"You never clean a .22 rifle"

The notion of not cleaning the bore of a .22 barrels dates back decades. It has a couple bases in fact:

1. The rifling in the small diameter bore is relatively easy to damage and excessive use of a cleaning rod will cause unnecessary wear.
2. The point of impact may vary if the bore doesn't have one or more fouling shots through it. This is important in match shooting if the opportunity to fire fouling shots isn't there. It could also affect small game hunting, depending on how different the POI is on a clean bore.

Additionally, .22 LR ammo is often lubricated with a waxy compound. This leaves a protective coating in the bore that prevents rust.

I generally do not clean the bore on a .22 LR gun after shooting it for these reasons. None of my guns has suffered for that.

What I do recommend, especially with semiautos, is to clean the bolt face and pay special attention to the extractor hook. Also, clean the chamber if you can with oil or solvent on a Q-tip if it's reachable. I also make sure that semiautos are well lubricated. They can function fine with a lot of fouling if there's plenty of lube to dissolve and carry away fouling.

This works for me. YMMV depending on the gun, ammo, and environment.

I clean mine to bare metal when I switch ammo . I don't like to mix lubes , they do not all have the same base lubricant . Also, I like my chamber/leade clean so I am engaging the rifling instead of a ring of crud . I do not clean my 22 rimfires as much as my centerfire rifles , but I keep them clean. Mostly just a few patches of Ballistol every few hundred rounds .

I've heard that they can "season" to the brand of ammunition being used if enough of it is shot. Switching brands supposedly would require some more "seasoning" rounds before maximum potential accuracy would be attained again.

If any of this is indeed true, then the rifle would simply need some "seasoning-in" rounds again once cleaned.

Done carefully there is no downside to cleaning a 22 barrel. The problem is that it is easy to do more damage than good by cleaning a 22. They are best left alone.

yea, you really don't need to clean them if they don't foul. I have never seen one foul.
One thing I have seen is that old .22's were made with some of the softest steel I have ever seen. While shooting thousands of .22 lr bullets may seem like a lot, imagine drawing the equivalent length of lead wire through a barrel, and it doesn't seem so much. Of course heat and pressure are a factor, but still, .22 barrels can be very soft, to the point where I would not want to run a cleaning rod through them without a guide, and don't want to run a hard brush at all.

Trey Veston said:

"You never clean a .22 rifle"

Has anyone else heard of this? My dad is a former USMC sniper, gun mag writer, and the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to guns. He was completely shocked and disgusted that I didn't know not to scrub the bore of a .22 rifle.

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I heard this first from H&R category moderator Walkalong when he referred to an article by Schuemann Barrels that discouraged "chemical" and aggressive cleaning - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?resources/schuemann-barrel-cleaning-guide.19/

Since, I have stopped using aggressive lead solvents and switched to using copper strand (Chore Boy) over worn copper bore brush, which 100% removed any leading of the barrel.

Only solvent I now use is Hoppes #9.

Dave DeLaurant said:

The US Army (among others) determined conclusively that excessive abrasive scrubbing of a rifle bore will destroy accuracy so don't do that.

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jmr40 said:

Done carefully there is no downside to cleaning a 22 barrel. The problem is that it is easy to do more damage than good by cleaning a 22. They are best left alone.

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I agree.

I am continuing my 25,000+ round 22LR various brand testing with new 10/22 Collector #3 (around 3000 round count) and T/CR22 (around 1000 round count) and these barrels have yet to see a bore brush. I simply mop the bore soaked in Hoppes #9 and push patches through until clean. I have a borescope and rifling looks shiny and clean. (Both barrels were "fire lapped" by firing several hundred rounds of copper washed/plated ammo)

My pistol barrels are mostly factory surface hardened Glock/M&P/Tactical Kinetics-Brownells barrels so I don't worry but my 416 stainless steel barrels (Sig 1911, KKM, Lone Wolf, BCA) and 18" stainless steel .223 Wylde AR barrels get the same treatment of Hoppes #9 only with minimal copper bore brushing.

Same for GSG 1911 22LR, Hoppes and patching and I plan to do the same when I get Advantage Arms 22LR conversion kit for my Glock 22.

So in my opinion, how aggressive and often to clean or not depends on the metal composition of your barrel. For 22LR barrels, it's essentially carbon steel vs stainless steel. I just ordered KSA stainless steel bull barrel for T/CR22 and I also plan to just use Hoppes #9 mopping with patching - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...last-three-days.842532/page-148#post-12051915

Rule3 said:

The cleaning or not of 22 rifle Fable has been discussed ad nausea for generations!

It's a gun, it shoots really dirty ammo why would it be any different from any other gun??
Does it apply only to rifles? What about pistols?
Is 22 ammo a miracle that it does not leave lead or traces of lube and carbon?

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People must think that it continues to build and build until you have a smoothbore. Myth. It doesn't.

Sorry but the idea that guns must be cleaned every time they're fired is a myth borne of blackpowder and corrosive primers.

Trey Veston said:

I told my dad that I got grandpa's Remington Speedmaster Model 241 .22 Short semi-auto all scrubbed and cleaned and ready to shoot and he had a fit.

He said you never clean a .22 rifle, or at least, you never clean the barrel. He said a .22 barrel will get "seasoned" like a cast iron pan, and is more accurate the more you shoot.

He also said it was fine to clean the action, but running a rod down the barrel likely ruined the accuracy of the rifle.

I took it to the range and got 1" groups at 25 yards with open sights, which seemed fine to me.

Has anyone else heard of this? My dad is a former USMC sniper, gun mag writer, and the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to guns. He was completely shocked and disgusted that I didn't know not to scrub the bore of a .22 rifle.

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Shot .22 International in high school 1969-1971. We were using Remington 40X's and the cross town school had the range and inherited the 52D's. The rule was you NEVER cleaned the barrel of the weapon. Ever. Normal cleaning of a non target rifle, you NEVER run a patch down the muzzle, you always PUSH the patch thru the chamber FIRST and you are extremely careful about letting any metal part of the rod bear on the muzzle crown.

Now, just to keep the heebie jeebies from gettin to ya, later, we pretty much ran cleaning rods on M16's either way with 12V drill drivers and got those done in less than 5 minutes. One advantage, the flash hider tends to protect the muzzle a bit more, and when you are 7,000 rounds over on ammo draw and you need to burn it up - it got burned up. The barrel was reoiled and they were borrowed from some armory anyway . . .

I got a lot more observant when I unboxed a new FN for my stock number, and I watched that one to see new nicks in the finish, wear patterns, odd out of place markings. It remained quite accurate as long as I remembered it was a pencil barrel and never use the sling in qualification.

It doesn't take much indecent abuse to ruin a barrel, expecially at the muzzle, and a .22 being cleaned by teenagers with no instruction or formal training on it are like any boy with a stick. Eventually even a hornets nest will come down. Keeping in mind that finesse is not in their vocabulary for some time yet to come and BIGGER HAMMER dominates their thinking until at least the second child, we are far better off not cleaning them rather than increasing the pile of junk .22's sitting in old axe handle barrels in the back of surplus stores with fantasy notions of a "preventative maintenance" program that then makes a mockery of the process by allowing the destruction of a decent firearm for some undeserved cleaning.

Just wipe them down, by the time serious damage comes around from a little residue the operating window of competition tier accuracy is long past - up scale barrels go "bad" after 4,000 rounds in some circles, add practice between matches and you'd be changing out barrels more quickly than cleaning would fix. In the circles I ran then it was still a matter of skill not equipment until you were busting 285 consistently. The human factor was pretty much the biggest obstacle.

Cleaning it would definitely throw in major damage and ruin the schools armory creating an expensive repair list with no budget to fix it. The best thing to do was not accept the risk. Don't clean that .22.

champ0608 said:

My great-grandmother was a champion smallbore shooter, and set a world record in 1941. She lived to the tremendous old age of 107, and was around to take part in my early gun-handling exposure. A lovely woman known to many old time Camp Perry types.

The story is her Remington Model 37 had over 200,000 rounds on it, the bore was NEVER cleaned, and the barrel was never replaced.

Take that for what you will. Just one anecdote.

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I'm with Grandma!!!

I have target 22's that the bbls. have never been cleaned and that's in more than 40 years...

They do NOT lead up, the bullet is moving too slow to lead the bbl., with the lube that's on the bullet...

Best way to clean a 22lr bbl., is to SHOOT it!!

BTW, not one small bore target shooter in our club, cleaned the bbls of their guns...

DM

You really dont have to clean a gun "every" time, but from past experience, and especially with 22's, its best done regularly if you want the best results from them.

Cleaning isnt just "cleaning" either, its maintenance and inspection, and just part of it. I dont know about you, but Id prefer to find out there is or might be an issue, before it becomes a real problem.

Ive owned a number of 22's over the years, and across the gamut of cheap and expensive and to a one, they all tended to get grumpy as they get dirty, and function, especially with the autos tends to go south the more you shoot them and dont clean them. Some were worse than others, the handguns seem to be more susceptible than the rifles, but they all do/did it.

Picked this up on Thursday and shot it twice now. Got a little over 500 rounds through it. Just got done cleaning and lubing it for the third time a little while ago.



Pretty sweet shooter too. Not sure if it will give the 44's a run for the money or not.

Too all,

I take it that OP was talking about cleaning the BARREL ... not the action.

CraigC said:

People must think that it continues to build and build until you have a smoothbore. Myth. It doesn't.

Sorry but the idea that guns must be cleaned every time they're fired is a myth borne of blackpowder and corrosive primers.

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And the US Military! LOL! Sometimes, it felt like we spent more time cleaning, assembling, being told to tear it back down and start over...spent more time cleaning than shooting some days.

I generally run a 22 bore snake through a couple times and call it good, though I do break down my Victory pistol and clean it more often than my Henry or Marlin 60s.

Buzznrose said:

And the US Military! LOL! Sometimes, it felt like we spent more time cleaning, assembling, being told to tear it back down and start over...spent more time cleaning than shooting some days.

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Not sure when you were in the military but in the early 80s training with Vietnam-era M16s, we were told of fouling build up jamming up action (Due to slower burning powder US Government "decided" to go with instead of recommended faster burning powder) and our cleaning focus was around bolt and carrier group ... not necessarily the bore.

BreakFree CLP was also utilized and we kept the M16 action on the "wet" side and I never experienced jams.

Trey Veston said:

. . . cleaned and ready to shoot and he had a fit.

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Well, I find that accuracy goes south about 500 rounds in, and returns 5-25 rounds in after cleaning. I also notice that if the seasoning (lead and wax) had been sitting long enough to oxidize, accuracy is lousy until cleaned and reseasoned.

Shoot it, but disregard the first 30 or so.

Not throwing shade at dad but On this topic he's full of something. They don't need cleaning often but they do need cleaned...always from the breech and always being careful to protect the crown. Research Merrill Martin's articles in Precision Shooting along with his micro borescope photos on wear from powder residue and other factors. I have an Anschutz that needs cleaning at least every 500 rounds, a CZ that goes no longer than 250. Both take from five to ten rounds to condition the bore but both shoot better than when new. My 52 Win needed lapping with JB when I got it. Went from 3/4" at 50 yd to 3/8. My Shaw barreled 10-22 with Kidd trigger hasn't been cleaned yet but I have found that I need ten rounds of a new brand of ammo through it before trying for groups. It is unreal and it will, when it has to happen, get soft silk on a nylon jag and only unicorn pee for solvent. Too much is worse than too little, I do agree.

Very interesting ... first time that I have ever heard/read about how one should not clean the bores of .22rf rifles.

Santa brought me a Sear & Roebuck Model 25 (Sears-branded High Standard Model A-1041) .22rf semi-auto rifle for Christmas 1964, a little over a month before my 13th birthday. Not a target rifle, by any stretch but perfect for my visits to my maternal grandparents' farm (where I have lived for the past 30+ years).

I have never noticed any accuracy degradation from cleaning the bore but, then, I have not been looking for any. I shoot it only (very) rarely and, then, not a lot and cannot remember the last time I cleaned it (15years?).

My primary reason for cleaning that rifle during the 57 years since I got it is the nasty MESS that is always created in the action. While I have it apart I will patch the bore clean, oil it and run thru one final patch to catch any inadvertent over-oiling.

edwardware said:

Well, I find that accuracy goes south about 500 rounds in, and returns 5-25 rounds in after cleaning. I also notice that if the seasoning (lead and wax) had been sitting long enough to oxidize, accuracy is lousy until cleaned and reseasoned.

Shoot it, but disregard the first 30 or so.

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That's what I used to think and why I did the 25,000+ round testing of 20+ brand/weight 22LR testing with several 10/22s and new 10/22 Take Down.

Since 10/22s used for the 20,000+ round testing were cleaned regularly, I wanted to conduct "myth busting" by shooting new out of the box 10/22 Collector #3 and T/CR22 without cleaning while capturing every 10 shot group to see effects of break-in and wear of trigger/rifling over several thousand rounds using most common bulk boxed/loose 22LR - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...rrel-ruger-10-22-collector-3-break-in.859106/

10/22 now at 3000 round count, bore hasn't been brushed but mopped with Hoppes #9 and patched clean along with cleaning of muzzle crown. Inspection of bore revealed clean rifling.

T/CR22 now at over 1000 round count, bore hasn't even been mopped with Hoppes #9 and just the muzzle crown cleaned. Inspection of bore is clean with consistency of group size maintained since new -
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...mmo-comparison-break-in.864241/#post-11980400

As indicated by 50 yard 10 shot groups from cold to hot barrel shooting several hundred different brand/weight 22LR, accuracy trend didn't indicate need for "reseasoning" or "fouling" shots.

PapaG said:

Not throwing shade at dad but On this topic he's full of something. They don't need cleaning often but they do need cleaned...always from the breech and always being carefully to protect the crown. Research Merrill Martin's articles in Precision Shooting along with his micro horoscope photos on wear from powder residue and other factors. I have an Anschutz that needs cleaning at least every 500 rounds, a CZ that goes no longer than 250. Both take from five to ten rounds to condition the bore but both shoot better than when new. My 52 Win needed lapping with JB when I got it. Went from 3/4" at 50 yd to 3/8.

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I think there's a difference between looser typical factory barrels like 10/22 and chambers compared to tighter match barrel and chambers.

Tighter match barrels and chambers may benefit from lapping and could well shoot better than when new whereas typical factory barrel may shoot worse as rifling wears.

I may be able to provide some data/myth busting on this as in addition to ongoing 10 shot 50 yard groups I am capturing with 10/22 Collector #3 and T/CR22, I ordered a KSA 16.5" bull barrel to conduct comparison tests with (Stay tuned) - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...last-three-days.842532/page-148#post-12051915

I’ve had a lot of “dad’s old rifles” or uncle’s or grandpa’s brought because “I’ll never get rid of it, but it doesn’t shoot well and doesn’t feed, should I rebarrel, can it be fixed? After a couple hours of disassembly and digging decades of carbon fouling from the action and scrubbing the bore which appears nearly smooth bore from so much leading, I hand back a fully functioning rifle with satisfactory accuracy.

Sounds like old folk wisdom.

Not necessarily wrong but how does anyone know he is right?

Varminterror said:

... scrubbing the bore which appears nearly smooth bore from so much leading, I hand back a fully functioning rifle with satisfactory accuracy.

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I agree, leading is bad.

earlthegoat2 said:

how does anyone know he is right?

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And why I am conducting the 10/22 and T/CR22 myth busting threads along with regular inspection of bore/rifling. (See post #44)

I could add borescope pictures to the "real life" 22LR threads including the 16.5" bull barrel that I do not intend to clean with bore brush rather just mop with Hoppes #9 and patch. Stay tuned.

To clean or not to clean a .22 rifle barrel is a debate which has gone on for decades. More decades than I remember and that is a bunch. Like several have mentioned, I run a patch with powder solvent through the bore followed by using a nylon or occasionally brass bore brush followed by a patch or two on a jag and finally an oiled patch. This holds true be it rifle or handgun. With semi auto rifles I bath the guts with break free of similar solvent.

Cleaning the bore does not mean violently scrubbing the barrel with a stainless steel brush. I also use mostly Dewey coated rods or similar coated rods and on a .22 bore I have a few .17 caliber rods I prefer. I got my first .22 rifle in 1958 when I was 8 years old and it, along with a dozen others all shoot just fine. I have never seen reason to change those habits. However, that said do whatever trips your trigger as I can only say what works for me.

Ron

LiveLife said:

Not sure when you were in the military but in the early 80s training with Vietnam-era M16s, we were told of fouling build up jamming up action (Due to slower burning powder US Government "decided" to go with instead of recommended faster burning powder) and our cleaning focus was around bolt and carrier group ... not necessarily the bore.

BreakFree CLP was also utilized and we kept the M16 action on the "wet" side and I never experienced jams.

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I was in the AF. I had to quality on the M16-M4 almost every year from 1982-2008 and an M9 probably a dozen times. The people who worked the ranges were ridiculous with getting every spot of carbon off the weapon and then properly lubricating it. I’ve heard the same thing from both Army and Marne Corps friends.

I realize many think the AF isn’t into guns much, at least back then, and the hat would be fairly accurate. I learned much more about shooting the year I retired from the military and went to Gunsite for my first class.

I no longer clean the barrel of my 17HMR. It shoots tight groups always. I’m a believer in not cleaning a rimfire, except when you buy it, to break it in, and every 3000 rounds

I shot biathlon for a little while, a long time ago, and also was on the outskirts of the BR50 game during its brief popularity. Most of those folks did not clean their barrels unless accuracy dropped off, and most would claim that 1) accuracy never dropped off, and 2) if they did clean the bore, they'd have to shoot for a while before accuracy returned. I can't shoot as well as those folks, but my experience matches theirs, with a few exceptions.

Those exceptions mostly have to do with quality, both of the ammunition and the barrel. Those competitors universally shoot high quality rifles costing four figures, and they universally shoot the best ammunition they can get. That usually adds up to a perfectly consistent bore condition, wherein each passing bullet scrapes up a bit of fouling and leaves behind its own. A good way to mess up that pretty equilibrium is with brushes and solvent. But those of us shooting lesser rifles and lesser ammunition - especially copper-washed bulk stuff - may not experience that kind of consistency and so may need to clean on occasion. The key, though, is to let the rifle tell us what it wants. Those of us who always clean their .22s may never have actually seen what they are capable of.

And JFWIW, the foregoing is only about the bore and only about .22 LR. Nobody is suggesting we should run our semi-autos until they fail, or fill our centerfire bores with metal fouling.