.22 Chamber Brush Problem

[Gwhite]

I've been using .25 caliber rifle brushes to make sure the chambers of .22's are REALLY clean:

http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php ... 96#p186896

Over the last decade, I've probably made over 100 of these for myself, friends, and the college team I help coach. I've lost count of the number of times I've rescued somebody mid-match with a quick chamber cleaning. They do wear out over time, and need to be replaced.

Lately, I've noticed that they seem to be wearing out much faster than before. The team seems to go though them in less than a year. I took a look at the latest bag of brushes from Brownells, and compared it to one of my personal brushes that I've probably had for close to a decade. They've changed the design, and they have WAY fewer bristles in the spiral than they used to:

I submitted a highly unfavorable review at Brownells, and I am now on the lookout for a good replacement. It's hard to tell from on-line images, but a lot of the options don't look much better. I'm going to purchase a variety of brushes, and will report back once I've identified a good replacement.

In the meantime, if somebody knows a good brand of bore brushes with lots of bristles, let me know. Alternatively, if you know of a brand that is particularly short on bristles, that will save me wasting time & money getting samples. I'm currently looking at ordering: Sinclair, Pro-Shot, Bore Tech, Dewey, Hoppes, Boosteady and Tipton. Some brands of brushes only come in the most common calibers (like .22 & .30), and they don't have .25 caliber (or 6mm, which should also work well).

Thanks!

[dam8]

thanks keep us posted i have saved many on the line with my angle brush as well I've had good luck with a 270 rifle brush i get 2 bends out of it!

[-TT-]

I've noticed the same thing in brushes, half the bronze it seems. Personally I've been using a nylon brush lately, less aggressive and does a fine job removing the waxy chamber buildup that I have it in the box for. They're cheap and seem to last indefinitely. I only resort to bronze if the forward forcing cone area starts to lead-up, and that's a rare thing.

[Gwhite]

Over time, I've seen carbon build up near the front of the chamber, even with frequent use of the bronze brushes. At that point, chemical warfare is your best option. Bore Tech Rimfire Blend is good, their Carbon Remover is a bit better, and Sharp Shoot R Carb-Out is a little better still.

If that doesn't work, a VFG felt coated with JB Bore paste or Flitz metal polish will get rid of what's left.

Here's a post that shows borescope pictures of the carbon crud before & after Rimfire Blend treatment:

https://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.ph ... 05#p300805

[m1963]

Take a look at the Otis line…their bore brushes last a long time and we use them hard.

https://otistec.com/6mm-243cal-bore-bru ... -1-bronze/

[Gwhite]

Thanks! They look pretty bristly, but they only come in shorter "pistol" length. That will make them a bit harder to bend for a good handle, but I can give them a try. The longer "rifle" ones give you a good long handle to reach into Pardini SP's ejection port without dismantling anything.

[Gwhite]

I've finally completed my survey of the various bronze bristle bore brushes out there. I examined a bunch of .25 caliber brushes, but I also checked .22 brushes. I want something that is big enough to do a good job on chambers, and some .22 caliber brushes are a bit small to do that well. The SAAMI specs for a match .22 long rifle chamber has a diameter at the rear of 0.2267 inches. Some of the .22 brushes are only ~ 0.234" in diameter, and I suspect they won't do a good job on chambers for very long. I can fell a significant difference in how easy they go into a chamber.

Because these will be used by college students, I wanted to go with brass core brushes to minimize the risk of damage to anything. Cost is another factor. The brushes I used to get from Brownells cost around $16 for a dozen. For some reason, the price nearly doubled suddenly about a month ago.

The winner is the Tipton .22 caliber rifle brush (#140337). The bristles have an OD of 0.244", which is the largest of all the .22 caliber brushes I examined. They are reasonably tight in a .22 chamber, almost as good as some of the smaller .25 caliber brushes. They have a brass core, and advertise "20% more bristles". They definitely seem to have more bristles than the majority of the other brushes I examined. They come in packs of 3, with a list price of $9.99, but there are a number of places that sell them for as little as $5.99. I'm still looking for a place that has plenty in stock at that sort of price, combined with reasonable shipping charges.

I'm hoping that having slightly shorter bristles than the .25 caliber brushes we have used in the past will help them last longer. With luck, the bristles will be bent a bit less and spring back rather than getting permanently deformed.

[JamesH]

Not to rain on your parade but:

Stuffing a brush into a chamber then backing it out is bad for the brush and the chamber, the bristles buckle over, stress the bristle too far and the tip grinds into the chamber surface, plus dumping broken bristles here and there.

Some people with tight chambers, FWB93s and Matchguns, use a full length rod and short brush so the brush can fully exit the chamber before getting pulled back out from the front.
May not be great for the muzzle crown but then neither is shooting it.

[Gwhite]

I've taken literally hundreds of borescope pictures of pistol chambers regularly cleaned with .25 caliber bronze brushes, and I have NEVER seen any sign of damage to the pistol from the process. The use of the brush is the first step in even a quick cleaning on the line, and is always followed by a dry patch to remove the debris (and any bristles). I don't actually recall ever seeing loose bristles except around the bend, where they wouldn't get into the bore.

The only downside of such an oversized brush is that the bristles get bent over, and lose their effectiveness fairly quickly. The design of the brushes we've used for over a decade was changed at some point with fewer bristles. The purpose of my recent search was to identify a good "bristlier" brush, but also in.22 caliber to try to get them to last longer.

[Alexander]

The (worldwide) best barrel and chamber brushes, bar none, are made by Erzinger in Wädenswil, Switzerland. They will be too expensive for Gwhite, but the quality difference to any (!) other product is immense.

If one wants to go on the cheap, there is a decent Czech producer. Less bristles than the above, but still more value on the money than the US, British or German competitors.

Alexander

[Gwhite]

I spent some time over the Holidays making up a large batch of chamber brushes. It turns out MidwayUSA has a fairly good price on the Tipton .22 caliber bronze brushes ($6.99 for a 3-pack). They run free shipping promotions fairly often, and I bought 10 packs several weeks ago.

When I first started making these, I designed & machined a pair of bending tools for the .25 caliber Brownells brushes I used to use. I made a new set redesigned to work with the Tipton brushes:

For an individual who isn't making tons of these, I suspect a couple pieces of 1/4" ID pipe would work fine.

I've found it useful to have two styles. One version is bent at 90 degrees for cleaning barrels when a pistol is disassembled, or for Benelli MP90/95's on the firing line. The other is bent at about 75 degrees, which allows cleaning the chamber of Pardini SP's on the firing line.

[-TT-]

Color coded, even! :)

[Gwhite]

I used to code them by date using different colors, but that turned out to be a waste of time. Some get used a lot, and some hardly ever, so age has nothing to do with what condition they are in.

[BobGee]

Doug, I admire your thoroughness and appreciate all you sage advice on the many topics you address.

Bob

[Gwhite]

Thank you. I'm mostly trying to assist the team I help coach, but I also enjoy the pursuit of knowledge in its own right. Once I think I've pinned something down, it seems silly not to share, especially given all I have learned from others on the forum.

Before I retired, I usually only had time to make a good guess & forge ahead. Now I can afford to be a bit more thorough, which I find very enjoyable.

[Gwhite]

I finally had time to do a more detailed write up of my chamber cleaning research. The cleaning process I discovered is very effective at removing built up carbon in .22 chambers. If you have the time & energy to clean your pistols immediately after every shooting session, it may not be an issue for you. For the college team I help coach, that just isn't practical.

Even with more aggressive attention to chamber cleaning than most people do, the carbon apparently hardens and builds up over time. Once it's fossilized, it can be very stubborn to remove unless you use the process described in the attached article. Even if you do clean your pistol after every shooting session, starting with the barrel and letting it soak while you clean and lubricate everything else will help to make sure you get as much carbon out as possible.

Have You REALLY Cleaned Your Chamber.pdf

(184.45 KiB) Downloaded 675 times

[Azmodan]

nice and informative
you say there that CLPs are good for this job. is Balistol a good CLP? (that is what i use / what i have easy access to)

[Gwhite]

I haven't tried it, but I suspect it will work well. I think the secret is much more the long soak than the actual solvent used. I discovered how well it worked with factory Benelli oil, and have tested RemOil, Breakfree CLP and FP-10 CLP. I think the FP-10 works best, but the difference is small. Even the plain gun oils made an enormous difference.

It's easy enough to test. Try your normal bore cleaning routine, and when you think it's all set, brush the chamber with a tight fitting brush and pull a patch soaked in Ballistol through the bore. The next morning, brush it again and pull a dry patch through. If you want to be meticulous, use a fresh brush so grime on the old one doesn't contaminate the experiment. If it comes out clean, either your normal process is fine and there wasn't any carbon, or Ballistol doesn't work. If you get the light angled right, you can actually see evidence of the carbon ring in a chamber without a borescope. A magnifier helps.

The real test is to use a borescope. The good news is that cell phone camera technology has made borescopes pretty inexpensive. I use this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TTQF24F

Warning: The borescope is not for the weak of heart, and will show all sorts of details about your barrels you may prefer not to have known about... For example, the borescope photos of the pistol in the PDF showed some scratches in the front of the chamber that look like some chips got caught in the chamber reamer when they made the barrel. I've examined some World War II military rifle barrels that look absolutely horrible compared to my hand lapped match barrels. Lots of deep scratches, and chatter marks the whole length of the barrel from the rifling cutter.

[Will Hart]

Gwhite, thanks for another detailed post and many thanks for what you are doing for your team; it's much appreciated.
One thing I used to do with a troubled Benelli was to soak a cleaning patch in Hoppe's 9, wrap it around a brush, twirl it a bit in the chamber, and let it sit inside the chamber over the weekend. That used to to work well but I'm sure your way is best for really fouled bores. Ever test with Hoppe's?

[Gwhite]

It sounds like a variation of what I developed. I was raised on Hoppe's, but that was way back when it still contained nasty chemicals that are banned now (nitro-benzine). I prefer the CLP stuff these days as a one-stop solution. A lot of the dedicated bore cleaning chemicals (including Hoppe's) recommend treating the bore with oil when you are done. With the CLP stuff, I never worry about it. Also, the newer stuff is generally less toxic & more environmentally friendly.

I almost think it doesn't matter what you soak the carbon with. The key is to soften it up with a good dose of time, and then get it out with a tight chamber brush before it sets up again.

I discovered the soaking trick after I had filled a bore with acetone for a couple weeks. (That's one thing I know won't work, no matter how long it sits..). I grabbed some borescope photos and had to head home. I didn't want to leave the bore with absolutely zero oil in it, because I knew I wouldn't be back for a several days and it was hot & humid. I grabbed the first thing that was handy (a bottle of Benelli oil), and ran a wet patch down the bore. When I got back, the first thing I did was run a dry patch through the bore, and it came out BLACK. I'd been working off & on for a couple months at that point, and had never seen so much carbon come out with any of the previous treatments. This was in a pistol that had already been brushed & patched multiple times during the acetone test.

I wanted to make sure the acetone hadn't "primed" the fouling so the oil worked well. Given that Benelli oil is pretty much unobtanium these days, I tried a more controlled test comparing Benelli oil, RemOil, and Breakfree CLP on three pistols with similar amounts of carbon fouling. The results were very similar, with a bit more carbon removed by the Breakfree (which could just have been that pistol was dirtier). We use Breakfree for general cleaning & lubricating anyway, so I settled on using that. Since then, I've become enamored with FP-10 CLP. It's a lighter lubricant, and cleans at least as well as Breakfree. I stumbled across a YouTube video of a friction test they did comparing FP-10 with a couple other products, one of which was clearly RemOil. The FP-10 was WAY better. Admittedly, the video was from Shooter's Choice, and they want to sell their product, but the test they did was well done & very convincing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCPg8mS_7wM

I now use FP-10 on my own guns, and will be switching the pistol team over to it once we use up all the Breakfree we have. FP-10 is also the product recommended by Pardini for maintaining their pistols.