hello,

i purchased a 1 piece cleaning rod and i am now looking for a bore guide. what are you guys using?

thanks in advance,

-z

More rifles are damaged by cleaning than by any other single cause.

When I clean my .22 rifles, I carefully guide the rod by hand. However, I seldom clean the barrel of my .22's, and most of mine are competition rifles. The actions and breech are brushed out, cleaned, and relubed on a regular basis.

Really. I got rid of my mess of guide rods and use bore snakes these days.
Much safer for the bore.

Agree 100%

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thanks for the responses.

does anyone know of a bore guide that fits the 15-22?

Welcome to the forum!

Considering that, unless you use a .17 diameter cleaning rod, the size of a .22 diameter rod pretty much negates the use of a bore guide. The only one I have ever seen for a .22 fit over the entire muzzle and had a hole through the middle for the rod. That's been so long ago, I have no idea who made it.

You might try a Google search.

Personally, cleaning from the muzzle end is a terrible way to clean a barrel, unless there simply isn't any access from the breech end. Cleaning from the breach/chamber end of the barrel is the proper way to do it.

FWIW, the ONLY time I ever use a cleaning rod is when there is a heavy lead buildup that a BoreSnake can't remove. Don't remember the last time I had to do that, though.

thanks Majorlk, i have a bore snake that i use regularly but did want to be able to get copper and lead build up with a brush every once and a while. did some google searching but could not find any info about a guide that fits because of the extractor.
maybe Otis is the way to go here...

do you think its safe to use a cleaning rod from the breech without a guide on this 22lr bore? again, this would not be done very often.

There's no breech/chamber end rod guides for .22 LR simply because there's no room for them in the chamber.

There's no copper buildup from .22 LR ammo. The copper on the bullet is simply a wash and not a plating and as such, does not build up that I have ever seen. Lead is another matter, but if you run the BoreSnake through the bore a couple of times when you finish a shooting session, it should never be a problem. Be sure to use some CLP or other good cleaning agent on the 'Snake.

Most of us put a soda straw on the ejector, (the extractor is in the bolt body) to keep from snagging it on the 'Snake, but unless one really isn't paying attention to what they are doing, you'd not do anything to it with a cleaning rod. It's at least a quarter inch away.

It's seldom that I put less than 500 rounds through my 15-22 at any given range session and many times closer to 1k. When I get home, I simply give the bore two passes with the 'Snake and take a tooth brush to the bolt face. All this takes less than ten minutes and I've never experienced any buildup of any kind with this routine.

Shoot and enjoy!

I'm with the Major. I keep hearing talk about all this residue in the barrel, but I never have any. After every 500 rounds or so, I run a boresnake thru twice and my barrel is spotless. Nothing to scrub. I put gun solvent on the leading edge, prior to the brushes and use CLP after the brushes, then let the long tail wipe it clean.

The barrel is easy to clean. The chamber is another matter.

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I'm picking mine up tomorrow morning. Im pretty excited

sweet! what bore guide are you picking up tomorrow morning?

LOL thread drift

I just got a bore snake.

I just use a bore snake. It cleans the chamber out just fine.
I have never seen a guide for the breech end, only the muzzle end.
If you got one of our threaded barrel ends you could use that as a guide to protect the crown. If you have a flash hider your crown is protected pretty well already.

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I took my m&p15-22 to the range today for the first time. Fired 300 rounds of various brands of ammo. None of which were mentiond in the manual to avoid using. Had maybe 10-15 failures to extract. My brother has an ar15 and said i probably didnt use enough oil around the bolt. So my question is where do i use oil and how much should i use. Tried to find videos on YouTube and didnt find a good video

No oil around the bolt.
Just a light coating on the guide rails. If you can see the oil, it's too much.
Polish the guide rails with a hard Arkansass stone or 600 grit wet/dry paper on a pane of glass. Use oil or water while sanding.
Re-blue when your done and you will see and a world of difference.

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Buy cheap, pay twice.

My 15-22 has somewhere north of 3K rounds through it and has never had a rod put to it. Bolt and carrier cleanup, swamp out the reciever, lube and go. And that's about every several hundred rounds.

Noncorrosive priming and protective bullet lube came out in the 1930s, folks.

Now why would anybody want to clean a 22lr barrel? I haven't seen a copper bullet leave and traces of copper fouling yet. There is no need to clean a 22lr barrel. Maybe oil it to keep it from rusting, go shoot it and enjoy it, instead of damaging it.

I get the feeling that most here use the 15-22 for exactly what it was designed for, fun plinking and training for a centerfire AR. If that's all you want to do, cleaning the parts other than the bore and maybe a boresnake down the barrel now and again should be fine for cleaning the 15-22. If you really want to test accuracy or try accuracy with different rounds from different manufacturers, you need to clean the bore better than a boresnake or "just shoot bullets through it" will clean it, specifically the area in front of the chamber. This is where those with benchrest or serious accuracy backgrounds come in, and want a bore guide.

For reference, using a boresnake is not nearly as safe as using a good boreguide with a rod and cleaning from the breech end without letting the rod and jag fully exit the muzzle. Having the boresnake with embedded fouling pulled against one side of the muzzle (no one pulls it exactly straight) is risky for damaging the crown over time, especially if you pull it to the same side each time.

All in all, I don't think any 15-22, even my performance center version, is going to have enough accuracy for any of this stuff to matter in an appreciable way. This is a "fast and fun gun" and will never be an "amazingly accurate" gun that will be something to send $15/box of 50 Lapua or Eley ammo through. Just use it for what it is and enjoy it. A boresnake will work just fine.

Considering that the steel in the barrel is hundreds of times harder than the brass brushes built into the BoreSnakes and any imbedded unburnt powder, this statement is nonsense. Maybe after a couple of hundred thousand passes ...

Oh yea, that also presumes one is so incompetent that they never wash the BoreSnake.

Check out primer composition before you say something is nonsense, and actual hardness scales before you claim something that steel is hundreds of times harder than anything, including the bronze (not brass) brushes or fouling.

I love Bore Snakes. Fast, easy and effective. Nuf sed.

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Bought one of these a couple of weeks ago (as I got a bit fed up of carting my big range box with me everywhere)

Real Avid | Zipwire Rifle Quick Connect, Flex Rod Cleaning Kits

Really like it - bore snake goes with me everywhere however I still like to run a few patches through with some Wipeout cleaner on - this fits the bill really well and I like 'pulling' the patches through rather than pushing them.....

The idea that you will wear out the muzzle or crown on a barrel with a BoreSnake IS nonsense. Proper cleaning techniques will not damage the barrel.

I'm sure the bore snake being pulled through the barrel by hand is probably way more damaging to the barrel than a hunk of lead traveling through the barrel at over 800 miles per hour as well, banging and scraping against the sides all the way down pushing all that previously unburnt primer and powder out.

I think I can sleep well at night using the bore snake. Dirty, clean, angled or whatever. You just couldn't REALISTICALLY hurt the barrel with it. In theory everything has an adverse effect, but this is by far the least adverse method I can think of.

Just keep the travel speed of the bore snake under say 9000 FPS and it should be ok.

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As I mentioned above, for no more accuracy than the 15-22 is going to have there's not much risk if using a boresnake. I even advised using it. The difference in the boresnake and the bullet pushing the fouling is that the bullet actually is going parallel to the bore where the boresnake isn't and will be using it as abrasive against part of the crown but not all of the crown. Primer fouling is actually very abrasive, where the rest of the lead/powder/copper fouling really isn't. A barrel is most accurate when the crown is even all the way around its circumference. That prevents the bullet from becoming upset in its path due to uneven gas escaping around the base of the bullet as it exits the muzzle.

If a boresnake was actually the best cleaning method for a 22LR bore, then the benchrest winners would be using it. If not cleaning a 22LR bore at all was best for accuracy, even with $20/box of 50 Lapua or Eley ammo, that is what the benchrest winners would be doing. They are shooting custom benchrest rifles, though, which a 15-22 is not and was never designed to be. It's a really fun, lightweight gun that does actually work well in competition in a match like the Steel Challenge. I would never try to be competitive in a benchrest match or even one of our smallbore silhouette matches with a 15-22, though, just like I would never take my custom Anschutz/Lilja/Pharr silhouette rifle to a Steel Challenge match.

My uncle has a 10/22 that you can actually see that the muzzle is worn more on one side since he's retired, shoots often, and always cleans his rifles the same way after every session. He only cleans the rifle with a boresnake holding the rifle in his left hand the boresnake in his right hand pulled at an angle to the direction of the bore and has for years. He doesn't care that he might lose a little accuracy over time. He's not as strong as he used to be and the targets he shoots are no more than 30 yards away. He's still very fast with the gun and it's accurate enough that it's hard to beat him on a dueling tree or similar target.

The best way to clean a 22LR bore is with a rod and a properly fitting bore guide designed for the model of rifle being cleaned, with care taken to not push the patch far past the muzzle so that the rod rubs on the crown in the 6 o'clock position. That level of care is effectively pointless when the entire rest of the rifle isn't conducive to top-end accuracy no matter what the quality and condition of the barrel is. For the rifle's intended purpose, that time would be much better spent making sure bolt, breech and trigger assembly were clean so it functioned reliably.

I get that most users here don't compete in serious accuracy matches since this forum is specifically for a gun that's designed for a completely different task. I use a boresnake on my own performance center 15-22, but not because it's actually the best way to clean a 22lr rifle bore. I would never put one down the bore of one of my custom rifle barrels, though, because I actually do want top-end accuracy from them.

For those who is looking for a bore guide for a 15-22, I'd advise that you shouldn't bother with one. A boresnake will be fine for years of use as long as you do a reasonably careful job of pulling it parallel to the bore. It may eventually take your rifle from 1.25 MOA (if you're lucky) up to 1.50 MOA but will it really matter? For anyone who is using a boresnake and hears some accuracy junky (or someone just trying to sound authoritative) say that they would never but a boresnake down any barrel, consider the use for a 15-22 rifle and then don't think another thought about it again. A 15-22 is designed to be fast, light and reliable. which it is. Cleaning it with a rod and bore guide isn't going to make it a benchrest gun.

I'll drop off this thread after this, as I feel that everything that has needed be written has been. No one is going to change anyone else's mind. Kudos to S&W for making a gun that works great for its intended purpose. I can honestly say I haven't changed a single internal part yet on my PC 15-22 and it's far from new. It's been quite a while since I could say that about any gun that I own.

^^^Please make him stop........smh

You were right. It didn't change mine.

You are correct sir. While I use bore snakes on both my 15-22s and my AR-22 and both my Browning Buckmark raceguns I do not use it on the custom barreled Rem 597 I use for metallic silhouette shooting because it is a .5 MOA rifle and I'd like to keep it that way for awhile. Admittedly its not a Bleiker or something even more expensive but it shoots tiny groups just fine out to about 100 yards.