Anybody Use Amonia for Bore Cleaning?

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Flynt

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Maybe I've learned just enough to be dangerous, but after reading dozens of posts here and elsewhere about bore solvents, there appears to be common element: amonia. Everybody eventually ends ups discussing whether a particular product contains amonia or not. Seems like amonia was once the tried and true cleaner -- the gold standard? Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody just uses amonia, presumably diluted and with excellent ventillation, for bore cleaning. If not, then there's probably a good reason. Thanks.
 
I do, but only when dissolved in a non-water solvent and sold in bottles labeled "Sweets" or "Barnes". I think using the household ammonia like you get at the grocery store could be a mistake, not will be mind you, but could be. It is diluted with water to about a 5% solution. The ammonia will strip most of the oil out of the barrel and the moisture left could start the rusting in only a few minutes unless you're fast on the draw and follow it with standard gun solvents and/or oil. Ammonia is a fairly strong caustic (basic) compound.

Even if you could get hold of 100% ammonia, trust me on this one, you do not want to play with that stuff. (It's normally a gas at room temp anyway.) I learned my lesson the hard way. I used to use a saturated solution of ammonia in my job and one day I opened the container without the usual precautions (fume hood). The effect was just about the same as a high voltage electrical shock. I was involuntarily knocked back against a wall (a reflex action that very rarely comes into play)- thank God the bottle didn't spill at that time. Ammonia is one of the nastiest compounds to the living in the entire universe and there's lots of it in there.
 
amonia vs chrome

if using amonia on chromed bores, be sure to remove all of it, and then oil. it will break down the chrome after extended exposure.

gunnie
 
I use Robla Solo Mil which is perhaps the best copper solvent after KG 12.

It does make Sweets et al seem like aloe vera.
 
I use amonia but I don't let it sit in for a day. I take a patch with some oil on it (WD-40, motor oil, whatever) rub the bore with it and maybe use a copper brush. Then I take one patch of amonia and rub it up and down the barrel to neturalize everything. Then I take a dry patch and dry the bore. Then any kind of unharsh for lack of a better word type of cleaner, and finally some oil patches

I don't leave the amonia in for more than five min.
 
I use ammonia for the removal of copper fouling. Run a wet patch, wait about 2 minutes, then dry patch. Repeat.

Now, it does not matter what kind of material your barrel is made up of, you MUST get all of the ammonia out when you are done. This has nothing to do with stripping out oil or any other such thing. When ammonia reacts chemically with copper, it becomes corrosive, and is especially good at eating away stainless steel. So, when you are done, a few dry patches, then solvent patch/dry patch combo a few times, oil like normal. Make sure you clean out the mag well and any other possibly contacted areas as well.
 
I use Sweet's but don't leave it in very long and run a couple patches wet with oil through the bore when I am done. No issues in 15 years of use.
 
There's TWO M's in ammonia!:banghead:

And it's very good for neutralizing the caustic salts from old, corrosive milsurp ammo. A lot of milsurp shooters will take a bottle of windex with them to the range, and rinse out the barrel with it when they're done shooting.
 
Windex / window cleaner works well for neutralizing the salts in corrosive ammo. Sweets works the best for copper removal

7.62
 
I use Butch's Bore Shine, which contains ammonia, but sparingly and only on guns that shoot copper. And, BTW, you can use ammonia-based solvents on chrome-lined barrels; just don't leave it in too long. About every fifth cleaning, I let Butch's soak in my Saiga's barrel a few minutes, scrub, and swab it clean. Then a final cleaning with (what else?) Hoppes No. 9.
 
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