Cleaning question for a Dead Air Mask

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holy crap, wish i'd seen this thread sooner. per zak smith (former mod here and owner of thunderbeast), i have used CLR (calcium lime rust) to clean all my cans for about 10 years now and it works as well as anything and is relatively safe.

first, weigh your can on a scale

take a plastic water bottle and cut the top off. pour about an inch or two of CLR in it. pour 1-2x that much water in.
now drop your can in. wait til fizzing stops. slosh it around a bit. let it sit a while. rinse, repeat. (for me, rinsing usually involves blowing it out with water and then compressed air too)

go 3-4 cycles of that, with some shaking and swishing. then dry and weigh it again. report how much carbon you removed
hmmmm. that sounds interesting. I have a terrible time taking my liberty mystic apart, and the titanium tube is not dip safe. I may have to try that.
 
I know this thread is kind of old, but I just cleaned my new Ruger 22 suppressor. So forgive me for resurrecting this but I was dumbfounded by the amount of lead buildup. Damn. I shot about 800 rounds thru it and did not do any research ahead of time. So, it was not treated with any silicone as advised.

What a mistake. Took me over 6 hours of scrubbing off and on over 4 days to get relatively clean. The lead buildup on the first two baffles was amazing. Took two days just to separate the two. They were practically fused together. I think I am going to use Silicon before my next shoot once I get these clean. Then I will use the dip if necessary for cleaning if the Silicon does not help to the extent needed.

I had always heard that 22 suppressors were very dirty. That is an understatement. Never saw anything like it before.
 
This thread on NFATalk goes into various experiments in baffle protection, with Frog Lube and a couple of kinds of high temperature silicone/ceramic brake lubricants.
http://nfatalk.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10344

Not sure if anything could provide sufficient protection for 800+ rounds fired through a can, but 100 to 200 seems possible. If doing a lot of shooting and not wanting to disassemble and clean often during that run, a plastic syringe filled with a grease of some sort can be used to inject it from the back of a suppressor, spreading it around the blast baffle area before continuing to shoot. I've done this with white lithium grease a few times in the field to prevent difficulty in disassembly if shooting 50 or more shots in a session, adding a small quantity after every few dozen shots. But lithium grease has been very smokey and smelly, so I'm glad to have run across ceramic particle filled silicone greases as an option. The one I've used so far, Permatex purple, smells odd but doesn't smoke at all, and is about as effective as the lithium for easing cleaning. Going to pick up some Silaramic white grease soon and see if that extends protection somewhat.
 
Hey Canadian,
When the boys came with me to the farm to shoot, they all wanted a piece of the new 22 suppressor. That is why I had such a high round count in it. Combine 2 youngsters, 2 threaded barrel 22 pistols, 1 10/22 with a binary trigger and you can burn thru 800 rounds before you know it. I will now operate under a round limitation and keep it at 500 or below. I just never comprehended that a 22 silencer has to be cleaned after every use and is best prepped with silicon beforehand.

Now I get it. :(
 
Yup, .22lr is amazingly filthy stuff, even the relatively less filthy CCI SV will crud up a can in no time. If it weren't so expensive to shoot (besides being overkill for plinking) I'd take my suppressed 9mm carbine out more as that can doesn't seem to get significant build-up at all, as observed with a little inspection camera.
 
After my second cleaning of my new Ruger SR, I tried the dip. The 50/50 solution of Vinegar and Hydrogen Peroxide worked like a charm. Had the baffles sit for about 4 hours in the solution. Took me about 30 minutes to get them cleaned and put back together after that. I hate that it creates such a toxic brew (lead acetate) but it saves hours of labor.
 
After my second cleaning of my new Ruger SR, I tried the dip. The 50/50 solution of Vinegar and Hydrogen Peroxide worked like a charm. Had the baffles sit for about 4 hours in the solution. Took me about 30 minutes to get them cleaned and put back together after that. I hate that it creates such a toxic brew (lead acetate) but it saves hours of labor.
I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly you can throw some epsom salts in the toxic brew and it will do some chemistry magic and the lead will precipitate out and lead sulfate will be created, which is supposedly less toxic.
 
This whole thread has me rethinking my desire to buy a .22 suppressor. Are they really that bad to clean? I don't love shooting for two hours and cleaning for four.
 
I wouldn't worry about cleaning to that extent. Get the suppressor and enjoy it!

If you intend to shoot large quantities, get a suppressor that you can take apart and use a stiff toothbrush to brush off excess deposits on the baffles every 1000 rounds.

You may be interested to know that I have one suppressor which has had 35,000 rounds through it without any cleaning at all, not even spraying anything into the can. That suppressor still works fine, although it has increased mass now.
Check my signature for details of that test.
 
did you try the salt in the dip? how did it work?

Hey Greyling. I have not added the salt yet to see if it precipitates out the lead. I did use the suppressor this weekend (about 300 rounds) and cleaned it again using the same solution that I used the first time. I am using a small mason jar and it is about half full of solution. I will continue to reuse the same solution until it ceases to be effective, then I will add the salt. Just curious about how many times I can reuse the solution before loses its effectiveness.

I let the baffles soak for 3 hours and then took a brush to them for about 20 minutes. So, probably a 30 minute job to brush, wipe and put back together. (Definitely gloved up though. The lead acetate has me cautious.)

Once I do the Epsom salt thing I will post the results with some pictures.
 
Thank you for the update. I am also interested in how often the dip can be reused. I've been disposing of mine after 1 use, after it has turned radioactive teal and dissolved all the lead of my can. I clean mine every couple thousand rounds. It gets very dirty and I have to soak it overnight. Any lead still on the baffles typically just wipes off. Anything that doesn't goes back in the jar for a few more hours. Occasionally I have to poke at a lead deposit with a toothpick.
 
a hobby rock tumbler and some stainless steel pins make fast work of .22 baffle cleaning. No dip to get rid of, no scrubbing, and about $60 on the cheap end to get set up.
 
This may be a naive question, but could the lead be melted off the baffles with a torch, or would that be too much heat for the stainless/titanium...?

I would only assume it wouldn't take anymore heat than the bullet casting group uses to cast their own bullets...?
 
You don't want to be torching titanium, as it weakens at a much lower temperature than lead melting point.
 
Greyling made a great point. If you use the dip, DON'T use it on aluminum. It's ok to use on steel and titanium, but not aluminum. The difficulty is the lead and how well it bonds to the internals after being cooled from gas to solid. During firing, some of the lead gets vaporized and that is what gets cooled on contact with the suppressor internals and hardens. That's the hard stuff to clean off. It doesn't happen to centerfire rifle calibers because they are encased in much thicker copper jackets that don't get vaporized which is why centerfire rifle caliber suppressors don't need to be cleaned. I don't know about pistol caliber suppressors because some people use lead for pistols. Do those need to be cleaned also?

My Gemtec Lunar 9 pistol suppressor's manual says it should be cleaned every 200rds.
That seems a little ridiculous to me. I used a toothbrush + gun oil the 1st time I cleaned it.

Rifle cal suppressors are where it's at - basically no cleaning required as the high velocity projectile blasts everything out.
 
Lead melts around 620-630 F, which is well within Ti's operating range. Still doing that isn't something I'd recommend because it's so easy to clean rimfire cans using other methods.

As for the other question, CLR will be fine on Ti parts
 
My latest foray into .22 suppressor cleaning has yielded FANTASTIC results. I have both a Dead Air Mask and a TacSol Axiom. There is no aluminum in either one, so what I am going to describe does NOT apply to suppressors with aluminum components. First, I treat the suppressor with silicon brake fluid. To clean them, my uncle has a blasting cabinet with very fine glass beads. The pretty finish on the titanium parts changes, but the parts come out clean and it's quick. He's an engineer and says that the fine glass beads do no harm to either the stainless or titanium parts. The entire cleaning process takes me about 30 minutes per suppressor, no matter how crudded up they are. It's a HUGE relief!
 
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