I Felt Like a Mad Scientist
A buddy of mine was a Jungian psychologist. They deal with archetypes and such. She always said that I was a Promethean type– a true hero mentality. I dunno about all that, but she did leave me some good Joseph Campbell tapes when she moved out.
The setup for all this is based on my recent purchase of the Ruger Hawkeye. As part of the deal, I decided to try Dyna Bore Coat. It was a new rifle, so I figured getting it down to the bare metal to apply the coating would not be all that hard. You can do several rifles with one bottle, so I wanted get a bunch of them ready. Besides the Hawkeye, I cleaned the Winchester 670 that I am giving to Angus as well as O.T.’s 25/06. SuperCore sold me an 8mm Mauser last year that I have been re-habbing. I figured that one would make 5 rifles– enough to get started.
The pre-clean for the Dyna Bore Coat is pretty involving. John Barsness wrote the instructions. I frequently find myself corresponding with him on 24HourCampfire.com. He and a lot of others on that forum think this is great stuff. John’s instructions call for JB Bore Compound. I did not have any of that, but John told me Flitz would work as well. 150 trips up and down the bore later, 5 rifles were completed.
The next phase of the pre-clean is the copper removal. I chose to use Industrial Strength Ammonia. The other 4 rifles came clean instantly. The 8mm Mauser was horribly fouled. I plugged the chamber with a rubber stopper and poured ammonia down and let it sit for 4 hours. It came back looking like Windex. I knew I had quite a job ahead of me, but I also figured this might be the reason the accuracy of the Mauser was less than expected.
I was contemplating 7 days of bore scrubbing and I ran across this tip from Mauser Central:
Electric bore cleaner – All you need is an electrode, a power supply and some wires and alligator clips. The electrode can be a coat hanger (make sure it is free of any varnish) or a store-bought thin wire rod. Use some heat-shrink tubing at the bottom of the rod and along its length in various places to prevent the rod from contacting the gun at any point in the barrel. (A short Circuit) The power supply consists of 2 `C’ cell batteries simply duct-taped together. There is no need for any fancy battery holders. Use only the 2 `C’ cells! There is no need for more power than this! The Positive power supply lead is attached to a good contact point of the rifle such as the rear sight. The Negative lead goes to the top of the electrode. Stand the gun upright and lock it into this position. Plug the chamber end of the gun…This can be done by using a fired shell wrapped with some Teflon tape or an automotive tire Valve stem trimmed to fit snugly. Tie a rag around the muzzle end of the barrel to prevent spills!..you can also wrap a layer of duct-tape around the muzzle so you can overfill the bore slightly without it leaking. The barrel is filled with “Household Ammonia”…You will find this at the grocery store or wherever your wife buys household cleaners…The strength is usually around 10 – 20%, you do not any stronger than that. Don’t dilute it, add any other agents to it or substitute anything else for it. Once the bore is filled with ammonia, connect the wires and let the device do its job for ONE HOUR. Keep a close eye on it as the ammonia will foam quite a bit making top-ups needed quite often. After the hour, the gun will need to be thoroughly cleaned with standard bore cleaners and oiled to prevent rust. So what does this thing do and when do you use it? This device is using the actions as a chrome plating shop does but in reverse. The ammonia lifts copper and the electrode attracts it like a magnet. You will see the electrode is quite a mess at the end of an hours use. Just wipe off the deposits though and its ready to use again. This thing is not meant to be used as a regular cleaning tool…There is no need for it after a days shooting inmost cases. It is meant to be used on guns that have not had a proper cleaning in many years…The ones that you can run a patch up and down all day and they still come out dirty! Follow the design and instructions exactly, Use it for what it is and it will save you hours of cleaning time. Try and overpower it, forget that you left it on, or misuse it it any way and you might end up with damage…I have yet to hear of any damage from this when used as I state here.
From Mauser Central Mauser Tips
Now it just so happened that I had to leave work early that day to take care of some business for my Mom. On the way home, I stopped at the hardware store, and picked up a 3/16″ steel rod and some cheap D batteries.
The battery holder was a paint stick, a couple of wood blocks and the aluminum foil from our last carryout meal. I used electrical tape as a stand-offs every six inches or so. I had a rubber plug that fit the chamber.
It took less than 1 oz of 10% Ammonia to fill the gap between the rod and the barrel. I hooked it all up to the batteries and was rewarded with a generous brown foam.
Brown? I unhooked it and consulted the website again. AH! I had the positive and the negative reversed. I went back down and put the negative lead on the steel rod and the positive on the receiver. Now I got whitish foam. In a bit, I was getting bluish-white foam– about like Windex. That continued for 15 minutes. By then the barrel had emptied.
I poured out what was left. The rod had gone from shiny to black– looked like lamp black. I used steel wool and then brake cleaner and a rag and got it shined back up. I set everything back up and restarted this mad-scientist rig. 15 minutes later, I had to repeat the clean-out and re-fit. I did this a total of three times over the next hour.
The last time I hooked up the battery, all I got was white foam. There was no blue.
Clean-up? I tossed all the gunk in the sink and then treated the Mauser like one of my muzzleloaders. It got rinsed with cold and then the outside got rinsed with hot. Once the barrel was good and warm, I dried it with a towel and then took it back to the bench. There, everything got a shot of breake cleaner and then a going-over with Ed’s Red.
I did not have a chance to touch the Mauser again until the next weekend. After a week’s stewing in the Ed’s, the remaining gunk released. My first patch was cruddy, but within 3 the patch came back clean. I tried Ammonia again, and the patch was white. I then shot brake cleaner down the pipe and then denatured alcohol and the Mauser joined the other rifles ready for the application of the Dyna Bore Coat.
The general consensus among those I have confessed this to so far is that what I did was risky. However, the old Mauser was shooting a 3 foot group at 100 yards when I started. I figure I had nothing to lose and if I mucked it up, it was going to be re-barreled or re-bored anyways. This was a last resort. I will let y’all know how it turns out.
As to the Dyna Bore Coat, the final application went smoothly. I had all 5 rifles done in an hour and then put them back in the rack, barrel down, and then left them overnight. Conceivably I could have shot them in 4 hours, but it will be a week or so before I can get down to the farm. Each rifle will need about 8 rounds sent down the barrel to bake in the nano-ceramic finish. The payoff should be 5 rifles with increased accuracy, no jacket fouling and faster clean-up. I will report back.
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Your best bet would be to get a stainless baerrl. If not, whether the baerrl is chromed or not will not make a bit of difference. There is far too much hubub and marketing around chrome lined bores. If the rifle you want has a chrome bore great, but don’t make that the reason you pick that rifle over another.Edit: all the downward thumbs is a prime example of how this issue is wrought with more passion than logic. There have been numerous tests done to show that non-chrome bores last just as long as chrome bores. As for baerrl life it’s a moot point. Sure chrome won’t rust, so if you’re the type that doesn’t like to clean your rifle after a day at the range, then get chrome. But if you are interested in accuracy look at baerrl quality. A well-finished chrome-bore rifle will shoot better than a roughly finished steel bore AND a well-finished steel bore will out shoot a poorly finished chrome bore rifle. The whole chrome lined sales pitch to any civilian is nothing short of a gimmick. Anyone that believes otherwise has been duped.I have several AR platforms with several rifles with stainless baerrls, non-chromed baerrls, chromed baerrls, cold hammer forged baerrls, etc. I could put anyone, with any level of experience, on any of those rifles and they wouldn’t have the slightest clue as the to baerrl type they were using.Looked it up I’m cancer moon, pisces sun, virgo rising .