204 Cleaning Ritual

[crashcarruthers]

Something else that is handy in the field is a can of canned air like you can buy to clean computer keyboards and electrical components.

[stevecrea]

I am one of those very careless guys who does not clean his rifle barrel after every 10, 20, or 30 shots. I do clean the outside of the rifle with RemOil and wipe it down regularly. The rifle I shoot the most now is a Tikka 595 in .223. I just cleaned it the other day after probably at least 150 rounds, and perhaps as much as 250. It is still relatively new, with around 400 or 500 rounds through it. However, the barrel was not that dirty, and had no evidence of copper in it. After about six or eight patches with Hoppe's Benchmark solution, the patches were coming out clean.

Of course, there are many factors that could increase the need to clean, such as higher ambient temperatures, heat generated by shooting strings, shooting cartridges with bigger cases which generate more heat, etc. Also, some powders are dirtier than others.

However, I have not found cleaning religiously to be that necessary, or that enjoyable.

Also, I have read at least several articles where rifles were not cleaned for many hundreds of rounds, and accurate records were kept of the accuracy levels that the rifle was achieving. In some of these tests, the best accuracy was achieved after hundreds of rounds. In others, there was little difference in accuracy over hundreds of rounds.
My simplistic conclusion is that a good barrel, after proper break-in, does not need much cleaning unless you are torturing it.

[Jim White]

Steve,

Regarding copper fouling (moly defiently shielded this from me in my .223's) if I can see it in the muzzle, I can only imagine how bad the throat is. Also, as you pointed out a properly broken in barrel (as long as the internal barreling is good) cuts down drastically on the fouling. Some could call me old school but I break mine in the old fashion way, basically its in three stages. Stage 1 is shoot and clean for 10 single rounds. When theres no more copper signs, I proceed to stage 2. Stage 2 is a minimum of five two-round shoot & cleans. Again, when there's no copper signs, I move on to stage 3. Stage 3 is a a minimum of two five-round shoot and cleans. If all looks good, she's ready to go, if not, I keep going. Rarely, do I have to keep going after the two 2 five-shot test. Now all the while I'm doing this I'm dialing in the scope and getting the action settled (if any is needed) so the rounds aren't wasted, especially the 5-shot rounds. In addition between stages 2 & 3, I'm monitoring the barrel temp and if there is the slightest heat I hold up until is cooled. For my heavy barrel 204's, its not an issue but for my skinny barrel CZ it was.

I don't mine cleaning mine but I'm not crazy about spending 2 hrs to de-foul a rifle barrel. I've found, more often than not, sooner or later the barrel has to be de-coppered and de-carbon fouled to shoot accuratly and when the accuracy falls off, it cascades downward pretty quick, thus I clean as I go. I also have multiple 204's so while one is cooling, one is working and another is waiting in the bullpen. Yee' definitily need a 2nd, 3rd or more 204's

HTH,

Jim