These aren't specifically precision rifles but folks here are a little more obsessed about barrels and the process is the same hence my question here.

I have a new Daniel Defense AR and a new Franken build from Brownell's parts.  The DD has maybe 100 rounds and the Brownell's has 300-400 rounds through it.

I'm using Patch Out with Accelerator to fully clean the barrels in a pseudo break in rather than just let the copper layer up.

Here's my process.  Dry patche(s) to wipe the previous solvent out then a couple oiled patches to soak. Scrub a few passes with an oiled brush to loosen crud up then a few wet patches to wipe the crud out.  A few more dry patches to get the oil out then Accelerator and Patch Out to soak.

After a week of Patch Out sitting in for anywhere from a few hours to 24 hours I still get blue patches out.

The ones below were after sitting for an hour or so.

Attached File


The left patch is an unused one for color comparison.  Middle patches are from the DD.  Right patches are from the Brownell's barrel.

The patches were run through dry on a jag using a bore guide (2 dry patches per barrel).  The heavy blue on the edges is from the jagged patch unfurling and grabbing some goo off the flash hiders.  The inner half of each patch is blue from the barrel.

How freaking long does it take to uncopper a barrel?  Am I doing something wrong or is it normal to take a week plus of effort to get all the copper out?

Using Sweets 7.62, I expect no fewer than 20 patches alternating wet patch, bore brush, dry patch. Rinse repeat.

Using one of the bore foams, not much difference, but the bore will clean up faster before it “stalls.”

Is that just one patch after another or is there a wait time for the Sweets to do it's job?

Are you using a brass jag

I wouldn't try to remove it all. I've always had the opinion that some fouling is good for smoothing out imperfections from machining. If you dissolve all of that away you can lose accuracy until it builds back up. I have no data to support that, just my opinion.

I also use Wipe Out in the Patch Out form and while I'm very happy with the final result, this stuff has made me absolutely hate cleaning guns. I have had a similar experience to you. It literally takes me days, if not a week to clean a gun. You have the let the stuff soak each time, and it just takes forever to get the patches to start coming out clean. I recently bought some of the Accelerator thinking it would speed this up, but it doesn't seem to have sped it up much at all. I mean it takes hours and hours of work to get gun clean. I've yet to find anything else that does as good of a job though. If I clean it with something else, then run this stuff through it, it'll often pull out more copper. I'd love to hear suggestions from others on how to speed this up, but so far I haven't found a way.

The above post does bring up a good point. If you're using a brass jag, Wipe Out will react to it and turn the patch blue. So that's something to pay attention to, but it's not the reason why it takes me so long to get the copper out, so I'm doubting that it's what you're doing as you can see that it reacts to the brass very quickly.

Overall, I've really started slacking off on cleaning my guns as it takes soo dang long to actually get it clean.

It really depends on the rifle. I've had some that shot better with a little copper fouling. While I've had others that shot best with a clean bore and accuracy would drop off after a few boxes of ammo. Generally I have found that most shoot better after a few fouling shots though.

That said, my main issue is storage. I can't get past the idea of storing it with a dirty bore. Then when I go shoot one of them, it takes days to clean it. I've purposely left a gun that I wanted to shoot at home on more than one occasion because I didn't want to spend the time cleaning it afterwards. Does it matter, maybe not, but I can't see how it would be good for it.

I have a used Colt SP1 that I can patch till the end of time and the patches come out blue.
I have used three brands of solvants.
It very minor now.
I don't loose sleep over it.
I would use the cleaner your using , get as much as you can.
Then a few patches of a CLP, followed by a dry patch.
Don't spend more than 15 mins cleaning it.

I don't have any experience with Patch Out.

I am a former Sweets 762 user who converted to Boretech Eliminator.  Removing copper is stupid fast and simple.

With Sweets, I'd brush, wet patch, wait 2 minutes, brush, and patch until all blue was gone.  It was a 20 minute process of cleaning finished with a patch of hydrogen peroxide to neutralize the Sweets.

Eliminator does it in less than half the time.  I don't have to worry about leaving any solvent in the barrel since it won't attack barrel steel.

I am but I’m cleaning it after every use (2-4 patches) But not after every patch.  Would the solvent action be fast enough to turn a patch blue in the minute or so that the solvent is on the jag and run through the barrel?

I’ll try a more rigorous jag flushing and cleaning method to see what I get.

Is there a decent plastic jag?  The only ones I’ve seen are junk that bends if you look at it sideways.

That’s exactly my experience.  Patch Out claims to be barrel safe and can soak overnight and seems to do a really good job.

For the purposes of a pseudo break in procedure (shoot a hundred to few hundred then remove all copper) I’d like to get back to a clean bore then fire 20 or so fouling shots with SMK’s before working up loads.

Patch Out was the best in some copper solvent comparison I saw that looked pretty well done.  Don’t remember if they tested Eliminator but I’m not against trying something new.

Once was enough for me where plastic jags are concerned. It snapped in the bore.

Aluminium jags are very good. I think all mine are from Dewey or Pro-Shot.

I’ve come to the conclusion that getting most of the copper out is sufficient.

Going to have to try some Boretech Eliminator.

KG12.

How long should it take? I don't know.

What I can say is that it seems to be the fastest way to get copper out though. It's aggressive.

Thread a couple topics down...

Which reminds me that I never comtinued those tests. Oops.