mohavesam said:
Asphalt is harder than rubber tires, but it will wear out... from my physics learnin's. why take a chance on expensive parts in this 21st century. Use modern chemistry!
Hi,
And water's softer than stone, yet it wears away at the rocks.
But that's not the point in my book. The real concern is HOW LONG WILL that take? I doubt I'll be around to see any wear on that rock I put out in the back yard to see how long it lasts, and I also doubt that I'll live long enough to see any of my gun barrels worn out from use of aluminum cleaning rods, the occasional stainless Tornado brush down a shotgun bore, or bronze bristle brushes. That's not to say I don't have barrels with wear: every time I pull the trigger, there's a heckuva lot more terrible stuff happening to my barrel than I could ever do in a proper cleaning session when I'm done shooting for the day. So, yeah, there's throat erosion, rifling wear, even muzzle wear from that blast of "stuff" that comes out behind the bullet. All that detritus IS abrasive. But online wisdom aside, I don't worry about my methods ruining anything.
There's a lot of folklore about cleaning barrels, most of which just doesn't stand up to a good sniff test, but it does spread like wildfire thru the Interwebs. One of my favorites has to do with all those .22 barrels which have been worn out online by over cleaning. I once asked my ol' gunsmith boss about that. He'd been in the biz about 40 years at the time. He suggested I go downstairs to our basement vault and see if I could find one (there were usually a couple hundred or more rifles there.) And when I did, he wanted me to bring it upstairs to show him. He said it would be a first for both of us to see!
So going back to the OP, that chrome lining is there to protect the barrel from wear, the kind that happens each time the gun's fired. I wouldn't worry about damaging it with reasonable cleaning. But IF it's still a worry, use Sam's advice about a chemical solution to the problem: get yourself a can of Kroil and some patches. A competitive AR shooter once showed me a barrel he told me had 1000s of rounds thru it, and had never seen a brush. After shooting, he'd run a patch generously wetted with Kroil down the barrel and let the stuff sit for a while, maybe a half hour or longer. Then he'd run a dry patch thru and see what came out. If it was nasty, he'd repeat the process. If not, he'd run another oiled patch, this time very lightly oiled (again with Kroil), thru the barrel and put the rifle away until the next time he was ready to shoot it, when he'd run one dry patch thru before his first fouling shot. He learned this from other competitive shooters, who seemed to think the Kroil managed to get under the fouling and simply loosened it so they could wipe it out, rather than mechanically removing it. I dunno, but he was happy with his drill.
Everybody's got their "secret" way!
Rick C