Do I really need to completely de-lead the bore?

KerryS said:
Restfully disagree. Hoppes No 9 is very effective at taking out copper fouling. It just takes time as I described. It is very obvious it is working when running a patch through the following day and it comes out blue or greenish. Repeat on success days until the patch comes out clean. Yes, there are strong copper removing solutions, such a Sweet's 7.62. I am very familiar with using both having been a High Power Competitor. But one has to be careful with Sweet's as it offers no bore protection. Don't leave it in the bore for anything beyond minutes.
Click to expand...
I won't restfully argue; it's just been my long experience that regular Hoppe's #9 is not a copper solvent. Benchrest Hoppe's is a copper solvent, but it's pretty slow working.
 
gwpercle said:
My Thoughts ... CLP is not a proper Bore Solvent/Cleaner for a leaded barrel . A proper Solvent and a Brass Brush will make the job a lot easier and do a complete job .

Some claim jacketed bullets do not remove lead but simply iron it deeper into the metal pores and make it more difficult to remove .

J-B Bore Cleaning Compound can be a good friend .
Gary
Click to expand...
JB is an abrasive, it removes steel too, it is not selective. Kind of like chemotherapy, it attacks the good and the bad.
 
chief38 said:
Hmmmm I've got one of those but never thought to use it as a patch in the barrel or cylinder - good idea! Might just work for moderate leading or after using the Lewis Lead Remover for the heavy duty deposits. Gotta try that one!
Click to expand...
Be aware that the Lead remover cloths will mess up BLUED finishes. It is good for stainless steel
 
b737lvr said:
I took my 10-9 out today and fired a box of LRN from PPU. The leading today was quite substantial, a lot more than I’m used to. I got home and scrubbed the ever loving mother out of the bore with CLP and a brass brush. That was a lot of lead that came out.

Point is, would yall think it’s alright if I removed most of it but not all of it switching back to an FMJ? I’ve really already done quite a lot as it is and there just some lead streaking here and there that I just don’t feel like trying to remove. See, I figured that by this point next time I send a cylinder of FMJ down the pipe it’s gonna blow the rest out anyway. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
I generally shoot nothing but lead even out of high power rifles. Yes you must get it all out as the lead left in will attract more lead and very quickly. Too much lead left in a barrel will cause a detonation blowing your gun sky high. This is not a myth I have seen it happen. As a matter of fact many of the newer barrels made for quite a few weapons these days have very shallow rifling so they can make them faster, faster, and cheaper, cheaper and when this type of barrel gets even a small amount of lead you can get into serious trouble very quickly.

Glock warns owners never to use lead bullets because of their shallow rifling, so does this mean you will disappear in a red puff of mist with the first lead bullet down the barrel??? No, because the good news is I have shot thousands of lead bullets down various Glocks with no problem because I cleaned out the barrel after every shooting session. A friend of my uses way oversize 9mm lead bullets (.358) in his Glocks and gets almost no leading out of his Glocks but you better darn well clean out even that small amount of lead or else risk a detonation.

Generally it is a myth that a rough barrel will lead up badly. It will lead up more quickly though. Leading is caused by shooting an undersize lead bullet down an oversize bore. Really the only cure for this is get another gun or cast your own bullets oversize which I have been doing for years. I have often got very little leading even out of bores damaged by corrosive ammo by simply sizing lead bullets oversize, even going as big as 3 thousandths and sometimes 4 thousandths oversize. Sometimes I have even had to have had a custom oversize mold made for me to do this.

Unfortunately finding linotype metal to add to wheel weights is like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow these days as almost all the old print shops have switched over to computerized printing. Buying pure tin to add to wheelwrights is not cheap anymore either. And do to the new EPA laws most places will not even sell you scrap wheel weights anymore either.

Are lead bullets less accurate than jacketed ones. No, if the bullet is not undersize and all are made of a uniform weight, which by the way is true of jacketed bullets as well.

Do barrels last longer with lead bullets than jacketed bullets. In most cases yes.

Will you save money by handloading? The answer is both "yes" and "no".

Factory ammo has never been cheap but today the prices are outrageous as the manufactures are gouging everyone due to the scarcity of both loaded ammo and components to handload with because as everyone knows the manufacturers are making a killing selling at outrageous prices to both the consumer and to the U.S.Government who in turn is giving it away free to the Ukraine.

So the bottom line is that if you "do not" hanload you will not shoot much these days because of the price of factory ammo and if "you do" handload at way cheaper prices you will shoot more but spend way more money doing it. Your pocket book gets emptied both ways.

And by the way using CLP is not the best way to get lead out of a barrel. I know, I have used it.

Use the old standby Hoppe's No.9. Leave it in the barrel about 2 hours for a rifle but not often necessary with a pistol, just start to scrub, and use a copper (bronze) brush, not a plastic brush and the leading , carbon , and powder fouling will all come out.

Now the bad news, no punches pulled , no soft soaping the answer to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. With many 9mm barrels I remove the barrel and after soaking the barrel with Hoppe's 9 I run a bronze brush back and forth for 100 strokes. Generally the barrel will come out squeaky clean and if not then do it all again. Yeah, it takes elbow grease but it can be done far sooner than you might think. Wear a mask as its not a good idea to breath in the mist when scrubbing a barrel no matter what chemical you use. Try it with Kroil oil and you will pass out and it will not work anyway. I have found it useless for anything.
 
bph9 said:
I generally shoot nothing but lead even out of high power rifles. Yes you must get it all out as the lead left in will attract more lead and very quickly. Too much lead left in a barrel will cause a detonation blowing your gun sky high. This is not a myth I have seen it happen. As a matter of fact many of the newer barrels made for quite a few weapons these days have very shallow rifling so they can make them faster, faster, and cheaper, cheaper and when this type of barrel gets even a small amount of lead you can get into serious trouble very quickly.

Glock warns owners never to use lead bullets because of their shallow rifling, so does this mean you will disappear in a red puff of mist with the first lead bullet down the barrel??? No, because the good news is I have shot thousands of lead bullets down various Glocks with no problem because I cleaned out the barrel after every shooting session. A friend of my uses way oversize 9mm lead bullets (.358) in his Glocks and gets almost no leading out of his Glocks but you better darn well clean out even that small amount of lead or else risk a detonation.

Generally it is a myth that a rough barrel will lead up badly. It will lead up more quickly though. Leading is caused by shooting an undersize lead bullet down an oversize bore. Really the only cure for this is get another gun or cast your own bullets oversize which I have been doing for years. I have often got very little leading even out of bores damaged by corrosive ammo by simply sizing lead bullets oversize, even going as big as 3 thousandths and sometimes 4 thousandths oversize. Sometimes I have even had to have had a custom oversize mold made for me to do this.

Unfortunately finding linotype metal to add to wheel weights is like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow these days as almost all the old print shops have switched over to computerized printing. Buying pure tin to add to wheelwrights is not cheap anymore either. And do to the new EPA laws most places will not even sell you scrap wheel weights anymore either.

Are lead bullets less accurate than jacketed ones. No, if the bullet is not undersize and all are made of a uniform weight, which by the way is true of jacketed bullets as well.

Do barrels last longer with lead bullets than jacketed bullets. In most cases yes.

Will you save money by handloading? The answer is both "yes" and "no".

Factory ammo has never been cheap but today the prices are outrageous as the manufactures are gouging everyone due to the scarcity of both loaded ammo and components to handload with because as everyone knows the manufacturers are making a killing selling at outrageous prices to both the consumer and to the U.S.Government who in turn is giving it away free to the Ukraine.

So the bottom line is that if you "do not" hanload you will not shoot much these days because of the price of factory ammo and if "you do" handload at way cheaper prices you will shoot more but spend way more money doing it. Your pocket book gets emptied both ways.

And by the way using CLP is not the best way to get lead out of a barrel. I know, I have used it.

Use the old standby Hoppe's No.9. Leave it in the barrel about 2 hours for a rifle but not often necessary with a pistol, just start to scrub, and use a copper (bronze) brush, not a plastic brush and the leading , carbon , and powder fouling will all come out.

Now the bad news, no punches pulled , no soft soaping the answer to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. With many 9mm barrels I remove the barrel and after soaking the barrel with Hoppe's 9 I run a bronze brush back and forth for 100 strokes. Generally the barrel will come out squeaky clean and if not then do it all again. Yeah, it takes elbow grease but it can be done far sooner than you might think. Wear a mask as its not a good idea to breath in the mist when scrubbing a barrel no matter what chemical you use. Try it with Kroil oil and you will pass out and it will not work anyway. I have found it useless for anything.
Click to expand...
Yes, too much lead left in a bore is not a good thing and could be hazardous. However, looks to me as if a shooter would never allow a bore to get in this condition as accuracy would be horrible. But then poor accuracy doesn't matter to some.

Very slight leading or wash seems to hurt nothing not does alternating between cast and jacketed bullets, at least in most handguns or rifles.

Yes, again...Hoppe's #9 (or Ed's Red) and bronze brushes are the best way to remove all fouling except copper fouling, though copper fouling in a handgun bore is usually slight (unless long neglected) compared to what you might run across in a rifle bore. Such little copper fouling does no harm. Perhaps an exception to Hoppe's #9 not being a copper solvent, one hundred strokes with a good brush will likely remove copper fouling due to elbow grease alone. Hoppe's has little to do with it.
 
chase45 said:
I just take a bore brush and wrap copper chore boy strands around it. It helps get the stubborn lead off. If you go this way make sure you get the copper chore boy as not all variants are copper


figure4_lead.jpg
Click to expand...
This method is where the term “Cats Ass” came from…..because it truly is.
 
Wow glad this caught my eye.Just bought M29 4:" machine. Engraved Buds Been 25 years since I had one but dug around found 30 200 grain LRN 44 SPECIALS and some full power 44mags Reading this I will pass on firing the LRN too much work zBut I might pull them replace the LRN with copper HP thanks charlie yeah a lot of work but not as much as barrel de leading besides I can modify the load aiming for not full 44mag maybe 180 grain 1100fps
 
rockquarry said:
Yes, too much lead left in a bore is not a good thing and could be hazardous. However, looks to me as if a shooter would never allow a bore to get in this condition as accuracy would be horrible. But then poor accuracy doesn't matter to some.

Very slight leading or wash seems to hurt nothing not does alternating between cast and jacketed bullets, at least in most handguns or rifles.

Yes, again...Hoppe's #9 (or Ed's Red) and bronze brushes are the best way to remove all fouling except copper fouling, though copper fouling in a handgun bore is usually slight (unless long neglected) compared to what you might run across in a rifle bore. Such little copper fouling does no harm. Perhaps an exception to Hoppe's #9 not being a copper solvent, one hundred strokes with a good brush will likely remove copper fouling due to elbow grease alone. Hoppe's has little to do with it.
Click to expand...
I do not know who told you Hoppe's was not a copper solvent but that is one of the major reasons it was invented. I remember way back in 1968 I was using Outers gun solvent and it was totally worthless in removing copper deposits but by following the instructions on the Hoppe's No. 9 solvent it took out all the copper solvent even when I "did not" use a bronze brush but it does clean it out faster with a brush. I have been using Hoppes 9 ever since 1968. Again I have even cleaned out old military guns with heavy deposits of copper without using a brush of any kind when using Hoppe's No. 9.

If you do not believe me take a "new" copper brush and submerse it in Hoppe's No. 9 over night and then try and use the brush to clean out the bore and you will see how much of the brush was dissolved overnight making for a loose fit to the bore compared to using a the same new brush without soaking it overnight.

Also another experiment is to just to soak the barrel for at least 30 minutes but preferable for 2 hours and then run a clean patch down the bore, no brush at all, and you will see "green deposits" on your patch which is the dissolved copper fouling.

Now I would agree Hoppe's no. 9 is much slower than the super harsh ammonia solvents like Sweets and some of the harsh copycat solvents as they will wipe out copper almost instantly but I never use them because if you do and you do not remove all of the ammonia solvent it will etch your bore faster than a cat can jump off of a hot tin roof. They even tell you this will happen. Hoppe's will not damage your bore even if left in the bore. Generally it takes about two hours of soaking but for really badly coppered up bores I have left it in overnight but this was on old, old Mauser Military Rifles that also had damaged bores from using corrosive ammo.
 
Last edited:
bph9 said:
I do not know who told you Hoppe's was not a copper solvent but that is one of the major reasons it was invented. I remember way back in 1968 I was using Outers gun solvent and it was totally worthless in removing copper deposits but by following the instructions on the Hoppe's No. 9 solvent it took out all the copper solvent even when I "did not" use a bronze brush but it does clean it out faster with a brush. I have been using Hoppes 9 ever since 1968. Again I have even cleaned out old military guns with heavy deposits of copper without using a brush of any kind when using Hoppe's No. 9.

If you do not believe me take a "new" copper brush and submerse it in Hoppe's No. 9 over night and then try and use the brush to clean out the bore and you will see how much of the brush was dissolved overnight making for a loose fit to the bore compared to using a the same new brush without soaking it overnight.

Now I would agree Hoppe's no. 9 is much slower than the super harsh ammonia solvents like Sweets and some of the harsh copycat solvents as they will wipe out copper almost instantly but I never use them because if you do and you do not remove all of the ammonia solvent it will etch your bore faster than a cat can jump off of a hot tin roof. They even tell you this will happen. Hoppe's will not damage your bore even if left in the bore. Generally it takes about two hours of soaking but for really badly coppered up bores I have left it in overnight but this was on old, old Mauser Military Rifles that also had damaged bores from using corrosive ammo.
Click to expand...
Personal experience. Maybe that's why Hoppe's came up with a benchrest version for copper fouling, even if it's slow. The older Hoppe's #9, fifty or so years ago contained nitrobenzine and that may have contributed to removing copper fouling. Current Hoppe's #9 doesn't have that ingredient.

I've bought Hoppe's #9 two quarts at a time for years. I use a lot of it but there are far better products for removing copper fouling and they don't all contain ammonia. We're part way into a new century.
 
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Harry Pope, the top of the line gunsmith & expert rifle shot, simply forced a wad of cotton down the barrel every 3-4 shots. He shot lead bullets only.
 
b737lvr said:
I took my 10-9 out today and fired a box of LRN from PPU. The leading today was quite substantial, a lot more than I’m used to. I got home and scrubbed the ever loving mother out of the bore with CLP and a brass brush. That was a lot of lead that came out.

Point is, would yall think it’s alright if I removed most of it but not all of it switching back to an FMJ? I’ve really already done quite a lot as it is and there just some lead streaking here and there that I just don’t feel like trying to remove. See, I figured that by this point next time I send a cylinder of FMJ down the pipe it’s gonna blow the rest out anyway. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
I have a specialty restoration shop and see of lot of barrels with different issues. One item I have found is the worse the condition of the barrel the worse it leads up. Barrels with pitting or other wear or damage (common on older guns especially ones that used black powder cartridges) tend to lead up far worse and faster than good solid bores. Also some older steel alloys grab lead. The best bet is to always clean after each shooting and use good products. There are so many out there that work well.
 
If you are a member of the NRA, the 2019 November American Rifleman had a really good article on cleaning lead and just old junk from a barrel. You can look it up at the NRA website.
 
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