I am brand new to this forum and excited to be on here and help contribute here. I have never been into the whole forum thing but its time to get with it.

So I come asking for help on my M&P .40 FS and I hope you all are up to the challenge. So my concern arises following my latest range session (Shot 165 rounds of both 180 grain HP and 165 grain FMJ) while cleaning and inspecting my firearm afterwards when I notice some, what could be, unusual wear towards the end of the barrel. See attachments.

If you could all do me a favor and check this spot in your M&P barrel and let me know if this is present on yours as well, just to give me some assurance. I have attached some pictures below to try to capture to the best of my ability the "wear" marks I am talking about. Thank you in advance.

Attached Images

	photo 55 (1).jpg (5.6 KB, 284 views)
	photo 4.jpg (8.0 KB, 265 views)
	photo 2.jpg (53.7 KB, 278 views)

I've probably got around 400 to 500 rounds through my mp40c mostly all fmj blazer and lawman 165 gr and some Winchester 185 gr I cleaned my mp40c a couple weeks ago after shooting and don't recall seeing anything like that. I'm away from the gun right now as I can't carry at work but will check when I get reunited with my gun in a couple hrs.

That's what mine look like before cleaning. Afterwards, they are clean and shiny. I've got over 50K rounds through some of my barrels.

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Minimize the variables

It doesn't necessarily look like wear to me. It looks more like a barrel that hasn't been fully cleaned. Let some solvent sit on that portion of the barrel for a bit and then run a bore snake or a brush through it. Assuming you haven't done that, it may be that simple.

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ChanceFavorsThe
Prepared Mind

Well I thought I cleaned it good enough with a little brass brush and pushing through the barrel with some Hoppes 9 bore cleaner and after with the cleaning pads. It's just a cheap kit at Walmart. Thanks for the replys everyone.

Do you think I should soak it over night with the Hoppes 9 and then go after it really good with the brass brush again?

How hard can you brush with those things without hurting the barrel?

Thanks again

-charlie

Welcome to the Forum

NEVER soak parts in solvents overnight. 20-30 minutes tops.

Barrels are Steel, brushes are Bronze or Copper. You could slide that brush back and forth until your arms fell off and not hurt the barrel.

I wouldn't even worry about it. That doesn't affect anything. You don't need the barrel to be new every time.

A copper brush is much softer than the barrel so you can just go to town on it. However, you don't need to spend a lot of time on it. A min or two is fine unless you shot a lot of lead bullets. Trying to get your barrel like it was when you first bought the gun is like changing oil on your car after every trip

Lands always come clean before the grooves. If you are concerned about it just keep cleaning. Make sure you are using a jag and not just the loop for final swabbing. Look at the patches and you will see why.

That depends upon the solvent. Regular Hoppes won't bother blued steel. I'll admit I wouldn't deep soak a nickel finish.

Now there are more aggessive solvents that do have a suggested maximum time for soaking. Sweets 7.62 being a good example.

I treat handgun barrels very differently than rifle barrels. I try to squeeze every bit of accuracy out of a rifle and their barrels shine, a hand gun not so much. I think your barrel looks fine, clean it till it shines if you like.
Just a comment on brass brushes being softer than the steel of a barrel, while this is true, water is softer than rock also. Yet look at rivers that carve their path right thru rock. Don't over clean your barrels, also that's why a lot of people use nylon brushes.

+1 ^^^

The only important part about cleaning barrels is to keep it relatively free from carbon build up. The copper and other fouling doesn't negatively affect function/accuracy.

My advice is based on shooting copper jacketed ammo. Cast loads are a different animal.

I clean my guns after each range day if it's over 100 RDs but other than cleaning the carbon out of the barrel chambers my M&P, Sig 229, or Wilson Combat 1911 have never seen a brush down the barrel.

There has been no loss of accuracy or reliability in thousands of rounds.

The whole "mirror" shine thing is a by-product of military boot training, and although it worked as a way to bust balls as an fNG and enforces attention to detail, it has no real basis in modern weapons maintainance.

Even when I shot a long gun for a living, we cleaned our rifle barrels @1000 RDs. Ironically after doing that, we'd still take fouling shots before we gun boxed the rifle because it lessened the deviation between our cold bore shot and the rest. To put it another way we took a perfectly clean barrel and made it 'dirty' again before we put it away, because it would shoot better the next time we used it.

I did not say it was safe or not safe with a particular solvent.

I said NEVER DO IT

If you NEVER soak a part overnight you will NEVER wake up to learn that you chose the wrong solvent.

Remember this is a newbie and not a seasoned veteran of the shooting sports

Thanks for all the help guys. I used Hoppes 9 and left it on for about an hour and a half almost and then scrubbed really quite hard with the brass brush. I also put the cotton patch over the brush and scrubbed because the brass still kind of stuck out. I tried attaching photos so y'all could see how it came out but it's not working. I will try again later.