If you use the google search option on the top header and search for "chore boy" you'll find quite a few references to de-leading barrels.
Here's one I clipped and saved:
"And here's a lead removal tool if you don't want to invest a lot of money--------------and don't want to do very much work.
1. Get a box of Chore Boy copper scouring pads----$1.50 maybe. That will make for a lifetime supply for you, your children, their children and their childrens' childrens' children.
2. Do not get any sort of lead removal solvent whatsoever. If you already have some, throw it away.
3. Dry the bore----make that DRY THE BORE!!
4. Get a worn out, good for nothing brass/bronze/whatever cleaning brush--------------a brand new one will work fine, but it will pretty much be good for nothing else after this exercise.
5.Open the box of scouring pads. Remove one---only. Find the little "knot" where the copper has been fused together----so the pad stays a pad. Snip it off with something other than your wife's best sewing shears----if you value your life! Unroll the pad. You are now staring at a tube made of copper cloth. Slit the tube with whatever you used to cut the little knot off. Now you're staring at a sheet of copper cloth. As an aside, your wife's best sewing shears will work fine for all this cutting----and the cutting to come. It won't hurt them a bit. And you'll be alright so long as she doesn't see you using them.
6. Here's where things get as complicated as they're going to get. Using the worn out bronze brush as a measuring device, cut a full length strip of copper cloth that's about half again as wide as the brush is long. Cut that strip in half. Take one of the halves and wrap it (snugly) around the worn out bronze brush (with a more or less even overhang of copper cloth at each end of the brush)----and twist the ends of the copper cloth (closed) around either end of the brush. Install the copper clad brush on a cleaning rod. Put the brush into the DRY bore. If it goes in easy, you don't have enough copper cloth wrapped around it. If you have to beat it into the bore with a hammer, you have too much copper cloth wrapped around it. Adjust accordingly.
7. Proceed to push/pull the brush through the bore-----avoid push/pulling the brush all the way out of the bore at either end.
If you have a proper fit or one that's actually a little too tight, ALL the lead will be gone in very short order----six to eight passes. If the bore was really loaded up, you will end up with two very satisfying piles of powdered lead on the table at each end of the barrel. The bore will be absolutely spotless----the cleanest one you've ever seen!!
It takes a whole lot less time to do all of this than you've spent reading what and how to do it."
I use 0000 bronze wool myself, and follow up with some Butch's bore polish on these:
WEAPONS CARE SYSTEM PELLETS - Brownells
Works well, and won't harm your barrels. Of course, the ultimate answer to barrel leading is just don't have it in the first place. Size the bullet to the barrel and cylinder throats properly, have the correct hardness for the pressures you're loads are at, and leading will be minimal or virtually non-existent.
ETA Just to better answer your questions, no, brass brushes and Hoppes are not going to damage your barrel. Running a cleaning rod back and forth on the crown can, so a guide is useful, but as far as the barrel itself, consider how many thousands of jacketed rounds with the attendant high pressures and temperatures it would take to wear out a barrel.