Bore Butter Buildup

[Idaholewis]

I got one of these because of how well Idaholewis said that they worked getting a barrel perfectly clean. Of course, the first time I used it was to clean a really filthy electric oven. WAAAAYYYYY better than oven cleaners. No smell, no toxic fumes, just lots of rags to catch the dirty, greasy water.

They definitely work! And they don’t cost much to own one

 

[shiner200gr]

If i had a Bore that was Built up with Bore Butter from a Previous owner (I personally would NEVER use Bore Butter,

See?

 

[Idaholewis]

See?

See what?

 

[Matthew323]

I got started in m-l in 1971, before Thompson/Center came into existence as a company. Before Bore Butter was offered to the public as a patch lube.

I used spit at the range, a pretty wet patch, when I was shooting shot-after-shot in fairly fast order. No more than 10 minutes between shots.

For hunting, I started using Crisco, which is hydrogenated vegetable oil. This was regularly recommended as a patch lube back in the '70's. Way too messy in hot weather, and too stiff in cold weather. I was a teenager still in high school, and working at a grocery store that had its own butcher shop. I asked the butchers for some pure beef tallow that I could render down into a semi-liquid paste. Bear grease/oil was no where to be found, which was what was being recommended in Muzzle Blasts magazine, and other publications of the times.

So, in my 17 year old mind I figured that the pure beef tallow would be close enough. I triple rendered the fat in a double boiler, as was suggested, and ended up with about 7 quarts of a pure white, Crisco-like substance that worked like gang busters as a patch lube.

I had enough patch lube to last me until I stopped shooting all weapons, including muzzleloaders, in the early '90's. So, when Bore Butter, and all the other wax impregnated patch lubes came out on the market, I never spent much time experimenting with them. People occasionally gave me some of them to play with, but my old standbys, spit & rendered animal fat, gave me stellar accuracy. Why screw with what was already working. All of my flint longrifles were more accurate than I was capable of shooting, except for the very, very, very rare day.

I was happy with a 4"-5", 5-shot group at 100 yards, lousy eyesight, Coke bottle glasses, ages 17-40, offhand, on any given day. When GOD chose to smile down on me occasionally, and a silver dollar size, 5-shot group at 100 yards showed up, I was in HEAVEN.

My experience with Bore Butter, and the like, was to witness several acquaintances with the then new Thompson/Center Hawken rifles have trouble with accuracy, and patched balls. The shallow depth of the rifling in T/C barrels demands that you follow T/C's recommendations closely as to patch thickness. Too thin of a patch, and the accuracy goes to hell. Of course, a lot of people blamed the Bore Butter formulation for the Hawken's & Renegade's bad accuracy. It could almost always be traced to too loose of a patch/ball combination, not the lube.

Beeswax based lubes have a tendency to be sporadic in giving the best accuracy in barrels. Some barrels shoot like a match grade barrel, and others won't shoot for anything.

 

[michiganmuzzy]

I got one of these because of how well Idaholewis said that they worked getting a barrel perfectly clean. Of course, the first time I used it was to clean a really filthy electric oven. WAAAAYYYYY better than oven cleaners. No smell, no toxic fumes, just lots of rags to catch the dirty, greasy water.

Speaking of oven cleaner, has anyone tried it to clean out bore butter build up? It's supposed to clean off baked on grease but will it harm the bluing or anything?

 

[Matthew323]

Speaking of oven cleaner, has anyone tried it to clean out bore butter build up? It's supposed to clean off baked on grease but will it harm the bluing or anything?

Oven cleaners are extremely caustic, which is to say very low on the alkaline side of the pH scale. They will destroy the finish on the stock, and ruin the bluing/browning on the barrel, especially the bluing.

Oven cleaner may be used to make a raw cherry wood stock look stunning, with a mahogany red color, after finishing. It's not something you want on metal that is already finished.

By the same token, bleach, which is also extremely caustic, will ruin bluing. I was looking at original, Winchester, 1894, 38-55, lever action rifles on Guns International, and at one point in its life, probably the early 20th Century, one rifle had had bleach splashed on the left side of the receiver, and the tang, knocking about $1,500.00 off the selling price. Making it worth half of what a comparable rifle in the same condition was worth. The remnants of the original bluing were splotchy where the bleach had stripped off the bluing, and the steel was lightly pitted.

 

[deermanok]

I used Lewis's idea and bought one of those little steam cleaners. It works awesome. Not expensive either, I think I paid about $ 30.00 for it on Ebay.

 

[Matthew323]

I can't recommend the little hand-held steam cleaner enough. I initially purchased it for the Optima V2 pistol, which I should be receiving from Doc White any day now. It works great for all kinds of household chores. I will post how it works on the pistol some time down the road. It should strip Bore Butter, or any kind of build up out of a barrel, but especially the nooks and crannies in percussion snail drum breech plugs. Like Idaholewis' videos show, there can be a lot of gunk left in the Thompson/Center breech plug fire channels after a "regular" cleaning.

Since I am considering the purchase of a Rice, Fast Twist, .45 caliber, 1:14" rate of twist barrel, perhaps in percussion, I would recommend the steam cleaner just to keep the breech plug as unobstructed as possible, for best ignition.

 

[rusticbob]

Don’t matter to me what you use, just keep shootin!

 

[jcnull2305]

See what?

@Idaholewis , I think Shiner's trying to intimate that since you mentioned that you don't use Bore Butter, you're trolling the guy who originally posted this thread. However, he seems to have forgotten the defining activity he, himself, stated that "trolls" do:

there are Trolls on this forum who will call you all sorts of names (as children will) for using Bore Butter.

I don't know what you were reading, @shiner200gr , but I didn't read any name-calling on Lewis' part, just a statement - He doesn't use Bore Butter.

Now, I know plenty about what Lew's done, because he's posted all kinds of videos on his YouTube Channel. What I know about you is that you built your Hawken in, what? the '60's? Since that time, We dun' got us the InterWebs, electric cars, and stuff that might work better that Bore Butter (opinions, opinions).

So, as I see it, you can go ahead and post some videos of your own, extolling the wonders of Bore Butter, or just stick to yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn.

(No names were called in the making of this post)

P.S. @Bruce Mattes - nice to see you're back. I missed you.

 

[Matthew323]

@Idaholewis , I think Shiner's trying to intimate that since you mentioned that you don't use Bore Butter, you're trolling the guy who originally posted this thread. However, he seems to have forgotten the defining activity he, himself, stated that "trolls" do:



I don't know what you were reading, @shiner200gr , but I didn't read any name-calling on Lewis' part, just a statement - He doesn't use Bore Butter.

Now, I know plenty about what Lew's done, because he's posted all kinds of videos on his YouTube Channel. What I know about you is that you built your Hawken in, what? the '60's? Since that time, We dun' got us the InterWebs, electric cars, and stuff that might work better that Bore Butter (opinions, opinions).

So, as I see it, you can go ahead and post some videos of your own, extolling the wonders of Bore Butter, or just stick to yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn.

(No names were called in the making of this post)

P.S. @Bruce Mattes - nice to see you're back. I missed you.

jcnull2305
I am glad to be back. The,reason I was gone was to get my head in a better place. At the time that I asked the Moderators to remove me from the forum, I was spending far too much time worrying about/responding to arguments that were being directed at me here.

So I P.M.'d the mods, and asked for removal. I visited, and kept up with certain threads, but it was a tremendous relief to not be in a pissing contest with someone, seemingly every other week.

I made a pact with myself that if those individuals started back up in on me, where they left off, then I would just prevent their posts from showing up on my phone. My serenity is too important to argue needlessly over things that cannot be resolved except in a face-to-face situation. And, perhaps not even then.

Thanks for welcoming me back. I missed your twisted sense of humor.

 

[short_start]

Re: the hand-held steam cleaner

How is it better than an extended boiling water rinse...like a large teapot full that's allowed to fill the barrel multiple times?

 

[michiganmuzzy]

Re: the hand-held steam cleaner

How is it better than an extended boiling water rinse...like a large teapot full tha's allowed to fill the barrel multiple times?

Steam is WAY hotter than boiling water

 

[jcnull2305]

Re: the hand-held steam cleaner

How is it better than an extended boiling water rinse...like a large teapot full tha's allowed to fill the barrel multiple times?

When steam makes contact with the steel, it condenses and releases a large amount of energy in the form of heat. That energy is what is very effective at breaking down the fouling.

A lot of the fouling left behind from Bore Butter is from the cationic polymerization of the olive oil, which can leave plastic-like deposits in the barrel. Those deposits have a high lubricity coefficient, which is great in your cast iron skillet because they keep food from sticking. Not so awesome in a rifle barrel, where the build up can interfere with bullet seal, which can leading. This lubricity makes removal with a bore brush a laborious process.

The heat exchange from the steam condensing superheats the barrel, which more effectively "liquidates" those hard deposits.

 

[Matthew323]

Oven cleaners are extremely caustic, which is to say very low on the alkaline side of the pH scale. They will destroy the finish on the stock, and ruin the bluing/browning on the barrel, especially the bluing.

Oven cleaner may be used to make a raw cherry wood stock look stunning, with a mahogany red color, after finishing. It's not something you want on metal that is already finished.

By the same token, bleach, which is also extremely caustic, will ruin bluing. I was looking at original, Winchester, 1894, 38-55, lever action rifles on Guns International, and at one point in its life, probably the early 20th Century, one rifle had had bleach splashed on the left side of the receiver, and the tang, knocking about $1,500.00 off the selling price. Making it worth half of what a comparable rifle in the same condition was worth. The remnants of the original bluing were splotchy where the bleach had stripped off the bluing, and the steel was lightly pitted.

The above should read " Oven cleaners are very high (not low) on the alkaline side of the pH scale. Acids are on the low side of the pH scale, and alkalines are on the high side of the pH scale.

 

[jcnull2305]

The above should read " Oven cleaners are very high (not low) on the alkaline side of the pH scale.

<Insert Age-Related Joke Here >

 

[short_start]

Steam is WAY hotter than boiling water

You're talking dry steam or super-heated steam. All water droplets must be eliminated from the system for steam to super-heat. Doubt a $30 device is capable of generating super-heated steam.

Wet steam is limited to the boiling temperature of water under the existing atmospheric pressure.

 

[michiganmuzzy]

Not true. Steam is hotter than boiling water. The little hand helds are sealed up and make a surprising amount of pressure. Thats why they get so much hotter than boiling water at atmo psi

 

[jcnull2305]

What is needed to create the energy transfer I'm referring to is simply pressure and heat. The $30 device which has been so vehemently advocated by other members, myself included, is capable of producing both pressure and heat.

 

[deermanok]

I did a bit of googling about steam vs boiling water. If I understood correctly, both occur at the same temperature but steam is hotter because it has more heat energy. Water boils at 212 degrees. I guess that steam can get to about 275 degrees. Super heated steam is a lot higher temp.
My takeaway is that even a cheap hand held steamer will have a much higher temp than boiling water.