Jim Watson
Member
Even worse than that. Black powder fouling is obviously dirty and must be cleaned off. And the best thing to clean it is water, which just coincidentally dissolves the chloride residue from corrosive primers.
But when smokeless powder came in, you could shoot a gun and it was not obviously fouled. Kind of like all the modern shooters still looking for clean ammo. But the chloride from the primer was still there with no potassium carbonate, etc, to dilute and mask it. People soon found out that their guns rusted worse than ever before as the potassium chloride picked up atmospheric moisture and left little puddles of salt water everywhere there was a crystal. But it hadn't taken them long to get out of the habit of wet cleaning their guns, so they used all sorts of potions. Some contained water and worked, some did not. Sometimes those worked and sometimes they failed. There were wild theories about "acid gases in the steel" which required cleaning a gun every day for three days after firing. Riight. The Bureau of Mines sent a report to the Army, "Corrosion Under Oil Films" and GI bore cleaners with emulsifiable oil and some water were developed. The civilian market was eventually rescued by noncorrosive primers.
