Hey all,
Need some advice here; A friend of mine owns a rifle that's not been cleaned for a VERY long time, and when I pulled the bolt and looked down the bore, it was what I would call a "dark bore." Amazingly, it shoots right at MOA, but it needs a THOROUGH cleaning. What would ya'll start with, i.e, solvents, etc.? The rifle is a Rem. BDL in .243 cal., and the fellow who owns the rifle told me he's never thoroughly cleaned the piece since he bought it nearly 20 years ago. Also, I believe this rifle has been fired less than 100 times, and has been kept in the dry climates of Utah and Wyoming all of its shooting life.
Other than the obvious cleaning concern, the main reason I'm posting here is that he showed me a couple of spent cases that were fired from some recent handloads we put together for his Rem. Most of the cases looked just fine, but a couple of them had a 1/16th inch long vertical dent in them just below the shoulder. The dent (not a scratch) is very narrow and very shallow. Again, not all the fired cases had the dent. He asked me about this, and my guess was that there was something foreign hung up in the chamber. Hence we need to do the cleaning.
The load recipe we used, in once fired Rem. cases from the rifle, was this:
44.5 grns. of IMR 4350 (weighed twice; once on a digital and once on a mechanical scale).
CCI 200 LR primers
87 grn. Hornady spire point bullets (I don't remember the O.A.L. of the loaded round).
Partial sized cases, primer pockets uniformed, flashholes uniformed and cases trimmed to trim length.
These rounds cycled through the rifle perfectly, with no apparent pressure problems on inspecting the fired cases (just the aforementioned "dents" on a few of the cases). My friend shot 5 rounds of this ammo @ 100yds. rest,
and right at an inch for group.
I'm going out to help him clean the rifle tomorrow, and would sure like your input for a proper cleaning procedure for a potentially great rifle. To go along with the dent question, I also asked him if he got all the case lube off of all the cases prior to the firing. He said he thought he had, but still, all the dents were pretty much identical in size, shape and location on the cases in question. The sequence of the firings were not recorded/observed either, so maybe the last few rounds fired had the dents, just don't know at this point.
Thanks a bunch for the help,
reinert
Need some advice here; A friend of mine owns a rifle that's not been cleaned for a VERY long time, and when I pulled the bolt and looked down the bore, it was what I would call a "dark bore." Amazingly, it shoots right at MOA, but it needs a THOROUGH cleaning. What would ya'll start with, i.e, solvents, etc.? The rifle is a Rem. BDL in .243 cal., and the fellow who owns the rifle told me he's never thoroughly cleaned the piece since he bought it nearly 20 years ago. Also, I believe this rifle has been fired less than 100 times, and has been kept in the dry climates of Utah and Wyoming all of its shooting life.
Other than the obvious cleaning concern, the main reason I'm posting here is that he showed me a couple of spent cases that were fired from some recent handloads we put together for his Rem. Most of the cases looked just fine, but a couple of them had a 1/16th inch long vertical dent in them just below the shoulder. The dent (not a scratch) is very narrow and very shallow. Again, not all the fired cases had the dent. He asked me about this, and my guess was that there was something foreign hung up in the chamber. Hence we need to do the cleaning.
The load recipe we used, in once fired Rem. cases from the rifle, was this:
44.5 grns. of IMR 4350 (weighed twice; once on a digital and once on a mechanical scale).
CCI 200 LR primers
87 grn. Hornady spire point bullets (I don't remember the O.A.L. of the loaded round).
Partial sized cases, primer pockets uniformed, flashholes uniformed and cases trimmed to trim length.
These rounds cycled through the rifle perfectly, with no apparent pressure problems on inspecting the fired cases (just the aforementioned "dents" on a few of the cases). My friend shot 5 rounds of this ammo @ 100yds. rest,
and right at an inch for group.
I'm going out to help him clean the rifle tomorrow, and would sure like your input for a proper cleaning procedure for a potentially great rifle. To go along with the dent question, I also asked him if he got all the case lube off of all the cases prior to the firing. He said he thought he had, but still, all the dents were pretty much identical in size, shape and location on the cases in question. The sequence of the firings were not recorded/observed either, so maybe the last few rounds fired had the dents, just don't know at this point.
Thanks a bunch for the help,
reinert
