ReadyontheRight
Member
Get a Boresnake.
How can a cleaning rod damage the crown if it isn't steel?
- Thread starter jc89
- Start date
- Status
esmith
Member
My, my, krochus, aren't we acting mature?
Ah, the age old and stupid debate. How can a brass or aluminum rod, which are FAR softer than steel, and much more soft than stainless, can somehow, with very little pressure, wear out a barrel.
Brass, Oil and aluminum will wear out a steel barrel, if cleaned 1,000 times a day for 100 years... Get on it.
Unless my 70 year old abused 22 savage, 50 year old Mauser, my 3 80 year old savages, and not to mention all of YOUR old and abused firearms are somehow immune to these affects, and yet they still show a perfect rifling, and no problems with shooting, and they were cleaned with, OMG, steel rods. Weird.
Oh, and of course water can wear out rock, but I ain't got 2,000 years of constant cleaning on my rifles to waste.
Brass, Oil and aluminum will wear out a steel barrel, if cleaned 1,000 times a day for 100 years... Get on it.
Unless my 70 year old abused 22 savage, 50 year old Mauser, my 3 80 year old savages, and not to mention all of YOUR old and abused firearms are somehow immune to these affects, and yet they still show a perfect rifling, and no problems with shooting, and they were cleaned with, OMG, steel rods. Weird.
Oh, and of course water can wear out rock, but I ain't got 2,000 years of constant cleaning on my rifles to waste.
Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
Cleaning from the muzzle with any side pressure on the cleaning rod will drag grit against the edge of the crown. There WILL eventually be a tiny bit of wear at the most critical point on a rifle. That's bad news for group size.
I guess the most extreme examples are with old lever-actions. I've seen some that began life as .30-30s, but the muzzle had gotten worn toward .31 or .32. Bummer.
I guess the most extreme examples are with old lever-actions. I've seen some that began life as .30-30s, but the muzzle had gotten worn toward .31 or .32. Bummer.
IndianaBoy
Member
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2005
- Messages
- 1,551
The reason why aluminum rods are bad?
All aluminum... the can of soda, the engine block, or the cleaning rod, has an extremely thin layer of aluminum oxide. Scrape it off and a new layer forms in seconds.
Aluminum oxide is an extremely hard material, it makes a fantastic abrasive.
Rub it along the crown of a rifle in a careless manner, and it will remove steel.
Unless you are a hamfisted conscript, this is unlikely to be a major problem.
However, steel, coated, or carbon fiber rods are all better choices.
All aluminum... the can of soda, the engine block, or the cleaning rod, has an extremely thin layer of aluminum oxide. Scrape it off and a new layer forms in seconds.
Aluminum oxide is an extremely hard material, it makes a fantastic abrasive.
Rub it along the crown of a rifle in a careless manner, and it will remove steel.
Unless you are a hamfisted conscript, this is unlikely to be a major problem.
However, steel, coated, or carbon fiber rods are all better choices.
30Cal
Member
Aluminum rods are almost always 3 piece rods. They don't stay straight for very long.
Regardless of what you use, be careful if you work from the muzzle end. Barrels are soft. All it takes to ding the crown edge is to bounce the tip of the cleaning rod over it.
After you've seen a zillion M1's with egg shaped muzzles, devoid of rifling, you start to believe that careless and overly aggressive cleaning really is bad.
Regardless of what you use, be careful if you work from the muzzle end. Barrels are soft. All it takes to ding the crown edge is to bounce the tip of the cleaning rod over it.
After you've seen a zillion M1's with egg shaped muzzles, devoid of rifling, you start to believe that careless and overly aggressive cleaning really is bad.
Tarvis
Member
The point isn't that cleaning your rifle will destroy it. The point is that every time you run something through the bore, it is wearing it even if the amount is very small. If it's a bench rest rifle and you shoot 3000 rounds a year and clean it regularly, odds are you want to be fairly careful when cleaning to get the most life out of your barrel. If you shoot squirrels and rabbits with your truck gun, cleaning once a month from the muzzle may not be a big worry to you.
The argument that it really doesn't matter how you clean because you will never damage the throat or crown is ignorance.
The argument that it really doesn't matter how you clean because you will never damage the throat or crown is ignorance.
KBintheSLC
Member
Exactly. Any matter can erode a harder substance with enough frictional interaction.
MT GUNNY
Member
Wouldn't a bore brush pick up these tiny particles and wear the entire bore? Not to mention the brush it self?
Poper
Member
Well, sort of. But not by water alone. The sediments, sand, pebbles, stones and boulders carried by water over time did most of the work. Later on, the exposed, sculptured elements were further eroded by wind and rain and the sand, dust, etc. carried by them.
Yup. Some of the best wet/dry sandpaper you can buy is aluminum oxide sandpaper.
OK, class, what lessons have we learned?
1) Shoving anything down your barrel will induce wear. Some things more than others.
2) Aggressive, ham-fisted conscripts, given enough time, will wear a barrel and crown.
3) Worn barrels and crowns affect accuracy.
4) If you or your descendants own a rifle long enough, the bore and/or crown will show noticeable wear.
5) Not cleaning the bore will degrade accuracy, too.
6) Barrels can be recrowned.
7) Barrels can be replaced.
9) The Grand Canyon was created by improper cleaning rod material and stroke technique.
The moral to this story?
Shoot your firearm of choice as much as it gives you the most pleasure, then clean the bore with your tool of choice.
Address any wear issues as necessary via items 6) and 7) as necessary to maximize shooting pleasure.
Worry about bore and/or crown damage deprives you of the pleasures derived from shooting and then cleaning (a.k.a. "fondling"
) your guns. I hope this is helpful.
Poper
Barrels are not soft.
If they were, then they would bell and deform the first time you shot a round through it unless you kept the pressure under the modulus of elasticity of the material. In which the round velocity means you may as may as well use a slingshot.
Water cannot carve rock.
It is either a transport medium for harder materials, sand, quartz, grit etc or it can gradually dissolve/corrode rock, if it is acidic or alkaline due to other dissolved materials in the water. An example from Chem 101, drop a small piece of limestone in water, then vinegar, the erosion only occurs in the acidic vinegar. With water, dissolved carbon dioxide makes a weak solution of carbonic acid that with time corrodes some rocks.
A softer material cannot wear a harder material, that is basic physics and material science. If it did then lathes would not be able to work material, sandpaper could not smooth surfaces, diamond could not cut glass.
Oh and before we hear the usual stuff......
"Yeah, then why does cutter paper blunt scissors".
This is due to the clays and other additive materials in paper that makes, is shiny/dull/glossy/stiff/soft etc
"Yeah, well why do razor blades dull"
Your whiskers are actually harder than copper wire and when you shave that plus the very thin and fine edge makes the edge liable to either deform (curve) or if brittle carbon steel, micro fracture and shed the edge.
In a barrel you either have
Corrosion, Erosion, Deformation, Fracture and a cleaning rod, unless made of a material harder than the barrel or lining, cannot itself damage the barrel.
Clean the barrel in the field with a pull through cloth or brush that has become contaminated with grit, sand etc and then yes, that contaminant can damage the barrel.
Fail to clean the barrel properly after using corrosive ammunition, then yes, that contaminant can damage the barrel.
Hit the barrel hard enough with a bloody great brass mallet or shoot at it with a high velocity FMJ and you can fracture or cause deformation of the metal of the barrel. I would suggest not doing either.
Shoot "barn burner", high temperature, high pressure ammunition and yes you will cause erosion or plastic deformation of the chamber, throat and /or barrel. Either tone down the loads or expect the wear.
Aluminium oxide in a manufactured crystalline form is very abrasive but is not formed by scratching an aluminium rod, you could however start to, in effect, mechanically plate the barrel surface which is a bad thing.
Bouncing an aluminium rod on a steel barrel, unless fired at very high velocity, cannot deform the barrel but can mark the surface by leaving a burnished layer of aluminium on top or by marring a softer surface treatment such as an ant-corrosion treatment.
So, after all that what have we learned.
Clean with equipment that is softer than barrel materials or is isolated, say with bore guides.
Don't let your cleaning kit get dirty
Don't re-use cleaning cloths that may have picked up cleaning contaminants
Really, really clean if you shoot corrosive propellant or primers
Use the same process each time so you clean OUT the crud and not move it backwards and forwards
Don't hit your equipment with a mallet or shoot it
If they were, then they would bell and deform the first time you shot a round through it unless you kept the pressure under the modulus of elasticity of the material. In which the round velocity means you may as may as well use a slingshot.
Water cannot carve rock.
It is either a transport medium for harder materials, sand, quartz, grit etc or it can gradually dissolve/corrode rock, if it is acidic or alkaline due to other dissolved materials in the water. An example from Chem 101, drop a small piece of limestone in water, then vinegar, the erosion only occurs in the acidic vinegar. With water, dissolved carbon dioxide makes a weak solution of carbonic acid that with time corrodes some rocks.
A softer material cannot wear a harder material, that is basic physics and material science. If it did then lathes would not be able to work material, sandpaper could not smooth surfaces, diamond could not cut glass.
Oh and before we hear the usual stuff......
"Yeah, then why does cutter paper blunt scissors".
This is due to the clays and other additive materials in paper that makes, is shiny/dull/glossy/stiff/soft etc
"Yeah, well why do razor blades dull"
Your whiskers are actually harder than copper wire and when you shave that plus the very thin and fine edge makes the edge liable to either deform (curve) or if brittle carbon steel, micro fracture and shed the edge.
In a barrel you either have
Corrosion, Erosion, Deformation, Fracture and a cleaning rod, unless made of a material harder than the barrel or lining, cannot itself damage the barrel.
Clean the barrel in the field with a pull through cloth or brush that has become contaminated with grit, sand etc and then yes, that contaminant can damage the barrel.
Fail to clean the barrel properly after using corrosive ammunition, then yes, that contaminant can damage the barrel.
Hit the barrel hard enough with a bloody great brass mallet or shoot at it with a high velocity FMJ and you can fracture or cause deformation of the metal of the barrel. I would suggest not doing either.
Shoot "barn burner", high temperature, high pressure ammunition and yes you will cause erosion or plastic deformation of the chamber, throat and /or barrel. Either tone down the loads or expect the wear.
Aluminium oxide in a manufactured crystalline form is very abrasive but is not formed by scratching an aluminium rod, you could however start to, in effect, mechanically plate the barrel surface which is a bad thing.
Bouncing an aluminium rod on a steel barrel, unless fired at very high velocity, cannot deform the barrel but can mark the surface by leaving a burnished layer of aluminium on top or by marring a softer surface treatment such as an ant-corrosion treatment.
So, after all that what have we learned.
Clean with equipment that is softer than barrel materials or is isolated, say with bore guides.
Don't let your cleaning kit get dirty
Don't re-use cleaning cloths that may have picked up cleaning contaminants
Really, really clean if you shoot corrosive propellant or primers
Use the same process each time so you clean OUT the crud and not move it backwards and forwards
Don't hit your equipment with a mallet or shoot it
VARifleman
Member
The modulus of elasticity of steel is the same between grades no matter what has happened to them. The term that you are referring to is the yield point, and then it would be the stress in the steel imparted by the internal pressure of the barrel, and those two things are not the same.
The elasticity of steel will vary by material, alloying, hardening etc as we are changing the ductility of the material.
As you noted the yield point is what we're really looking at in the Stress/Strain curve of a ductile material.
Once we start throwing surface treatments such case hardening, layering such as chrome lining and so on the formulae start to get real fun.....
For this case I was refuting the erroneous idea that a barrel is somehow made of a soft material, not ductile.
As you noted the yield point is what we're really looking at in the Stress/Strain curve of a ductile material.
Once we start throwing surface treatments such case hardening, layering such as chrome lining and so on the formulae start to get real fun.....
For this case I was refuting the erroneous idea that a barrel is somehow made of a soft material, not ductile.
VARifleman
Member
The elasticity has nothing to do with ductility at all. Ductility is seen after plastic deformation, after the material yields. Elasticity is always 29 million psi for steel though, while you can have yielding as low as 15 thousand psi, or as high as several hundred depending on the alloy. I've tested steel that will fail at 75-90% elongation, others will break in a brittle fashion without much noticeable plastic deformation.
Gator
Member
+1
And not only M1s, many, many milsurps show the evidence of muzzle wear from cleaning rods. Yet some people refuse to believe that cleaning rods cause wear.
The last AR I bought had two pages of instructions about how to properly clean the rifle, and it included a STEEL cleaning rod.
Maybe the problem is not the cleaning but milsurps that have tens of thousands of rounds through them, under bad circumstances, and been cleaned with whatever horrible cleaning kit they came with.
R.W.Dale
Member
dont forget by conscripts who are being forced to clean them when they'd rather be doing other things.
It's not the size of the rod or what it's made of, it's how you use it
telomerase
Member
Yes... its other names are "ruby" and "sapphire".
charles.emond
Member
- Joined
- May 12, 2008
- Messages
- 66
i never cleaned my .22 savage
Stump Water
Member
Paralysis by analysis.
Use common sense in your cleaning routine. It’ll fare you well.
Krochus…. I’ll stand you a beer
Use common sense in your cleaning routine. It’ll fare you well.
Krochus…. I’ll stand you a beer
Buzztail
Member
The muzzle on my M1s worn out from protecting freedom
. YMMV
Stevie-Ray
Member
Well, not shooting it just kinda takes all the fun out of it.
- Status
