Breech face grunge

[Candiru]

I've noticed that shooting a lot of rounds in a session leaves a ring of
grunge on the breech face where the cartridge's headstamp rests. Most
of the fouling is easily removed, but on my stainless steel pistols
there remains a ring-shaped stain that's almost impossible to get off.
(For all I know, this also occurs on blued pistols but just isn't
noticable.)

Repeated swabbing with Hoppe's doesn't help, nor does vigorous brushing
with a nylon brush. I'm reluctant to bring a bronze brush to bear after
my first attempt left some scratches on the face. I've considered
preventative measures, such as a very light coating of oil, but I doubt
its efficacy and the potential drawbacks (penetrating the primer of a
chambered round or gumming up the firing pin channel) are considerable.

Does anyone have a sure-fire way of removing heat- and pressure-embedded
headstamp marks from a stainless steel breech face?

 

[1911Tuner]

Ring around the Breech(face)

Howdy Candiru, and welcome aboard.

Not an easy way to remove those, and the hard way would probably damage the breechface. They won't hurt anything anyway, and other than just a good scrubbing with a nylon brush to clean the crud off the breechface, are probably best left alone.

Luck!

 

[Zach S]

Tuner is right, it wont hurt anything. Most of my 1911s are stainless, and they all have that stain.

However, I have found that the best thing to scrub them off is an old points file that has had the teeth ground off of it wrapped in part of an old T-shirt. I normally use gun-scrubber, followed by break-free. Works a lot better than the nylon brush anyway.

Mine may have more buildup than yours, I normally dont bother cleaning until somewhere between 1500 and 2000 rounds. The exceptions are when they are dropped off at a 'smith, or when money is short and they get pawned.

Of course, you dont have to use a smoothed points file...

 

[HSMITH]

LeadAway cloth, it will wipe the discoloration right off. Keep it well away from your blue guns though, it WILL wipe blueing right off too!!

 

[usp_fan]

I can second the Lead-Away cloth. I does wonders on removing tough powder rings on my Stainless Bisley cylinder.

--usp_fan

 

[foghornl]

I've found that a dab of "Flitz" metal polish does a good job on those grunge rings.

 

[Shear_stress]

I remove the slide and drag the "brush" section of a bore snake back and forth across the breech face. The method works pretty well, and seems a little gentler than a full-on brass brush.