Is this a bad idea?

[danbrew]

So I'm out blasting away today with my new 617 and having a ball with it. I did 550 rds yesterday and 888 this afternoon. Yeah, my trigger finger is a little sore - but it was all (mostly) double-action and quite illuminating as to teaching me the whole idea behind double-action firing.

I did a decent job of cleaning the gun last night and scrubbed the bbl and the chambers with a brass brush and some Hopes #9. Throughout the day today, I applied some #9 to a few patches and rubbed down the revolver every now and again, but didn't put any patches or a brush down the bbl or the cylinder.

I have a very cool loading block from Dave Skrzela and loaded that up and used his loader to blast away. I'd put up a new target every 50 rounds and then quickly (within 2 minutes or so), dump 50 rounds into the target. Yeah, that was cool.

BUT... towards the end of the day, the fired rounds were getting a little tough to extract. Hmmm. The cylinder chambers weren't gunky or anything, but I think the cylinder was getting too hot and made the fired rounds sticky to extraction.

As I loaded up the DS loader with 10-rounds from the loading block, it occurred to me to take a patch soaked in #9 and run it around the rounds on the inside and outside of the DS loader... to lube them up a bit. It worked like a charm. They extracted with a gentle little push on the extractor vs. a stubborn push that I had previously experienced. Now I would never suggest anybody apply oil or #9 to their ammo... but I figured it couldn't hurt in this situation. Yeah, I suppose I could have slowed down on my firing or run a few patches and a brass brush (or a bore snake) down the cylinder and bbl every now and again.

So... is this a bad idea?

 

[Brian Williams]

Just keep a brass brush and run it thru every few cylinders full.

 

[zt77]

I don't think so if you're just going to shoot right then, but I wouldn't let it sit overnight.

My model 18 does that, too. But it doesn't matter if it is hot or cool. I think it is caused by the bullets being heeled and as big as the case. In most centerfire there is space for the fouling to go. and the bearing surface is so short it doesn't make much difference. In .22 lr the fouling still goes into the chamber, but makes it a tight fit for the bullet, and a .22's bearing surface that is in the fouling is pretty long.

 

[Drail]

Rimfire ammo is the dirtiest stuff around. The powder is dirty and the waxy lube gums up everything. As Brian suggested keep a brush and some CLP handy if you're going to shoot large quantities of rimfire ammo. I would clean the chambers rather than lube the rounds. You need to get the gunk out of the gun. But don't stop shooting lots of ammo.