I don’t clean my rifles after every range trip. Can be months at a time. But can the lining rust if not cleaned & lubricated periodically?
Thanks

Yes, CLd bbls can rust.

FWIW, I do not clean often either.

Not had an issue with bore rust......yet.

Verdigris may be a bigger issue.  Years back after a day of shooting, I had to leave my CA banned "assault weapon" in my brother's AZ safe.  I asked him to punch the bore before storing it.  He didn't.

Enough verdigris built up on the copper fouling that when I got to it, I could not force a cleaning rod down the barrel.  I thought it was ruined, and it made me sick.  I soaked it in Kroil, filled and plugged, filled with Kroil.  It did nothing.  I got some Liquid wrench and did it again and I was finally able to get a bore brush through it.  The crap that came out was insane.

The barrel was undamaged and still shoots fine to this day.

This was in a house that ran a swamp cooler, which increases humidity. This was enough of an issue that I could see verdigris on the shell bases of 12 ga rounds in my brother's bandoleer.

In my current house, I have AC with humidity control and I rarely clean guns.  No issues.

Never even heard of that.

Crazy reaction.

YOu are a welder.  Didn't you read them metal books?  I did.

Not much in my exposure that has to do with copper carbonates other than hobby time these days


Haven't laid any silica bronze in years. I've since pimped myself out to specialty/exotics, mostly in the SS category.

One time I got home late/tired from an out of state shoot and just left my M&P 15 5.45X39 sit till the next morning.  What is 12 hrs. going to do??  I shot that Russian surplus ammo in it regularly but would usually sit down and clean it when I walked in the house.

That time I didn't.  Pulled it out of the case the next morning and could not get the charging handle to pull the bolt to the rear.  Jerked it, smacked it, mortared it, finally got the bolt to move to the rear and the bolt lugs were orange with corrosion.  Field stripped it and started looking it over.  Flash suppressor was rusting inside and a little on the outside.  Locking lugs on the bolt and barrel extension were rusting.  Bolt tail had what looked like orange fungus growing on it.  No rust in the lower parts.

Sprayed hot water through/on all of the rusted stuff and down the gas tube in the kitchen sink (wife was at church and will never know unless she starts reading arfcom)

The bolt tail already had small pits in it.  The barrel itself (chrome lined) didn't appear to have any rust in it.  I dried off everything, got out the Black Off (black powder cleaner I used for the corrosive ammo) and went to scrubbing/brushing/wiping.  Got the rust off all the parts and then cleaned the barrel.  The only thing I got out of the barrel was crud from shooting.  No orange/brown rusty residue.  

Oiled it, put it back together and checked it every day for about 3 or 4 days to insure I hadn't missed something.

I'm sure chrome will rust (or the metal under chrome will rust) sooner or later, but in my experience you'll get rust on the rest of it before you do the chromed parts.

Well, I guess you better know, stainless steel can rust too.  Even if you don't give your guns a full cleaning, shoot a bit of bore cleaner down it, run a bore snake through, no matter what the barrel is made of or lined with.  Takes 2 minutes & you won't have to worry about your barrel rusting if you don't get to cleaning the rest of the gun for a couple months.

And don't forget your gas port.  Is it drilled before or after chroming?  If it's after, then your barrel may not rust but you gas port damned sure can and if you let rust build up there and block it off, that's not going to do anything good for function.  And if the rust migrates under the chrome around the gas port it may cause it to start peeling.  I have no idea if that can happen or not but I have seen hard chromed pistols that have had rust get under the chrome plating and it started peeling off.  But what I don't know was who did the hard chroming, did they know what they were doing in the prep work, and I am pretty certain HC is not anything like the chrome lining used inside the barrel. Still...
My philosophy, take care of your weapon and it will take care of you.

Decorative chrome =0.05 to 0.5 micrometers thickness typical

Standard thickness for non-salvage applications can range from 20 to 40 micrometers and up to 100 micrometers for extreme wear resistance.

Thicker deposits require post plating surface operations such as grinding or lapping to bring parts back into tolerance.

I’ve seen little bits of that form on my muzzle devices on occasion.  I don’t know it had a name.  I have things humidity controlled always under 45%

Hard electro-plated metals are under severe tension after plating.  Chrome is particularly bad.  It develops cracks quickly, so it is not a really awesome corrosion-resistant coating.  Electroless nickel, if it is aged, is just about as hard as chrome, with a little higher friction coefficient, with trivial tensile or compressive stresses.  Unfortunately, it suffers from intergranular corrosion at the temperatures it would see inside the barrel, so it is not suitable for that application.

You really don't want to be plating highly-stressed components, like bolts and springs, in chrome, because it reduces their life.  Fatigue cracks develop sooner since the plating is under extreme tension.

Here's a pro-tip: get a bore snake and some clp to the range. At the end of the range session, just run a snake with some clp on the tip and you're going to be okay. Don't break the weapon down, just lock the bolt back, and drop the bore snake into the chamber. While pulling leave the tip exposed a little and drop some clp into the tip of the boresnake and then pull through completely. While hunting or something, when I get back in, I unload and simply run a bore snake coated in some clp. Even if you don't have a bore snake, you can use some sectional rods to give it a quick pass. Just break the upper, drop the rod and pull through a wet clp patch, run a bore brush, and then run a soaked clp patch again. That's essentially the same action as a bore snake.

It's not 100% but truth is it's enough to where not only can you relax on when you clean the rifle, but also the rifle is able to shoot should you need it to. I always take bore snakes and some clp and just run it into the barrel and use the bore snake to wipe down various parts of the rifle or pistol. Once I get home, I can clean whenever but I do clean it usually within a 24 hour period. I also use the bore snake like a dental floss to clean the lips of the magazines. Every once in a while I toss the bore snake into the washer and use it some time later.