Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

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dlh
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Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#1

Post by dlh »

Apparently some disagreement over this in the shooting community.

One school of thought (my gunsmith recommends this) says regularly clean the copper out of your barrel.

Another school of thought from some snipers and long-range shooters is not to do that as it adversely affects the accuracy of your firearm.

What say the learned folks in the forum?
Please know and follow the rules of firearms safety.
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Liberty
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#2

Post by Liberty »

Anything being scraped along a rifled barrel at around 1000 ft per second is going to leave a trace of itself behind. Anything that is going to clean up copper deposits will affect the steel. chrome barrels probably reduce this effect.

All this being said, for handguns, I don't think it matters much. For the most part we aren't requiring the accuracy of our handguns that we do of our rifles and will likely physically wear out the rifling before copper deposits affect the accuracy.
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Mike S
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#3

Post by Mike S »

dlh wrote:
One school of thought (my gunsmith recommends this) says regularly clean the copper out of your barrel.
This is what I was taught circa 2002.
dlh wrote: Another school of thought from some snipers and long-range shooters is not to do that as it adversely affects the accuracy of your firearm.
This is what the current school of thought is. Consider that even with the best barrel manufacturing the rifling process leaves micro-grooves & flaws. As you put rounds through the barrel the copper fouling fills in these, allowing for a smoother surface, more consistent muzzle velocity, etc. Minutia, but minutia counts at extended ranges. This said, most people won't notice a difference either way; remember that most rifles & quality optics are capable of greater accuracy than most shooters can hold.

In the end, figure out what works best for you & provides the most consistent accuracy. Personally, I rarely use copper solvent anymore, but am a stickler for cleaning the rifles the same day.

crazy2medic
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#4

Post by crazy2medic »

My personal experience with this has been my .204, after about 125rds the accuracy is noticeably effected, i can run copper remover through it and then standard bore cleaner, after three fouling shots i'm back to 1/4 MOA
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flechero
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#5

Post by flechero »

dlh wrote:Apparently some disagreement over this in the shooting community.

One school of thought (my gunsmith recommends this) says regularly clean the copper out of your barrel.

Another school of thought from some snipers and long-range shooters is not to do that as it adversely affects the accuracy of your firearm.

What say the learned folks in the forum?
Both are right to a degree... your run of the mill factory barrel is not anything like the barrel a true long range shooter uses... it will need cleaning with some regularity. When you get into high dollar barrels, there is a great deal smoother finish and some are further refined before being shipped. Most factory barrels have tool and chatter marks visible to the naked eye.

The long range shooters I know (most anyway) say to shoot without cleaning until accuracy starts to wain, and then clean. That could be 100 rds or a 1000 rds but either way, the gun will tell you.

WTR
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#6

Post by WTR »

I have a .308 that is scary accurate. One day out of the blue she began stringing. A total cleaning brought her back in.

Ruark
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#7

Post by Ruark »

WTR wrote:I have a .308 that is scary accurate. One day out of the blue she began stringing. A total cleaning brought her back in.
Any idea how many rounds went through it before that point?
-Ruark

WTR
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#8

Post by WTR »

Ruark wrote:
WTR wrote:I have a .308 that is scary accurate. One day out of the blue she began stringing. A total cleaning brought her back in.
Any idea how many rounds went through it before that point?

My Father bought the rifle used, so I have no idea what the previous owner had done....me around 1000 rounds.

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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#9

Post by WTR »

In my experience, after a complete cleaning ( by electrolysis ) I had to lay a little copper back down ( 50 rounds) to bring the accuracy back to normal.

mrvmax
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Re: Copper Fouling-To Be-Or Not to Be?

#10

Post by mrvmax »

Liberty wrote:Anything that is going to clean up copper deposits will affect the steel. chrome barrels probably reduce this effect.
Copper is much softer than the barrels so it's easy to clean copper without affecting the metal on the barrel. That being said I don't clean copper specifically until I have accuracy issues. Normally I'll run enough patches to clean out the major fouling and call it a day.
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