carbon removal!!

[cleardatum]

as you all may or may not know, i've been searching for a carbon removal procedure/ chemical/ process. the last few days i've been attending to a totally neglected smith 686 range gun. i'm guessing many thousands (maybe 10,000?) of rounds down the pipe, never been cleaned! the carbon was like nothing i'd ever seen before, so i took this project as an interesting opportunity for experimentation. i tried the usual suspects- hoppe's, hoppe's bench rest, butch's, clp, jb bore paste, 0000 steel wool, combinations of the above, all with some result, but very slow, and it was becoming obvious it would never be what i would consider "good". ENTER THE EPIPHANY!!! sitting on my amazing "shelf o' chemicals", is a tub of mother's metal polish. hmmm. i put a small amount on a patch, and of course, it came out black. was the black oxidation, or was it carbon? BOTH! the carbon was being removed! the barrel is now in serviceable condition. not perfect, but damn good!

 

[joecer]

Have you ever tried just plain old water? remove the cylinder make a plug for the barrel and pour the water in. Let it set for a day then empty and oil it down. The water will mix with the carbon and burned powder then turn acidic which will eat the rest of the carbon.l

 

[AzShooter1]

Tandemkross sells and excellent product for getting out the carbon. Slick 2000 go to Tandemkross.com and find it.

 

[libbylibbylibby]

Two things I have found to be good at carbon removal are #1 - Ed's Red (w\ acetone), and #2 - a PB Blaster product called "Small Engine Tune-up. Both will dissolve carbon quite well. Just don't get it on any wood finishes, it will strip it.

 

[Jimbo357mag]

I believe a small patch of Kleenbore Lead Away cloth or similar on a jag will remove carbon from a bore but don't let it get on any blueing.

 

[DougGuy]

I see it in a lot of cylinders sent in for throating, where the chamfer is in the end of the chamber behind the throats. This stuff s moonrock for lack of a better word, it is hard as glass, and VERY stubborn to remove. I use a #462 wire brush in a dremel tool to carefully polish out this lava rock and leave the chambers shining like a new penny.

I have added this as an additional service in my pricing for cylinder work as it is time consuming and laborious, in some cases it takes longer to remove the carbon than it does to ream and hone the throats!

Left unattended it will eventually prevent most ammo from seating in the chambers and because it is an obstruction it can serve to raise pressures. I wouldn't say dangerously so, but enough to change how the gun recoils in the hands and consequently affect the point of impact.

Pair of consecutively numbered Vaquero cylinders, sent in for throating by a CAS shooter:



Same two cylinders after cleaning the carbon out and reaming/honing throats to .4525"