A little help cleaning revolver

Don't worry about the cylinder face

Scotch brite. For the locations your fighting, that’s going to be about the most aggressive as you want to go that will get the job done quickly. Just don’t use it on areas on the outside of the gun where it will be visible as it will mark the gun to where it will be noticeable against an unmarked area of the gun.

I usually just deep six my SS revolvers in a sonic cleaner, half & half CLR to water. When done, I put in a tub with WD 40, wipe them down. Spotless.

Careful use of a dental pick to get the carbon off the area above the barrel, or 0000 steel wool (gently) and a good cleaner made for baked-on carbon. As George P said, don't worry about the cylinder face.

I had a 7.5" stainless Redhawk .44 Mag., dealt with this on a regular basis.

I would call it clean and be done with it.

I clean the cylinder face with a nylon brush/solvent to keep it from building up and causing binding on barrel. Some of the methods used to get all of it off are abrasive so I wouldn't do it every cleaning. For occasional deep cleaning of the cylinder face you can use Birchwood Casey lead away cloth(mildly abrasive). It works very well on SS. BTW, I never use steel wool on my guns except for when I cold blue.

If you have to clean the carbon off, which you don't, you can use a white eraser. The old school kind like you used with a typewriter works well. It looks like a pencil that you sharpen on one end. It had a brush on the other.

For cylinder face use a better solvent than hoppe’s. I use shooters choice mc#7 or butch’s bore and a stiff nylon or bronze brush. Don’t expect to get it perfect, because all your gonna do is dirty it again!!!

Depends how clean you /want/ it to be. Right now, it would be the cleanest gun in my collection

If you find you need something a tiny bit abrasive, no to steel wool. Maybe scotchbrite, but note they have grades. Also might try the Magic Erasers. Sold in general house cleaning, they are melamine foam sponges, that are VERY fine, so good at removing gunk with minimal (but not zero) scratching. Good choice for very gentle stuff like removing paint pen marks from painted magazine bodies, etc. Magic. Use them wet, not dry.

I have used Birchwood Casey lead away cloth mostly with good results

put the solvent on it - then come back in a couple hours, time is magic

Get as clean as you can with hopped & copper wool or brass brush. You buff out the rest with Mothers msg wheel cleaner & polish

Lee Q. Loader said:

. I saw a YouTube video that says use steel wool and solvent.

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Don’t use just any steel wool! It may mar your finish. If I had a rusty gun then maybe I might use 0000 steel wool and WD40 to get the rust off but never for cleaning and never anything courser than 0000 steel wool. You could used Chore Boy copper wool scrub pads as well and they shouldn’t harm stainless but I prefer my method below.

If I have a really dirty revolver, blued or stainless, I remove and disassemble the cylinder and I submerge the cylinder in Break Free CLP in a small Rubbermaid container.
I lay the revolver frame in a tray and apply a generous amount of CLP to all the dirty areas and parts with built up carbon and the I leave it sit overnight. In the morning I would apply more CLP and leave it sit until the late afternoon. After leaving things soak I then use Hoppe’s #9 and stiff nylon brushes, wooden swab sticks, plastic scrapers or a nifty brass scraper made by Pro Shot to clean up the heavy build up areas.
I have let cylinders soak for over 48 hours in CLP to get really hard carbon deposits off. It won’t harm bluing or stainless.

I've used metal polish to clean that kind of stuff on revolvers for years with no adverse effects.

I clean my stainless and blued cylinder faces the same way I use a Hoppes bronze brush and a little breakfree CLP, and it takes the build up right off and does not destroy the bluing.
PS I dont get them absolutely spotless as it is not necessary on guns I shoot.

Here is the brush which also works for cleaning the frame.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1014735087?pid=671244

2.99 buy a couple..

film495 said:

put the solvent on it - then come back in a couple hours, time is magic

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This.

Put a thin film of a good CLP on the trouble spots, wipe it off a day later with a cloth, repeat until the spot is gone. Not necessary to soak in a tub, only the stuff in contact with the metal is doing any good. Do the same for the bore, which I would be more concerned about. It will probably take several cycles of soaking and swabbing before the patch shows no more crud. I like Lewis Extreme Duty CLP as well as Break Free. Give the solvent time to work rather than using abrasives.

I just had a range day with the wife. We shot my Ruger Bisley stainless revolver and some other handguns. When I cleaned the Bisley I just scrub the cylinder face and areas around the forcing cone with a brass brush and Hoppes #9. They never come completely clean or like brand new. Clean enough to prevent further complications.

film495 said:

put the solvent on it - then come back in a couple hours, time is magic

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It has to be immersed in the solvent, or the solvent ddries and it is rock hard as before, unless you catch it before then.

entropy said:

It has to be immersed in the solvent, or the solvent ddries and it is rock hard as before, unless you catch it before then.

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I think it still softens the carbon, I do this process with pistons and cylinder heads, and sometimes don't go back to look in my basement for weeks and eventually it just wipes off over time, although I use Seafoam for that - which contains light oil like a CLP product

Aerosol brake cleaner works pretty fast but take precautions: remove the gun’s grips, wear safety glasses and gloves and spray it outdoors away from any flame.

Howdy

I have said this a million times. I never worry about the carbon rings blasted onto the surface of a revolver. They occur as high pressure gas and fouling are blasted out of the barrel/cylinder gap. Unlike fouling on the rest of the gun, the pressure they are blasted out under bonds them quite strongly to the front surface of the cylinder. There are all kinds of advice for removing them, I never bother because they always return the next time I fire the gun. I always say if you are still trying to scrub the carbon rings off the front of a cylinder, you don't have enough revolvers. Once you have enough, you will stop worrying about the carbon rings.

Also, never use steel wool to clean a stainless gun. Not even 0000 grade. Tiny shards of steel wool can break off and embed themselves in the steel. Stainless steel is defined as having a certain percentage of chromium in the alloy, I can't remember how much right now. Under normal circumstances a thin, invisible layer of chromium oxide naturally occurs on the surface of stainless steel that forms a barrier against atmospheric oxygen reaching the surface of the steel. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon, it protects the surface of the steel from corroding. If you scratch the surface a new layer of chromium oxide forms and protects the new surface. If tiny shards of steel wool, which is not stainless, are embedded in the surface, it interrupts the ability of the chromium oxide from forming a protective layer around the shard, and tiny rust spots can appear. If you want to scrub the surface of stainless steel with something more aggressive than a bright boy or an eraser, buy some bronze wool from Brownells. It will not hurt the surface of stainless steel.

By the way, stainless steel is never truly stainless, you can get it to corrode if you try hard enough. It also depends on the specific alloy. There are many, many different alloys of stainless steel, each with a different chemical makeup and different purposes. I had some cheap 'stainless' steak knives that I eventually threw out because they developed rust spots every time they went through the dishwasher. A zillion years ago when I used to specify materials for parts, we never used the term Stainless Steel. We always called out Corrosion Resistant Steel, along with whatever specific alloy we wanted. The term 'resistant ' is much more accurate when describing this type of steel.

Use a "Lead Wipe" don't get it on any of the blued parts sights etc ,it with remove the blueing. That cylinder face,rear cylinder and top strap will sparkle.

I always clean the face of the cylinders when I clean the guns. Its just part of cleaning and it can cause problems if you dont with some guns. I dont get the comments that its going to get dirty the next time you shoot the gun so why bother either. The whole guns getting dirty the next time you shoot it, and you clean the rest of it, why not clean the gun properly?

I had two Ruger Blackhawks that made it very apparent why you keep the face of the cylinder clean, which with them was really pointless, as their gap was to tight right from the start. The cylinder face would quickly load up with fouling and would bind and tie the gun up after a few cylinders full of LSWC's. Finally had to send them both back to Ruger to have them address it. If I hadnt sent them back, there was no way you were shooting the guns if you didnt clean the face of the cylinder.

The longer you wait between cleanings, the harder it gets when you finally do decide to do it. Its a lot easier to just clean the gun properly after each outing. Doing so also allows you to go over the gun and look for and maybe head off any possible issues that might show up.

For those spots that tend to build carbon and other fouling, I normally use a bronze or SS brush and Hoppes. If you do it regularly, its quick work and easily done.