I intend to take my Hornet rabbiting at Easter so today checked the zero. Running two loads. NOE 225107 at 2250fps and 40gr jacketed full house for longer range. Shot the 225107 then changed to jacketed and back to the cast. Bullets went exactly where they were supposed to. This rifle certainly is tolerant of swapping bullets without cleaning the barrel.
Cheers from New Zealand
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Rambling;
Like that party game where you whisper a phrase that by the time it gets to the last person,well you know.
So the passed down idea or notion that all traces of copper need to be vanquished,IMO falls into that spectrum. Meaning,"some" of the original intent may have been lost.
"IF" you want to isolate certain items from a testing standpoint,achieving X before hand can help in that respect. Nothing is being said,you must do this to accomplish that...... which is what this cleaning regime has sorta morphed into. Along with several theories in CB land. It's just an idea that by eliminating certain things,it pares down the input variables. Think,better safe than sorry.
To begin with,each barrel,rig,and combination is somewhat of a,law upon itself. The goal,or fun is trying to crack the code. If "X" load worked perfectly in every rig,what fun is that? I'm afraid the interweeb has dumbed this down a bit..... that original party of 10-12 has grown a might.
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Jeff,
Just what a faithful reader of the Fouling Shot would have expected. The article in TFS #260 (July/August 2019) indicated that instead of the old BS that copper fouling degrades CB accurace, it instead, may improve CB accuracy a bit. At least 6 out of 8 trials by four different shooters using four different sets of equipment said so. The testing didn't include the very heavy copper fouling that affects jacketed bullet accuracy so even that may improve CB accuracy for all we know until someone finds out by testing. Maybe lead just shoots better over a layer of copper. We just as well assume that as the opposite.
We are beset by myths that cause unnecessary work and worry and drive some shooters out of CB shooting. They seem to be almost impossible to kill by tests that show the're worthless. It almost seems that a lot of CB shooters would rather fiddle fart around doing all sorts of extra work than doing a bit of testing to find out if it helps. Probably the same defect in our DNA that makes us want to shoot CBs in the first place.
John
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I alternate between jacketed and cast a lot in my M1 carbine and occasionally in my 1894's. I also do it occasionally in my big bores like 7X57 and 30-06. I never see a problem.
If I shoot several rounds of jacketed it takes a few fouling shots of lead to re-establish the bore condition but I have never "completely removed all traces of copper". I would think that you risk damaging the bore with over-zealous cleaning.
I realize my opinions go against conventional wisdom but I am telling you what i observe in my shooting.
YMMV
Steve in N CA
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My Marlin 336 in .219 Zipper is shot interchanging cast and jacketed loads all the time.
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My greatest differences is when switching to cast loads with different primers and powders. A good shooting load suddenly turns Jekel and Hyde on you and accuracy is out the window.
Dave
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I’m pretty well convinced that the need to completely remove jacket fouling to accurately shoot cast and vice versa is not true. I routinely switch between jacketed and cast in a number of rifles. I clean by brushing 10-15 times with Ed’s Red followed by 2-3 wet patches, and then dry the bore thoroughly. This removes the primer and powder fouling. It seems to keep the jacket fouling from building up. No need to complicate things and perpetuate falsehoods.
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Twenty five years ago I believed the "never lead over copper" but that was mostly old military rifles. I have since considered that it was layers of fouling over copper over fouling over cupro-nickel over fouling, etc. etc.. The military considers a shiny bore a clean bore, true or not. Maybe a thin layer of copper wash just smooths out the machining marks?
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After spending a LOT of time cleaning after shooting jacketed bullets, I did some experiments. I have shot lead over copper in old military rifles with worn pitted bores, in new rifles with factory bores and in two custom barrels with perfect bores. don't know how bad copper fouling has to be to affect accuracy, but it has to be really bad.
We can take this myth out behind the barn, shoot it with a silver bullet and bury it at a crossroads at midnight with a stake through it.
Tomorrow it will be back on line in some forum.
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Mostly convinced that it was cupro-nickel lumping fouling from 100 years ago that started this tale.
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I really don't have any problem with jacketed bullet fouling messing up my cast accuracy, primarily because I am just too cheap to buy and shoot jacketed bullets.
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Jeff, did you say you were going hunting for the Easter bunny!!??
Glenn
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Yes Glenn. Hope you get your eggs before I get him.
Cheers from New Zealand
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I'm a simple country boy from Illinois and not as smart as the gun writers in the shooting magazines with their much heralded and repeated warnings based on someone else's untracked knowledge.
But I do know my uncle shot High-Power in the 1950's and 1960's using cast bullets at 200 and 300 yards, then jacketed at 600 yards. He claimed the two sighting rounds at 600 yards cleaned the lube residue out for the jacketed to work, He scrubbed the bore with J&B when he got home to start the next match with a clean bore for the cast. His son and daughter were Illinois Junior Rifle Champions several years before going off to college. This cast and jacketed routine must have worked.
Farm boy from Illinois, living in the magical Pacific Northwest
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Probably the same defect in our DNA that makes us want to shoot CBs in the first place.
John
Funny you should mention DNA, my Scottish Frugality Gene jumped up and down in joy when I first started shooting cast. The RCBS 45-405-FN bullet was $0.22 cheaper than the Remington 405 grain jacketed for my Marlin 1895 .45-70. Then I added shooting .30 and 6mm, sizer dies, various lubricants, different alloys, more molds, another melting pot. You know the drill. My Scottish Frugality Gene does not know me today.
Farm boy from Illinois, living in the magical Pacific Northwest
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I think Ric is onto the start of the jacket fouling myth. That was the early 1900's in the 30-40 and the new 06 right when several new cast bullet designs came out for 30 cal. I understand cupro-nickel fouling was very bad, lumps of fouling which destroyed jacketed bullet accuracy. It was probably even worse for cast bullets.
Steve
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Americans in general have a somewhat cavalier attitude toward cleaning their firearms (to the detriment of many guns which were treated to some foreign corrosive ammo in the 1990s). There is still a lot of that ammo around just waiting to strike. People like my father who would hunt quail several days a week all season long, and unless his shotgun started jamming would only clean it at the end of the season before putting it away until next year.
I'd hate to add to that bad attitude by convincing them to clean even less, although not having to waste time scrubbing every last streak of copper from the bore is a good thing. I've bought some used rifles that had layer of carbon over layer of copper, over carbon, over copper, on and on and ...........
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It appears that there is a lot of difference between "cleaning to the bare metal" and cleaning for maintenance and operational functioning.
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Not wanting to sound dumb, ....okay. I'll ask anyway.
How does one know if there is "layer of carbon over layer of copper, over carbon, over copper, on and on and ...........".
Does it come off one layer at a time? one patch carbon, then the next patch copper and the next patch carbon?
There are times that I have wondered what might be built up on the inside of the bore. Often, cleaning made me feel good but I am not too sure the rifle shot any better or worse.
Years ago, like almost 50, I would shoot hot 44 mag cast loads ('cuz that was why I had a magnum) and then end the day with a round or three of jacketed. ...to supposedly rid the barrel of lead. I also owned a Lewis lead remover. I don't recall ever getting lead out with it except for the time and reason I bought it. A new Ruger Super Blackhawk shooting Hornady Frontier lead bullets I got with the purchase. Soft soft lead, and the rifling filled to the brim.
I really don't know much about layers of dirty fowling built up in the barrel.
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Usually it comes from trying to clean the bore with oil, i.e. the Army method. Arms were issued to the troops with cosmoline in the bore and they clean them until "shiny". In Basic we would shoot 20 rounds a day until qualification day. Every day we would clean the bore with GI Bore Cleaner. That only removed the gross carbon and made it shiny.
When I was doing Springfields there were rifles with little grooves, especially '03A3 training rifles from WWII. Not until alternating boiling water, brass brush, and reverse electro plating over several days did they come clean "to the metal". It is not clean till it is clean, a white patch with Ed's Red pasted through the bore that is white on the other side.
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Aaron
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linoww
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Wm Cook
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MP1886
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beagle6
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Ed Harris
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Pigslayer
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RicinYakima
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Wilderness
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Ross Smith
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