cupro nickle removal

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  • Last Post 19 June 2020
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sluggo posted this 05 June 2020

Hello: I am refurbishing a 1894 krag that has been bubbasized. I think the bore has a heavy cupro nickle coating. I tried copper removal methods to no avail. this stuff is really ironed on good. Any ideas for removing without ruining the bore?  Thanks in advance

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Brodie posted this 05 June 2020

Sluggo,

I would attackit with JB bore Paste followed by sweets 7.62 or any other good agressive copper solvent, and keep alternating the applications.  The only other thing I can think to do is to lap the bore; either fire lap or with a rod and poured slug.

I just thought of one more, clean the bore of all oil and grease, plug the chamber with a tight fitting piece of plastic or wood and fill the bore with liquid Mercury.  That will remove any copper in there probably even any that is bound to the nickle.  Don't worry the Hg won't hurt the steel of the bore or poison you unless you boil it and inhale the fumes like the old miners did by accident. 

Beyond those two methods there is the one using electrolysis (the name escapes me at the moment).  You put a rod down the bore that acts as the cathode, and fill the bore with a solution , apply electricity through a converter (it only works with direct current) and the ions of the jacket fouling magically travel to the rod which you can remove and clean later. 

Good Luck

B.E.Brickey

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Wheel Weights posted this 05 June 2020

Back in ancient times bores were plugged with rubber stoppers @ both ends and filled w/ammonia.

If air gets to it, you'll have rust !

 

"Hatcher confirms that CuNi (which is 60%Cu and 40% Ni, no other material is added) bullet jackets caused lumpy fouling if left to progress and had to be frequently removed using Ordnance Department Metal Fouling Solution - basically a strong ammonia solution."

 

 

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sluggo posted this 05 June 2020

Thanks for the ideas. I have some WW2 G.I. bore cleaner. I will start with that and go to the JB and Sweets from there. I do not have any mercury. Years ago I used an ammonia based solvent on a rifle i owned. I must not have used it correctly. It seemed liked it etched the bore and caused it to foul up quicker. Probably something I did wrong

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Wheel Weights posted this 05 June 2020

You can't let it absorb air, then it will pit.

 

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Bud Hyett posted this 05 June 2020

Simplest and safest is JB Bore Paste. This takes time and muscle, but it works. Rebarreling a 1903 Springfield with a new barrel that looked less than smooth, one Saturday afternoon and evening with 300 strokes of JB made it shoot great. Five strokes, refresh, five strokes refresh - takes a while.

Any method on a barrel with visible jacket material will take time. Ammonia would be my second choice, mercury the third only because it is not easy to find these days. By the time you run down the ingredients, you can work the bore with JB and be done. 

One thing not to do is mix compounds. I etched the bore on a Savage 110S many years ago by switching from Sweet's 7.62 to Shooter's Choice without be sure of getting all the Sweet's out first. The rifle shot jacketed just fine, but cast was never the same. That experience prejudiced me to using JB Bore Paste followed only by Butch's Bore Shine. Any cleaning compound, but only one cleaning compound to clear the JB Bore Paste. 

Farm boy from Illinois, living in the magical Pacific Northwest

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Mike H posted this 05 June 2020

Sweets will not get it out,there was a mixture in the early days of the 30-06,that contained strong ammonia and other substances,one was ammonium persulphate plus other compounds.I haven’t tried it.I would use JB compound as BudHyett suggested.If you could chemically remove the fouling,most likely the bore underneath will be very rough.

After a good go with JB,I would give the barrel a lot of castbullet loads.Good luck with it.

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RicinYakima posted this 06 June 2020

It all depends on how fast or how little patience you have. Plug the throat with a rubber stopper, 5/16" from the brew store. Fill with Hoppe's #9. Wait a day and pore it out. Run accouple of dry patches through the bore Repeat until clean with a borescope.  The stuff is not pure nickel, but cupro-nickel. Anything with ammonia in it will take it out, but slowly. The aggressive copper removers will etch the steel bore, so that is why I like the old fashion Hoppe's #9.

JB will take it out, but you have to be careful at the end, as the last thousand strokes will also be polishing the steel. This method is safe, but time consuming.  FWIW

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sluggo posted this 06 June 2020

I have it corked up, filled and soaking overnight. I filled it with "kroil". I will try regular cleaning with hoppes tommorow. I can always get more aggressive if that does not work. Thanks again for all the ideas.

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RicinYakima posted this 06 June 2020

Kroll will not work at all. It is designed to work under rust and carbon, so will not work at all on bonded metals. You will have to have a chemical, like ammonia, to dissolve the copper and then let you lift the metal fouling off the steel.

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Larry Gibson posted this 06 June 2020

I've shot thousands of milsurp cupro-nickel clad milsurp bullets of various countries make over the years.  The last ones are some 8x57s of European and Turkish manufacture.  Normal bore cleaners and even the copper removers such as Sweet's do not take the fouling out of the bore.  I've found JB's to reliably remove the cupro-nickel fouling every time with little fuss. I use a warn 30 cal brush with a patch wrapped around it.  A bit of JB's on the patch does it.  A regular cleaning afterward with Hoppe's #9 and then a light coat of Kroil..   

LMG

Concealment is not cover.........

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sluggo posted this 09 June 2020

After some careful cleaning with JB bore paste most of the fouling is gone. The members were correct when they said the Kroil would not help much. The WW2 bore cleaner also did little. I also tried some shooters choice copper remover. that seemed to help some. What worked was the JB on a patch wrapped on a cleaning brush. The bore has revealed some pitting after cleaning. it is 126 years old so who knows what it went through. I am going to try to assemble a shooter out of it and will see what happens. Thanks again for all the help. 

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max503 posted this 18 June 2020

I once soaked a nickel plated revolver bore with the old white vinegar/peroxide solution. The solution came out orange colored. Just sayin.

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RicinYakima posted this 19 June 2020

Nickel will not plate onto iron, so they have to put a thin coat on copper on first. The most common place you see it tried are some of the older Ideal reloading tools. Nickel is porous and will let the iron rust underneath it so it flakes off. By putting a flashing of copper on the iron first, it seals the surface and lets the nickel plate the copper.  FWIW.

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