I'd like advice from older or experienced shooters. I bought my first rifle ever in October. A Henry H001M. I knew nothing about cleaning or how to care for a rifle, so I watch a lot of you tube videos, and the Henry care and maintenance video for my rifle etc.
After finding this video, "How To Clean Lever Guns"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2Rl8k2q5o by GunBlue490, (who I think is a retired Connecticut policeman), I started to pay more attention. Without going into to much detail, he has a recurring theme about gun maintenance; that is, "
We're cleaning STEEL, not a gun, but hardened gun steel". And he goes into great detail about the copper gilding metal on the bullet jacket that "conditions" the barrel, by filling in imperfections, like a painter spackles a wall. That this is not copper fouling, it's barrel condition and honing, and that the copper shouldn't be scoured out of the rifling, lands a grooves.
I love his common sense approach, yet I'm still slightly confused about when to use a "SOLVENT", how often, and when to use a rod and bore brush, or if I even need to use a bore brush at all for that matter.
Before I ever put the first round through my rifle, I swabbed the bore with a Hoppe's Viper boresnake moistened with WD-40, and pulled it through the bore twice. I followed up with a few drops of G96 oil on the orange looped portion of the boresnake, and pulled it through twice. There was a 1" black smudge on the orange part of the boresnake, and I thought "it's clean".
The first day fired the rifle, I put about 150 rounds through it. When I got home, I repeated the process above, let the rifle sit for a few minutes and put it away. My shoot/clean process is basically this - whether I put 20, or 120 rounds through the rifle:
• Open the action
• Stand the rifle on the muzzle end in a corner, with a shop towel underneath the muzzle, inside a margarine container and inside a cardboard box,
• Spray WD-40 with the straw inside the opening of the chamber, let it drip out the muzzle for a few minutes
• Spray WD-40 on the boresnake (in front of and on the 2 bronze brushes) - pull it through twice.
• Clean the bolt face, around the top of the carrier with Q-tips, inside the receiver cover
• A few drops of G96 complete gun oil on a Real Avid boresnake (the brush and aluminum portion were too wide for the width of the ejection port, so I cut off the brush, and tied a boot lace to the mop portion as a swab only) - and pull this through, wipe down the barrel, mag tube, and put the rifle away.
Recently, I've been using Ballistol as well - it was a Christmas gift. I'm not sure what works better, G96, Ballistol etc. When I shine a light down the barrel from the chamber, it looks like a gleaming mirror.
QUESTIONS:
1) SHOULD I be using Hoppe's 9 with a bronze brush and rod - EACH time I clean the rifle?
2) If I'm cleaning the rifle immediately after I've fired it, using only a boresnake, is this "enough"?
I just didn't want to get into needing a vise, a rod, cleaning brushes, jags etc.
Much thanks