Cleaning guns back in the day

[smitty22gunr]

So I was thinking about some of the surplus corrosive ammo I have and it got me wondering:

A. At what point were "non-corrosive" cartridges introduced by manufacturers?

B. Were all cartridges produced prior to this "corrosive" in the same way that common vintage milsurp stuff is?

C. What products were used back then to safeguard firearms against the ill effects of that ammo, especially what was used in the era of the Old West and prior?

Anybody care to take a stab?


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[rcmodel]

Commercial U.S. Ammo begin the use non-chrossive priming prior to WWII.
First in .22 rim-fire, later in center-fire calibers.
U.S Military small arms ammo was all non-corrosive after about 1952.

In the early days, boiling water was used to scrub bores with a cleaning rod & patch to 'pump' boiling water back and forth through the barrel.

It is told the buffalo hunters would urinate in the bores of thier black powder rifles to keep fouling down during long shooting sessions.

Prior to the discovery of crude oil and refining it in the mid-1800's, various animal fats were used for lubrication, and rust protection.

Sperm whale oil was especially praised, and prized.
As well as rendered bear grease, and probably other rendered animal fats from game and livestock.

rc

 

[Jim Watson]

Greener was strong on "petroleum." He did not mention hot water for regular cleaning but said "Boiling water kills rust."


There were a lot of priming compounds tried over the years before the industry settled on lead styphnate. There is now a move towards the lead free Dinol mix.

The buffalo hunters had to deal with primers containing both mercury fulminate and potassium chlorate, mercuric and corrosive both.
The mercury fulminate was left out, most likely for storage stability, and had the added advantage of not attacking brass. Leaving the chlorate "corrosive" priming compound.

The horrible ammonia blends used to remove hard metal fouling from cupro-nickel jackets had the then-unsuspected advantage of dissolving the chloride residue from chlorate based primers.

There was a lot of mumbo jumbo about "acid gases" in the "pores of the metal" from newfangled smokeless powder. Army practice of cleaning with oily "nitro solvent" usually got enough chloride out, but not always. It took the Bureau of Mines to figure it out, as described in the report 'Corrosion Under Oil Films.' Military bore cleaner came to include water emulsions. The civilian market demanded noncorrosive primers and there were a bunch tried. Even one mercuric but non-corrosive primer. The ammo companies didn't care that it destroyed brass, they didn't want to encourage handloaders. A German company and then Remington picked up on lead styphnate which became the industry standard.
The Army was slow to accept anything new after some unfortunate experiences with gimmick formulas. One was made with red phosphorus, available in adequate purity from only one source.
So the Army stuck with the well known chlorate primer through WWII, except for M1 Carbine ammo which was always noncorrosive to protect its staked in gas piston. They meant to go noncorrosive after the war, but Korea got in the way and the changeover was not complete until up into 1952.
The Canadians made the shift earlier on. Contract .30-06 was noncorrosive, and the 9mm I shot in my Luger was first class, even 20 years after the war.

 

[Jim K]

The U.S. military kept the old FA-70 formula through WWII because it was known to be stable and little affected by extremes of temperature (think of the extremes at storage depots in Panama and Alaska) not to mention combat zones. With non-corrosive primers having been introduced only in the mid 1930's they had simply not been around long enough to prove stability in storage. The military doesn't keep a couple of boxes around like the average deer hunter - they keep several billion rounds on hand in case of a war.)

The Canadians did use non-corrosive primers, but some Canadian 8x57 I tried to fire a few years ago didn't go. The storage had been OK. While that is a bit extreme (1940-2005), I have fired .45-70 that lasted longer than that.

Jim

 

[smitty22gunr]

Thanks everyone! Very informative.


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[Malamute]

Even cold water will cut black powder fouling, it just doesn't help dry the metal like hot water does.

The nitro solvents, Hoppes No 9 perhaps being the best known, work fairly well. Hoppes was developed for smokeless powder and primer fouling. I think the formula has changed some in the semi-recent past. Keith wrote that when on the shooting team, hed clean his rifles with Hoppes and leave them with a film in the bore, and continue shooting (he may have run a dry patch through itr before shooting again, not sure). He reported they stayed in excellent condition. With basic corrosive primer ammo, Ive used Hoppes and Shooters choice and had no problems at all. For heavy jacket fouling, Shooters Choice works better than Hoppes. I think one part of the change in Hoppes was reducing the ammonia, which cut copper fouling. Probably also reduced nasty chemicals we don't want exposure to also.

FWIW, if all you have is Hoppes in camp, it works well on black powder fouling, it just takes a few very dirty patches to get clean. It was fine in my 1886 in antelope camp.

 

[Jim K]

Hoppes #9 was made to dissolve the fouling left by the old cupro-nickel jacketed bullets. While most European makers went to mild steel jackets* for high power rifle bullets, U.S. makers (including the Army's Frankford Arsenal, used cupro-nickel. That alloy left what can best be described as "clumps" of jacket material in the barrel, raising heck with accuracy. The ammonia in Hoppes #9 dissolved the copper and washed the deposits away.

Hoppes dealt with corrosive primer residue only by having enough water to dissolve it; it was not made specifically to deal with potassium chloride because no one knew that was what was causing barrel corrosion.

The problem with the the old Hoppes #9 is that if used on a nickel plated gun, and it gets under the nickel through a crack or chip, it will dissolve the copper cladding under the nickel and the nickel will peel. I understand that in more recent times, Hoppes has changed its formula, but in any case avoid use of any ammonia-based cleaner when nickel plated guns are involved.

*Cupro-nickel was often used to plate steel jacket bullets to prevent rust in storage, but it was thin and did not cause buildup in a barrel.

Jim

 

[4v50 Gary]

For SMLEs, the Armourer had a special galvanized funnel for pouring hot water down the action.

 

[cdk8]

Commercial U.S. Ammo begin the use non-chrossive priming prior to WWII.
First in .22 rim-fire, later in center-fire calibers.
U.S Military small arms ammo was all non-corrosive after about 1952.

In the early days, boiling water was used to scrub bores with a cleaning rod & patch to 'pump' boiling water back and forth through the barrel.

It is told the buffalo hunters would urinate in the bores of thier black powder rifles to keep fouling down during long shooting sessions.

Prior to the discovery of crude oil and refining it in the mid-1800's, various animal fats were used for lubrication, and rust protection.

Sperm whale oil was especially praised, and prized.
As well as rendered bear grease, and probably other rendered animal fats from game and livestock.

rc

That is so cool and I think you just solved a mystery for me! Years ago my grandmother told me that her parents used bear grease or boar grease for everything from guns to cooking, and I thought it was bear grease but not certain (partly because boars tend to be a bit further south than where she grew up.) As they had both cows and pigs, you would think that they would just use pork fat that would accumulate with slaughter, especially at a time when pigs had so much more fat on them compared to now. If bear grease was highly coveted as having certain benefits over some other animal fats, that explains why they would go to the extra trouble & effort when they had boatloads of free pork fat within a few yards reach.

I always knew that sperm whale fat was highly prized for various properties such as clean-burning, and figured those properties were what made it justifiable as a premium product over animal fats that were much easier to acquire. Neat! Thanks!

 

[Jim K]

Mineral oil has another advantage for use in lighting. Ever been in a room where animal fat is being burned for light?

One small point. Prior to the common acceptance of non-corrosive primers, mercury fulminate was in use, beginning about 1900. It was satisfactory as far as preventing barrel rusting, but the mercury amalgamated with the copper in the brass case and made the case brittle, and thus unsuitable for reloading. This made little difference to the military or to those who didn't reload, but when the military began to issue reloading tools for target practice, the mercury fulminate ruined the cases.

The old use of mercury fulminate is the reason why so many cartridge boxes, even in fairly recent times, were marked "non-corrosive, non-mercuric."

Jim

 

[Jim Watson]

The US Army quit using mercuric primers in 1898, or so Hatcher said.

Winchester loaded factory match .30-06 and .300 H&H with the corrosive and mercuric 8 1/2G primer until 1960.

One old source said that bear fat was prized for lubrication (and for pastry) because it did not go rancid like hog lard.