Rust in my barrel

[Number 6]

I pulled my M48 Mauser out of the safe this evening to make room for some new additions and to my horror when I looked at the bore I noticed there was rust in it. I immediately did a thorough cleaning of the bore and thankfully it does not look like there is any visible damage. I really do not know how this happened. I have been shooting Romanian 8mm which I assumed was corrosive thus after every trip to the range I used Windex on the bore, and then I thoroughly cleaned the rifle. My guess is that I was not as thorough as I should have been. Now I will be kicking myself for some time now.

My question now is, what do I do? I cleaned out the bore but I still see some rust in there. Do I keep cleaning with Hoppes #9 or do I use something special to get the rust out? Is my barrel ruined? I do not see any pitting or any other damage but should I get the barrel checked out, or is it safe to shoot? I am thoroughly disappointed in myself for letting this happen, any suggestions or help you guys can offer be will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Steve in PA]

Its probably not rust, but copper fouling.

You can use a good solvent designed to remove copper fouling and give that a try, but I wouldn't go nuts over it.

Some rifles seem to shoot better with a little copper fouling. Case in point, my hunting rifle, a Win 70 .30/06. I scrubbed and scrubbed the bore until all streaks were gone. But the next range trip, I found the accuracy had dropped off.

I just clean the barrel like I always did with Hoppe's #9 and the rifle shoots fine now. Occasionally I will use some of Hoppe's Benchrest solvent which is designed for better copper fouling removal.

If it is indeed rust, then I'd scrub the bore and make sure I put in a good oil/grease. If it is in a safe, make sure you have some means of de-humidification.

 

[Swampy]

#6,

Funny you should mention this....

Just last week I was going through my vault, looking for a particular rifle when I ran across one of my Yugo Mausers that I'd not fired since last Spring. A brief glance at the muzzle told me that I'd forgotten to clean it after the last range outing.... ouch. Yank the bolt and a look down the bore showed a real sewer pipe.

It looked pretty far gone.... This was a bit hard for me to take because this particular Yugo 24-47 had had a like new bore & muzzle when I'd received it. Oh well, you can only kick yourself so many times before you just dig in and deal with it..

I began by soaking the bore with Ed's Red, the home made bore cleaner, lube, and protectant used by many comp shooters for decades, then started scrubbing with an oversized bronze brush (.35 caliber). After 20-30 strokes, run a patch to remove the crud then start over with the Ed's Red and the brush.

After about 5-6 cycles of this the bore is smoothing out pretty well. When all the obvious rust is gone I switched over to a tight fitting patch soaked in JB Bore Paste. I did 5-6 patches for 20+ strokes each... cleaning between each with Ed's Red.

Final cleanup is as normal.... patches and Ed's Red, then dry patches.

Cleaning rust out of a bore is a chore, but it can be done. The amount of pitting that remains behind will depend on the quality of the steel in the barrel and the amount of humidity that the rifle has been exposed to since the corrosive salts were left in there.

The bore of my Yugo 24-47 is now bright and shiny, back to very near what it was before I goofed and forgot to clean it. You can see some very fine pitting in spots when you look down the muzzle, but certainly no worse than many used milsurp barrrels out there and still better than most.

I'll have no qualms about shooting this rifle again... the bore is fine... but I'll also be pretty D&$M sure to clean it after I get it home.

Just do it... your Mauser can be fixed too I'm certain.

Best regards,
Swampy

Garands forever