CLEANING LORE RAMBLE FROM THE DECADES
"More guns, cameras, small boys, and coffeepots have been ruined by excessive cleaning than any other single cause." 230RN ca 1965
The remarks about .22 target rifles being over-cleaned is apparently true. Also, in High Power matches, in my "antique*" experience.
It may be a mere hangover from the days of Lesmok powder** for .22 rifles and prior to the advent of tin alloy jacketed bullets, but it was customary (I don't know if it's still true) to fire several freebie "fouling rounds" before taking sighting shots at matches.
With my .22 Target Rifle, I always found the first shot out of a clean barrel was a flyer. In high-power matches, I could see four or five shots "walking" toward the final impact point.
I "converted" over to Prairie Rat shooting decades ago and I almost never clean my varmint rifle barrrel thoroughly. Just run a patch through it to clear out the cobwebs before shooting (joke, joke.) It seems that with jacketed bullets, successive shots from a really
clean barrel kind of approach the final point of impact asymptotically. The usual result was that the first Prairie Rat made it to his hole and was a little bit more "educated" about people walking around with long sticks 3-400 yards away.
I bought a boresnake for my 1911 recently just to keep the barrel free of the aforementioned cobwebs (joke, joke) and the inevitable lint and grit and stuff (not joke, not joke) that gets in there just from daily carrying. Works very well in this application.
I keep an eye on the humidity with a cheap cigar store hygrometer and by watching the NOAA*** site and if it goes over 50% I will squirt some Birchwood-Casey "Sheath****" down my barrels and then run a dry patch through before shooting.
Except for the .22s, I never shoot lead bullets unless I can't avoid it. I used to fire 50 rd per day of my own cast gas-checked bullets for Handgun Metallic Silhouette practice, and I hated "reaming out" the lead (despite the gas checks) every day. 'Course, they were loaded pretty hot, but nevertheless, it was a royal pain in the tuchas.
This kind of practice was not necessarily for "accuracy," but for firing discipline, so the gradual decrease in accuracy through a session did not matter that much. But by the fortieth round, I could sure tell a "reaming" was necessary. The last session before an actual match was with full-house jacketed bullets, and this one was always for accuracy, not mere fire discipline.
In
general, and I always get flamed a little for this, I've found that guns tend to shoot more accurately when dirty anyhow. Some gunk (but not too much so as to interrere with functioning) seems to take up some slack in the mechanism, resulting in better shot-to-shot uniformity.
For what it's worth, that's my long-term general experience with cleaning guns in general. I do like that boresnake, though, and that's fer sure.
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(* I haven't fired in matches in over thirty years.)
(** Lesmok Powder was half-and half black and smokeless.)
(***
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ifps/MapClick.php?CityName=Nederland&state=CO&site=BOU
Insert your own zip.
(**** Watch it. Use rubber gloves. The overspray from this stuff makes me itch like mad.)