.303 cleaning??

[Bruce_in_Oz]

For those using Oz "Sweets" evil-smelling, but effective brew, avoid copper or bronze brushes.

Sweets is formulated to remove copper-based fouling. It has LOTS of a copper-dissolving ammonia emulsion in it, hence the evil smell and the lovely green streaks on patches, soaked with the stuff, as they exit the barrel.

What it does to bore fouling, it does to bronze brushes.

Use Nylon brushes or "fluffy' mops. Pieces of flanel on the classic steel "takedown" M-16-type rod works too. I don't leave home with a rifle without a cleaning kit containing one or more of those old green "pouches" with the "modular" rod, sundry assorted rolls of flannel and a couple of small containers of solvents and oils.

If I have a "fouled" barrel, or just after a long match, it gets mopped with a Sweets-saturated but loose-fitting mop on a rod or piece of flannel. Let it "work".

Go and put on the kettle / coffee machine, then start pushing CLEAN flannel through the barrel; it should come out with green streaks on it, indicating the removal of dissolved copper.

There is a standard warning about using it on stainless barrels. Left overnight, it MAY start attacking the barrel itself. "Frosty Shades of Grey" is NOT my favourite bore colour!

Interestingly, Hard-Chromed barrels are a LOT less susceptible to "jacket" fouling, the bullets just seem to glide over the Chrome. Pushing a Sweets-soaked patch trough a fully-chromed L1A1 barrel will produce little or NO green streaking on the cloth.

HOWEVER, because HARD Chrome develops "micro-fractures" in the very act of being applied to the barrel steel, COMBUSTION products WILL find any path to the steel substrate.

This is where hot water / Hoppes No9, etc. come into their own. It is amazing / disturbing how much black s...., er, stuff comes out after a good day at the range.

The old RAAF range on Warwick Road, near the Amberley RAAF Base used to have the facilities to boil and dispense water for this very purpose, but, that was back in the early 1970s.