Cleaning Nickel Cylinder/Barrel Interface Fouling

I have an absolutly beautiful M29 with a nickel finish, and while I have been cleaning guns for ~60 years, I would like to ask for your input as to which solvent/cleaner will remove the black ring blasted onto the cylinder throat environs by those magnificent 44 mag blasts. I ask because I remember that Hoppes #9 will remove the nickel if left on the surface, and I would rather just skip Hoppe's in this case. I have almost every oil and solvent known to man, but rather than list them, I'm looking for input on what has worked for you. I'm not averse to ordering "just one more!" if it will keep the cylinder face clean. The pics show what look like surface imperfections but it is artifact. Thing is pristine...

herrwalther said:

Flitz metal polish. Most stores do not carry it as I recently found out but you can get it from places like Midway and Amazon.

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That's funny. Used it in the Army long ago and far away - but I will definitely pick some up. And you never know when you might need to polish up your uniform brass... ;-)

Never used Flitz in the Army. It was always Brasso for us, and I have some of that too. Had to pick up my first bottle of Brasso in several years to polish one of my old belt buckles that is suitable for civilian dress attire.

We used Brasso but also Flitz to touch things up without having to go through the whole Brasso rigamarole. You could tear a piece of paper or cardboard and put it around & under your brass and wipe it without removing your brass and having to go through all the measuring contortions to get it back on right...

But, back to nickel cylinders: I ordered a couple of the lead removal cloths from Brownell's, and I think I will get a carbon remover as soon as I hear from them whether it is safe or not for nickel finishes. I'll take dirty cylinder faces over screwed up/etched nickel any day.

.38 Special said:

I have heard that every gun solvent on the planet will damage nickel, but so far have not damaged my nickeled guns with any of them - including Hoppe's.

Having said that, I have completely given up on trying to remove blast marks from the front of the cylinder.

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I got the lead removal cloths from Brownell's, and one of them easily removed the blast marks from my nickel 44 - front of the cylinder looks fantastic! Get one or two - they're inexpensive and really easy to use. Brownell's says that the dark discoloration on the cloth can be ignored, but it cleaned everything before I could really test that. They are also non-toxic and smell nice...
Like I said, it is awesome!