Dirty .30 meets 'Gomer' !

If you read the previous post about my VERY lucky hunting trip to Coleman County you will soon realize why this latest post is eyebrow raising!

The day before I left for my hunting trip I decided to do some low end maintenance on my (.30-’06) Mauser’s action to ensure that the bolt’s travel would be unimpeded by crud from the previous outing. No, I had not cleaned my gun immediately following the last use. This particular barrel loves to be dirty while at the same time maintaining what I consider very good accuracy for a hunting rig. (A freshly cleaned barrel with a couple of drops of oil tend to send my first shot high and to the right by about 3-4”.)

So out came the gun on the kitchen table along with my gun cleaning kit. First up, a good soaking of the bolt with a clean cloth dipped in Hoppe’s #9. (Best smell in the world if you ask me!) Setting aside the bolt to dry before oiling, I reached in for the only cleaning rod I have in .30 caliber- a three piece number made of aluminum that is very flimsy- even after being screwed together. As I put the rod together I considered whether to tip it with a bronze brush soaked with Hoppe’s or to go straight to the 100% cotton cloth patch soaked in same. I decided, “Nah, let’s scrub that sucker good then go in with a cloth patch. Better yet, let’s wrap the brush with a thin piece of cloth so that the bristles will scrub the cotton into the very bottom of the grooves thus saving you time.”

Yeah right, saving time- NOT! Word to the wise- don’t ever contemplate saving time while attempting to properly clean a firearm. The two usually don’t mix, and in my case, can be hazardous to your mental health…read on.

After dipping the cloth covered brush into my Hoppe’s I slowly pushed the rod from the breach end of the action into the throat area of the barrel. I knew right away the fit was tighter than it should have been. Did I immediately pull it out? No. I thought I could muscle it all the way down the length of the barrel. (Idiot, idiot, idiot!) I got that cleaning rod to advance about 6 inches and it stuck. I don’t mean it slowly came to a halt I mean it stopped like a large cork in a thin necked bottle! Try as I might, I could not get the thing to advance or retreat. I set the gun down on the table and tried to get my thoughts in order on how to proceed. I remembered getting a rod stuck in a smaller bore rifle two years ago. I dripped oil from the muzzle end and let it soak into the trouble area in an attempt to lubricate the problem area thus freeing the rod. The previous attempt worked. This time- it didn’t work at all. I let the oil soak for a good 5 minutes and that rod still wouldn’t budge.

My wife, now observing this dilemma asked what I was going to do. I said aloud, “I wish I had a solid, blunt faced rod of similar size to gently tap into the muzzle in order to get that rod to back out through the breach.” Wanting desperately to assuage my building anguish, she offered one of her wooden dowel rods she uses in sewing/knitting. I tried it in the muzzle end and it was a perfect (loose) fit and slid easily into the barrel. It was approximately 18 inches long. It mated with the rod tip and I began to slowly tap the exposed end with my hammer. I felt the wooden dowel sharply give. Looking towards the butt end of the rifle I hoped to see some increased length of exposed rod- but it appeared unchanged. What I had done was split the wood dowel rod like a saxophone reed and it wedged on either side of the rod tip and buried itself into the stiff metal bristles of the brush! Realizing what I had just done, there was no way to push that wood rod forward without making it worse, and I couldn’t back the metal rod out from the breach. Reaching for a pair of pliers I grasped the dowel rod firmly in an attempt to pull it backwards. A sharp crack at the muzzle confirmed my worst nightmare. The rod snapped a quarter of an inch outside the barrel leaving the wood dowel in its new (permanent?) home. I had committed the worst ‘GOMER’ ever! Not only was I extremely mad at myself for doing this I was most vexed about how to solve the problem within the next 18 hours before going on this hunt. A small voice entered my head: “Go to someone smarter than you, fella- like a gunsmith, and see if their use of proper tools and techniques will save your butt!”

Best advice my conscience has ever delivered in a clutch situation. I didn’t call to see if anyone was open I just gathered the rifle and headed down to my local shooting supply store downtown. (The two older gentlemen working at this store periodically worked on customer guns – both repairs and in customization.)

Arriving at the shop hoping for one -or at the most two – car(s) to be present so as to hide my asinine predicament I noticed no less than 6 vehicles parked out front. I thought, “Great, now everyone will know what I did today and have a great laugh at my expense!” The men standing around the counter glanced to see who came in the door but didn’t see my rifle with the rods sticking out each end as I briskly walked to the back of the store with the gun firmly planted against the length of my leg. (No sense in making it easy for them to see, right?) Soon after striking up a conversation with the gunsmith and explaining what I had done he took the entire rig from my hands and headed to his work bench with me in tow.

Putting the gun in the horizontal position he clamped it up firmly in his very large machine vise with the muzzle to my left and the buttstock to my right. After listening to each step I took in my attempt to rectify the problem and checking how tight the metal rod was stuck, he simply growled, “Boy, you’ll be lucky if we can get this rod out with your barrel’s rifling intact.” My heart melted. If his prediction came true, and we were able to remove the rods only to find mangled rifling (the part of the barrel that engages the projectile on it’s delicate, twisting journey), I knew there was no way I could go on my trip as the barrel would have to be reamed again (cut the rifling back to original specs with a new reamer) or worse, order a new barrel and have it installed on the existing action. Either way, it couldn’t be done in an hour and a half. The store closed at 5PM. It was now 3:30PM. (Besides, the gunsmith hadn’t planned on working on my gun today, he was reordering stock before I showed up and begged him for help.)

He tugged on the metal rod. He tried to grab what was left of the wooden dowel in the muzzle end and extract it- no go on either end. He decided, with my urgent coaxing, to take the last third of the 3-piece rod off leaving about 6 inches exposed out the breach end of the action. Then he took a rather large, rubber mallet and slowly began to tap on the rod. After four quick taps, my eyes fixated on the muzzle, I saw a slight movement to the left! I coached him to keep going. He tapped a little more and the dowel began to reappear as if by magic (the God of Nimrod was smiling down on me after all). With 4-5 successive blows he had that dowel rod out and the metal rod pushed through enough to grasp it with pliers and pull it clear of the muzzle. (WHEW!)

I asked him if he had a bore light so we could look at the lands and grooves of the rifling. “No, I got sumthin’ better than that,” he said. He walked over to his tool chest and pulled out the coolest toy I ever got to play with- a Hawkeye Bore Scope! I had read about these for years, but the steep price always prevented me from purchasing such a fancy rig. (They start around $800.) The scope basically looks like a cleaning rod with one notable exception. It has a large eyepiece on one end set at a 90-degree angle to the axis of the length of the rod (and therefore the barrel that it slides into). The eyepiece is not unlike what you look through when using a binocular. On the tip end of the rod is a brightly lit window milled into the metal made of glass (or crystal?) that exposes an intense, lighted fiber optic wire contained in the rod. In front of this light is a mirror set at a 45-degree angle so that whatever is exposed by the light through the window bounces back down the long axis of the scope and is bounced upward through the eye piece by another corresponding 45-degree mirror. The eyepiece magnifies what the user sees into a much larger version of what the “tip” is exposed to inside the barrel. (Think of it as a miniature version of a submarine’s periscope and you have the general idea.)

After moving the scope the entire length of the barrel my new (now close) friend announced that: “Well, you have some pitting in this barrel and a hell of a lot of jacket buildup. There’s copper everywhere in here. Here, take a look.” He handed the eyepiece over to me and allowed me a close-up glimpse of my barrel. Sure enough, I saw the dark areas he referred to as pitting (erosion of the metal due to lackluster maintenance and subsequent rusting) and a bright flaky substance that looked like copper flakes that had been hammered into the deep grooves of the bore. There was a LOT of jacket fouling. While I played with his scope he said casually, “Son, you are very lucky. I don’t see any problems with that rifling whatsoever. Those ‘ol military guns were made for abuse and you got your hands on one of the toughest I seen. That brush should have mangled that rifling.” I nearly wept for joy right in front of the guy!! My rifle was intact and ready for my big hunt…I thanked the man profusely.

Leaving the work area walking back into the store he adamantly preached to me that segmented rods (especially aluminum rods) were the worst thing anyone could subject a rifle’s barrel to- especially if the rifleman was serious about accuracy. He led me over to the wall holding Tipton's one piece cleaning rods made of carbon fiber. These are extremely light weight, with no joints to catch on the lands when sliding into the barrel. The carbon fiber is coated and very slick so that it slides across the metal like smooth glass. On top of purchasing this $35 rod (which is a good investment) I also bought a new brush. The other was trashed after it came out of the barrel. (Bent and horribly mangled.) The gunsmith admonished me for using bronze brushes. “Never, never use bronze brushes in a gun that you want to remain accurate. It can shave a tiny piece of the barrel every time you scrub with it- always use nylon. Nylon won’t interfere with the barrel and cleans just as good with the proper chemicals. Speaking of chemicals, you have a choice to make on getting that jacket fouling out of those rifling grooves.” I had forgotten about the jacket fouling since my elation over the intact rifling. He led me over to a small kiosk with a myriad of solvents, cleaners and specialty items. He handed over a small bottle with 2 ounces of clear liquid called Barnes CR-10. (Click on this name and you will be taken to a website with a picture.) This is an ammonia based solvent that works incredibly well on copper jacket fouling. When you run a soaked patch through your barrel it comes out dark as the chemicals react to the copper agent turning the white patch a dirty blue color. He told me to follow the instructions exactly as they appear on the label and keep using the stuff until a patch came out completely white- with no traces of blue. He says, “That’s when you know you got all the fouling out.”

I paid for my new cleaning rod, brush and solvent to the tune of $45. No charge for the removal of the stuck cleaning rod! (This guy just found a customer for life!)

After getting all this stuff home, I proceeded to clean the barrel and action of my rifle. Following the directions outlined on the label of the Barnes CR-10, I noticed there were several steps involved- six to be exact. I went through all six steps a total of three times before my last patch came out completely white and clean. I COULD NOT BELIEVE THE SHINY INTERIOR OF THE BARREL once I turned the gun to the light and looked down the full length of the bore. That barrel looked like what I imagined it did when the original reaming job got through cutting the lands- everything was in sharp contrast and shone with the brilliance of a new nickel! It was obviously the first time I had seen that barrel totally cleaned down to the bare metal. I thought I had cleaned it well enough before with my brushes and regular solvent, but nothing really touched that jacket fouling like this Barnes product. I remain amazed even as I type this report. I will never clean another gun without using this stuff to remove jacket material- it is very hardy stuff and cheap! One bottle cost me $3.50 and a few drops go a long way.

Well, gotta run. I’m off to buy new Tipton carbon fiber rods for my 6mm and .22 caliber guns!