Carbon removal

[RAVEN]

Bill brass also polished show black also
the colour on the cloth has nothing to do with caron
the abrasive paste combined with the motion removes metal & carbon
best practice is don't let it build up in the first place

RB

[bshrestha01]

I think I am the least experienced here to be throwing in anything but here it goes.

I have heard some our club members using/pouring warm water with ammonia through a barrel. Basically 1 part ammonia to 3 parts hot (not boiling though) water to make a liter of solution. They have a special funnel made to make the solution go straight into the barrel.

Does this work in any ways?

Also a word of warning thrown around with this, start pushing in dry patches approximately 1 minute after pouring the mixture in.

[RAVEN]

Boiling Hot water will open the pours of the steel which should help dislodge the carbon with chemical or mechanical action
Patching a bore when the barrel is hot works better than once the carbon has cooled re heating may have a similar effect

[KHGS]

I think I am the least experienced here to be throwing in anything but here it goes.

I have heard some our club members using/pouring warm water with ammonia through a barrel. Basically 1 part ammonia to 3 parts hot (not boiling though) water to make a liter of solution. They have a special funnel made to make the solution go straight into the barrel.

Does this work in any ways?

Also a word of warning thrown around with this, start pushing in dry patches approximately 1 minute after pouring the mixture in.

Plain boiling water is very good to soften the carbon followed with a good non ammonia solvent & bronze brush.This is the best way I have found to remove carbon. The other posters are correct, no known chemical (to me) will dissolve carbon fouling from ADI powders, this was the primary reason for me going "molly" 20+ years ago. Molly, JB paste, carby cleaner & bronze brushes make carbon a non event. I do not mean for JB paste & bronze brushes to be used together. I do not believe in applying ANY abrasive with a brush of ANY sort. I certainly would not use a mixture of hot water & ammonia in a stainless steel barrel unless you want to ruin it. Ammonia does nothing for carbon anyway, it is a copper remover.
Keith H.

[RAVEN]

IMO Bronze brushing should be thought of in this way
it is an abrasive scourer that scores and scratches the carbon which allows the carbon removal chemical to work more effectively I do not pass a bronze brush through my barrel all that much as I want the chemical or (bore solvent) to do the work
JB paste is ok for occasional use KG2 or JB bore bright is better as it is finer and you can use it on a regular basis without damaging the internals of the bore think of it like JB paste as 500grit wet rub and KG2 or JB bore bright as 1000grit wet rub
I guess Lisso Paste fits in here somewhere Alan will fill that one in I’m sure
RB

[bshrestha01]

While looking for a totally different topic, namely car maintenance, I came upon a terminology called Sodablasting. Sounds a very interesting way to possibly clean off the carbon without damaging any of the barrel, at least in theory.

It is just blasting water and bicarbonate soda mixture with a high pressure pump through the bore. Does this have any harmful effect on the barrel/stock etc? Of course, once the blasting has been done, water needs to be poured through and cleaned off with patches.

Have I overlooked anything in this process?

More information on sodablasting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodablasting

[Cameron Mc]

The only chemical I know that may help with carbon is a strong acid. I am not about to use an acid in my barrels

Out of interest, some time back in our kitchen, a person who will remain nameless overcooked a meal in an enamel cast iron cook pot. The surface of this was nice and smooth much like the bore of a barrel before cooking began.
Anyway this person forgot about the pot on the stove. The food was so overcooked it turned to pure carbon....read .... a black, caked on mess in the bottom of the pot. After some cursing and swearing I decided to try and resurrect this pot. I had paid over $200 for it so was not going to give up without a fight.
First I tried boiling water. No luck, just some of the lose carbon came off. I added washing up liquid knowing it would be useless and it was. I tried rubbing and rubbing with a green scourer. This started to remove the carbon but oh so slowly.
By this time I had maybe 1/3 rd of the carbon gone and aching elbows.
I had a brain storm and decided to try JB Paste. I emptied the pot. I added some light machine oil and about a tablespoon of JB to the pot. I pulled out a new scourer and within approx. 20 minutes I had all traces of the carbon gone.
Conclusion from my point of view was that the carbon could only be removed via abrasion. The JB hastened the process with the scourer. Interestingly this maybe like using JB on a brush. There were small scratch marks on the area affected which I later polished out with 1200 wet and dry then a burnish. What a process.
To me this was like a barrel that had been let go too long and a lot of carbon had built up. No amount of patching with chemicals would shift the carbon. Lot's of JB on a patch was needed.
I find putting some/any type of oil in the barrel as soon as possible after firing your last shot makes it easier to remove carbon later. I feel this gets into the pores before the aging process begins. Some carbon will be left in the throat area after every normal clean and will slowly build. I use JB just in the throat area around every 150 rounds.
To me barrels are like race car tyres. They are expendables. Yes, treat them with care to get the best possible result. But they are there for a reason and will wear out.

Cheers

[bill]

Bill brass also polished show black also
the colour on the cloth has nothing to do with caron
the abrasive paste combined with the motion removes metal & carbon
best practice is don't let it build up in the first place

RB

RAVEN Just thinking
The black I am seeing may be a form of oxidation
That the compound is causing
That works on steels and metals
The abrasive may be removing the oxides

[AlanF]

...I had a brain storm and decided to try JB Paste...

Now that's given me an idea for my coppered up hot water pipes - Sweets !

[Norm]

Maybe we are all looking at this from the wrong angle.
We are all trying different liquid chemicals or abrasives to remove the carbon.
From my memory of chemistry at gas may be more suitable in getting a reaction with solid carbon.
Or maybe some liquid nitrogen poured into the barrel may make the carbon shatter and break free.

[Brad Y]

Any of those who mentioned ultrasonic cleaning had any success with barrels in long tanks?

[BRETT B]

I have put the chamber end of my fireform barrel in my Lyman ultrasonic cleaner a few times and it works really well at removing carbon. It only gets to about 6 inches of barrel cos the tank is too small but after ten minutes the carbon is all gone !! I dont use the normal solution which contains water so i used kerosene instead. I found it rips the carbon ring out of the throat real quick too. Not sure yet if i will try it on a Match barrel yet!!

[Brad Y]

Double that depth mate would be really handy to remove it out of the whole throat area. Might chat to ya at the easter shoot about it- wont be able to shoot the weekend, but hoping to do the friday coolilup cup over 3, 5 and 600m

[RAVEN]

So Cam what do your spud taste like now

[DenisA]

G'day Brett, when you say "the carbon is all gone", is that using a bore scope or based on clean patches? Cheers.


In general I think carbo-phobia is becoming very popular. In my experience it doesn't hurt accuracy unless it's allowed to build up for an extreme amount of time with no cleans.

Don't get me wrong I clean my barrels after every shoot and for the last 12 months, I've been pushing pasted patches down the barrel after a few hundred rounds when the carbon starts to get thicker in spots. The pasted patches bring it back to clean shiny metal, confirmed with a bore scope.

The question that I've been asking myself is, why the fascination with removing all the carbon. With my 6BR/AR2208, .284W/AR2209 and .300WSM/AR2213sc, I can run at least 120 accurate rounds through the barrel without cleaning at all. When I do clean them back to steel, they take approx. 3 - 5 rounds for MV's to settle but I honestly believe that with all my cartridges it takes at least a detail of 12 rounds before they're at their most consistent.

In my opinion, based on my own experience, I think cleaning carbon out of barrels completely (using which ever process works) should be a means of controlling the build up to a manageable level over a period of time rather than simply having to get it out because it's in there.

After all the main goal of barrel maintenance (aside from safety) has to be to get the most number of accurate rounds out of it as possible, not to have a shinier bore than your neighbour.

So all that said, is there really a need for anything other than a tub of paste, a jag and some patches?

Is this the general consensus or do I have a poor view of carbon removal?