Henry Rifle Forums

Slugnut wrote:I had "Green" patches following their directions. Believe it or not, accuracy did improve for me.

thanks for posting your results .... in the beginning, the vast majority of my shooting was hunting related .... as such, I we focused on making clean kills at the ranges I anticipated shooting .... that didn't require pin point accuracy or tightly grouping a given number or rounds .... later I worked at a tourist attraction where shooting demonstrations were part of the show .... during that time the emphasis for my time spent shooting shifted to improving my skills firing western style handguns .... for most of my career with NC's Dept of Correction, my duties included armed pursuit of felony escapees and in staff training .... doing so required yearly recertification with rifle, shotgun, and revolvers .... today my shooting emphasis is much more directed toward target shooting .... my go to hunting rifles (a Remington 700 BDL chambered in 300 WBY Mag, a Browning BLR 308, and a Remington 700 30-06) don't see anywhere near as much time our of the vault as they used to .... as noted previously, I've owned/used them for decades and copper fouling hasn't been an issue .... I can't help but wonder if changes in the way today's firearms manufacturing lends itself to fouling .. .. that said, I still haven't seen any impact in accuracy from copper fouling .... now, as to a lead buildup, that's a completely different matter

Brought copper fouling cleaning over from 'Dirty Firing Ammo' topic...
http://henryrifleforums.com/viewtopic.p ... 839#p66041

Last night did another Tetra Gun soak for several hours. Still getting a lot of dark purple. Assuming that the solid dark purple means a lot of copper. I did change up using the squeeg-e at the chamber end. Instead of the screw end inserted into the .30-30 casing I reversed it so that the screw end goes into the chamber first. That way I was able to insert my cleaning rod into the muzzle and remotely screw it onto the squeeg-e and then draw all the purple gunk out the muzzle. Will be doing another long soak this morning.

Have you tried removing the bolt and pushing the rod from breech to muzzle yet?

P.S.
I had to use metal brushes when the copper didn't seem to clear up after a couple of soak sessions. I may do about 6 soak sessions total of about 30 minutes each.

JEBar wrote:Mags ... just curious .... how many rounds would you estimate you have fired through that barrel ....

Exactly 84.

GFK wrote:Have you tried removing the bolt and pushing the rod from breech to muzzle yet?

No. Haven't seen the need to do that, since I am pulling the squeeg-e I inserted into the breech/chamber out through the muzzle.

GFK wrote:P.S.
I had to use metal brushes when the copper didn't seem to clear up after a couple of soak sessions. I may do about 6 soak sessions total of about 30 minutes each.

Before the first soak, I ran a bore snake that contains a wire brush, breech to muzzle.

Currently on my 4th soak. Smell of ammonia is starting to grow on me. oh yum.

Results of the 4th soak top smear (10hrs) along side the 3rd (bottom). Looks like I had probably gotten the copper out in the 3rd soaking and the 4th soak was only needed to verify. So 10hrs was overkill. Also in the picture is the improvised bore plug used at the chamber end of the barrel. Doing this I was able to thread the cleaning rod onto the squeeg-e through the muzzle and pull all the gunk out through the muzzle.

Thanks guys for your guidance.

Looks like you got it. Hopefully, it will go quicker as time goes on. At least, that is what I am hoping. I typically clean and lube the bolt also. I have found it makes for a smoother cycling. Plus, it allows me to push any carbon out through the muzzle end and not be as concern about the receiver.

UPDATE :

Mar 19, 2018 ===>

JEBar wrote:I must admit that I'm growing more and more perplexed as to the reason .... no copper fouling in either our Henry 44 Mag or 357 Mag even though both of them have has thousands of more rounds run through them

Mar 19, 2018 ===>

Rugerfanboy wrote:JEBAR....The Henry 44 Mag rifle has a bore diameter of .431". The Nosler 240gr JHP (part# 44842) has a diameter of .429. Your not gonna get any copper fouling with this bullet. Even the Nosler 300gr JHP (part# 42069) has a diameter of .429". Same thing goes for the Henry 357 Mag rifle. It's bore is bigger than the Nosler bullet.

April 7, 2018 ===>

JEBar wrote:since their last cleaning our Henry 44 Mag has had a couple of hundred full power, 240 gr Nosler JHP's fired through it, .... with both the 44 and 357 I couldn't see any sign of copper fouling but Sweets 7.62 Solvent soaked patches revealed light fouling .... it didn't take long to thoroughly clean both ....

fast forward to today .... I've completely lost track of how many round have been fired from though our 44 since April 7th .... what I can say without any doubt it has been thousands, if not something over 10,000 .... all have been hunting level loads pushing Nosler 240 gr JHP .... this afternoon after removing the large lever, the bolt and the ejector, I thoroughly inspected and cleaned the rifle ....

1. no observable sign of copper buildup in the barrel
2. chamber wasn't as dirty as anticipated
3. 3 screws had worked loose

a cleaning patch soaked with Sweets 7.62 Solvent confirmed, no copper buildup .... Ballistol soaked patches took care of burnt powder residue .... blue Loctite should take care of the loose screws .... no ejection issues .... new inner and outer magazine tubes seem to lockup as designed .... I tend to believe Rugerfanboy is correct .... all in all, I can't help but be pleased

Good news!

certainly is and sure hope it keeps moving in that direction

I'm gonna play my new guy card (still) and ask a dumb question: how do you do a prolonged "soak" of the inside of a barrel, regardless of the cleaning agent? Like Sweets' instructions to "swab for one minute." Having a hard time visualizing that...