Cleaning after Bear Creek bullets

[jetinteriorguy]

Well, here’s today’s results. Basically soaking with acetone had very little if any affect. The PB Blaster seems to have gotten about half of the buildup out. At this point I’m just going to wait for the Moly Magic to get here and hopefully finish cleaning these barrels up. Just for the fun of it I think I’ll order some Lee Liquid Alox and just tumble some bullets in it to see if that helps. At least I could use up the 1600 bullets I have left.

 

[cdoc42]

Here's surprise. I have bullets that I Neco-moly'd at least 15 years ago. I put 6 each of a generic .38 Cal, 158gr LSWC and Speer 200gr LSWC in a plastic urine specimen cup with 3/4-oz of Birchwood Casey No. 77 "Muzzle Magic" and 1/4-oz Gunzilla. It made a pink solution. I shook them up and left them stand overnight. I just now removed them, wiped them dry with a cotton rag and every bit of moly is gone. The solution is still pink but the rag is black.

Previously I had Vib-cleaned others in corn cob media with Lyman Turbo-Cleaan Brass polish for 2 hours, and had ZERO results.

Next I'll try to soak them overnight, then Vib-tumble, to see if I can save myself the effort of hand-wiping them.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

The Moly Magic arrived today and so far I’m seeing some results. Just going with the basic first time cleaning instructions my M&P barrel came about 90% clean in less than half an hour. The same time frame cleaned probably a little over half the crud out of my CZ75 barrel.
So my next step is to saturate the barrels, cork them up, and let them soak overnight. This is very encouraging. Seems weird but it smells more like a soap than a solvent/penetrant.

 

[cdoc42]

" This is very encouraging. Seems weird but it smells more like a soap than a solvent/penetrant."

This makes me wonder if the laundry soap that removed it from my hands is simply a different chemical surfactant than what's in "Moly Magic" or the combo I described.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

Soaking the bores overnight has helped, so far I’m soaking, scrubbing with a bronze brush, then followed by dry patches, then soaking and starting the process over again. Each time things get a little cleaner, so it’s a bit of a process but it’s working. At this point I have about 90%+ cleaned out so not much more and they’ll be all nice and clean. For me at least I’m taking two things from this experience, first of all no more Bear Creek Moly coated bullets for me, and second is that the Moly Magic cleaner does it’s job given enough time and work. Others experience may be more positive and good for them, just not my experience. Even though they cost more I’m going back to my old reliable Xtreme copper coated bullets.

 

[RickB]

Bear Creek uses a Moly coating? I did not know that.

It's a polymer coating, of which one component is moly. I knew a local guy with a bullet business, who sold it to Black Bullets International, and he said his coating had twelve ingredients.

 

[cdoc42]

There's a good article in the July issue of Guns &Ammo, entitled "Barrel Care."

Among the things discussed, use a plastic-coated rod, not the metal 2-3-piece rods. Do not use stainless steel brushes, and in small-bore rifles, a wire brush will wear out the rifle throat quickly. Studies done by Hornady with .17 HMR showed accuracy loss after 1500 rounds when routinely brush-cleaned. Copper solvent and no brushing increased that to 7500 rounds. I now routinely only use nylon brushes.

 

[Unclenick]

Jetinteriorguy,

Glad the MM is working.


Cdoc42,

You've reminded me Gunzilla might also have done it all by itself. It can be slow, but a good penetrant. I'd forgotten that the first time I tried it (samples were being given away at Camp Perry then, as it was a new product) I had a stubborn carbon/moly ring at the end of my match AR chamber in the corner of the step at the end of the chamber neck to the freebore that no amount of brushing, abrasive cleaner or conventional bore solvent would get out. I put some Gunzilla in and got distracted and left it for 24 hours. When I pushed a dry patch through the next day it came out with this little carbon ring on it. The borescope showed the stubborn spot was gone.

So that little corner I'd forgotten about was the one instance where moly-coated bullets caused me bother, though plain old carbon can build up there, too. It was mostly psychological trouble, as the black ring didn't seem to affect accuracy, but I didn't like it being there and was glad to have found a way to remove it.

I'm also reminded that Hummer70 recently told me that ZEP 505 will get under and lift the asphaltum sealant off pulled military bullets in just under 24 hours. It might be another agent that would make it possible to patch this Bear Creek stuff out.

 

[Jim Watson]

It's a polymer coating, of which one component is moly. I knew a local guy with a bullet business, who sold it to Black Bullets International, and he said his coating had twelve ingredients.

Was that Ranger Bullets? They looked like Bear Creek and early BBI. I shot some of those in .38 Special and they did ok.
The same stuff on early BBI was ok in .45 ACP but gave me a mess similar to OP's at higher velocity in 9mm.
BBI got smart and went to Hi Tek.

I think I’ll order some Lee Liquid Alox and just tumble some bullets in it to see if that helps.

I salvaged those first generation BBI 9mms with LLA-JPW-MS.
Lee Liquid Alox, Johnson's Paste Wax, mineral spirits. The usual formulation is equal parts of Alox and wax, 10% mineral spirits, hence 45-45-10.
I thinned it a lot more with more mineral spirits.
Just put some bullets in a Ziplock bag, dribble in some lube mix, and roll around until coated. I dumped mine out on a sheet of wax paper in a hot garage to dry.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

Thanks everyone, I’ve cleaned probably about 96%+ out of all four of these guns and that seems like all that’s going to come out. At the end I used a couple applications of Slip 2000 Carbon Killer for the final cleaning followed by a thin application of Slip 2000 lube to the bore then one final dry patch. The dry patch came through completely clean with just small traces of the Moly coating in the corners of the grooves left. I’m thinking this small trace amount will probably come out with shooting copper plated bullets through the barrels.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

I picked up a can of Kroil at the gun show yesterday and since I can’t get to the range for a couple days I’m going to see if it will get the rest of the barrel clean. I’m going to pick the worst one and see what happens. I really hate to not get it completely out if possible.

 

[Unclenick]

Kroil is OK, but this video shows cheap and dumb old Liquid Wrench is actually more effective. I've also had super-duper penetration from Gunzilla if I added about 10% tea nut tree oil by volume. The effect can be seen putting a drop of the straight Gunzilla and tea nut tree oil adulterated product on a sand-blasted matte piece of steel. The latter creeps out way better. The same addition may work extremely well with Kroil. Tea nut tree oil can be very expensive, but Walmart has a reasonably priced brand if you want to try this out.

I applied Student's t-test to the results in the video and found the only ranking he did that wouldn't randomly change places from one test to the next was that Liquid Wrench was the best of the lot. That appears to be quite certain.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

I liked his testing method, probably as close as you can get consistent wise. If the Kroil doesn’t do the job I’ll have to give Liquid Wrench a whirl. I just found a few sources in various gun forums where Kroil was said to work. I guess at this point I’m all in to try figure out what works. I guess next will be to get some Alox and see if I can make the last 1600 projectiles usable. Maybe my lackluster experience can at least help someone else out, if nothing else I can pass the information along to Bear Creek so they can help anyone else with this problem.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

This morning a ran some Kroil soaked patches through three of my barrels, the first patch came out black just after a couple passes. The bores looked almost completely clean, very little of the moly was left in the barrels. The second wet patches stayed pretty clean so it left behind some Kroil to soak. I’m going to run some dry patches through later today and see how it goes. So far I’m impressed, I’m saving one barrel to try liquid wrench on when I can pick some up.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

It seems I’ve gotten about as much of the Moly buildup out of these barrels as I can. I’d say they are about 98% clean and I’m hoping the last remnants will possibly shoot out. Next on the agenda is to try salvage the bullets, Alox is on order.

 

[Metal god]

Maybe this was talked about here but I have a question . If moly is so bad/hard to clean out of barrel . Why do match rifle shooters use moly coated bullets . I can’t imagine that kind of build up and inability to clean would be good on match rifle barrels ?

 

[jetinteriorguy]

Maybe this was talked about here but I have a question . If moly is so bad/hard to clean out of barrel . Why do match rifle shooters use moly coated bullets . I can’t imagine that kind of build up and inability to clean would be good on match rifle barrels ?

I have no answer for others experiences, just my own. Steve at Bear Creek claims he’s never had anyone with this problem, seems odd that a company that sells nationwide to who knows how many thousands of people has never had this issue. If this only happened in one of my guns would be one thing, but every single gun. I told him what the load was and how I loaded everything according to their recommendations and he didn’t think it should have been such a problem. He also didn’t think the buildup would hurt anything, more like a seasoning, I’m not willing to risk my health and pistol on something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Maybe I got a bad batch, but there was no mention of this possibility in our conversation and no offer to return it for a refund or replacement so they could test it. I received my LLA today and will try coating some to see if it helps so I can at least use up the remaining 1600 projectiles I have left.

 

[Jim Watson]

Maybe this was talked about here but I have a question . If moly is so bad/hard to clean out of barrel . Why do match rifle shooters use moly coated bullets . I can’t imagine that kind of build up and inability to clean would be good on match rifle barrels ?

It isn't the same stuff. Rifle moly is MoS2 with a light wax coating. Molybdenum disulfide is only one of a dozen materials in the Bear Creek lead bullet coating, and probably a minor one at that.

 

[edfardos]

with 45acp 95% of it comes out with choreboy. maybe some residue in the rifling near the chamber.. can scrape it off with a sharp bit of copper wire if needed, but it has no real dimension or buildup.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

I applied my first coat of LLA yesterday, but I think I thinned it too much with mineral spirits. So today I’m just going to warm the LLA real good again and do a second round uncut. I know most people recommend a very thin coating so I’m going to go real light with it. Then I’m going to let it dry over the weekend and load some up and shoot them next week.