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
Attached Files
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
Attached Files
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.
Attached Files
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
Attached Files
Mostly convinced that it was cupro-nickel lumping fouling from 100 years ago that started this tale.
Attached Files
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.
Attached Files
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
Attached Files
about 1952 i decided to spiffy up my colt challenger 22 pistol. i pushed the little button on the top of the slide and everything went * SPROING * all over the kitchen table.
oh oh .. no Youtube back then to see how it went back together. pushing the little button didn't seem to put it back together.
so about midnight i left the parts in a pan on the kitchen table and went to bed . in the morning, God had put it together for me.
taught me to watch how things come apart . came in handy later when i amazed my co. Lt. with how many pieces a BAR could be broken down into ...
ken
ok, it was my genius big brother, but he LORDed it over me for years after that ...
Attached Files
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
Attached Files
My Marlin 336 in .219 Zipper is shot interchanging cast and jacketed loads all the time.
Attached Files
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.
Attached Files
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?
Attached Files
Jeff, did you say you were going hunting for the Easter bunny!!??
Glenn
Attached Files
Yes Glenn. Hope you get your eggs before I get him.
Cheers from New Zealand
Attached Files
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 ...........
Attached Files
There also seems to be confusion about what some people like me consider a "cleaning". Once I started shooting cast lead bullets exclusively I had to let go of a lot of things that were ingrained in me.
Like a lot of you fellas I had a father who was a veteran. He drilled into us that we field strip the weapon and detail clean it after each use, even if I had only fired one mag through my 1911.
This attitude was re-enforced by my own time on active duty. I then passed this on to my sons and even my grandchildren. Watching my 12 year old granddaughter field strip my 1911 always gives me a smile.
When I say I don't clean my rifles I mean that once they achieve the right condition in the bore I leave them alone. They go for hundreds of rounds until accuracy drops off. I clean the bore thoroughly and then shoot 10-20 foulers to re-establish bore condition.
I don't neglect the rest of the firearm. It is cleaned and lubed before being put away. For the bore after firing I run two wet patches of Ed's Red and leave them wet. The bores on all of my guns look brand new.
YMMV
Steve in N CA
Attached Files
" If you are some one who rarely takes apart your gun for cleaning it can be intimidating."
Good point and it becomes an excellent point as you age. I am a bit worried about taking down my Ruger #1s again and my 92 Winchester is going to stay in one piece. The others are still reasonable.
John
Attached Files
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
Attached Files
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.
Attached Files
I guess it depends on what part of the Army you were in. In my basic training the instruction was as sghart sez above. When I made the Sixth Army Rifle team to avoid KP, guard duty, and most of the chickenshit, the right way was completely different. The commander of the Army's Advanced Marksmanship Training unit, Col. Siffass, (can't remember his last name) and his expert advisors determined what the conventional wisdom was for us.
We were issued two match grade M-1s and told to never clean the bore and never take them out of the stock which meant that the only cleaning and lubing that was so important in basic wasn't important for match shooting where combat conditions weren't expected. About the only thing we could do was lube the locking lugs and operating rod once in a while from the cunning little grease pots designed to go in the butt of the rifles. We naturally did as we were told. Nobody knew, or cared, whether our bores were shiny or not but I'm sure they weren't. The only patches we used were stuffed in our ears in a vain attempt to lessen the hearing damage that was obvious in all the older shooters. No hearing protection was issued or suggested.
At the end of the first season I had one failure to feed (bent clip) out of maybe 5K flawless rounds through my main rifle. I now have little doubt that the bores of our rifles were heavily copper fouled by the end of the season but members of our team shot some good scores at the end of the season at Camp Perry. Of course I suppose most of the competition we were shooting against in service rifle class had fouled bores as well and the targets were big.
As far as reliability to feed and fire, in my second year I had no failures and I don't remember others mentioning any. Functioning of the M-1 wasn't an issue in civilian conditions, whether it was cleaned or lubed compulsively or completely ignored except for a dab of grease now and again.
John
Attached Files
jeff houck
20
Aaron
15
Wilderness
14
Tom Acheson
14
John Carlson
13
sghart3578
10
Spindrift
5
alphabrass
5
SkinnerD
5
MP1886
3
