Cleaning - what am I doing wrong

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Bushfire

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I have always cleaned my muzzleloader after every use, did the old hot soapy water and dry patches until it was clean and then finished with an oil patch and assumed it was OK. I did notice what looked like a little crud recently so bought some boar tech cleaner to "just touch it up" and this is what I pulled out of my barrel.
stupid question I guess but does hot water only pull the powder fouling and not touch the copper fouling?

20201117_145336.jpg

What am I doing wrong?
 
What are you shooting that would leave copper fouling?...PowerBelts?
The only thing its ever shot is 240gn hornady xtp magnum sabots and 300gn hornady ftp. I guess both are copper jacketed .
 
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Have you ever attempted to locate and inspect spent sabots? I have had some real eye openers, finding only the base portion of more than one type of sabot.
 
Have you ever attempted to locate and inspect spent sabots? I have had some real eye openers, finding only the base portion of more than one type of sabot.

Nah I've honestly never given a thought to even trying. Figured they'd end up in the never never. I will try to find some next time I go out. Managed to get some sabots sent over by a guy from another forum which I'll use for my 250gn monoflex projectiles. Need to work out a load for it so should have a few sabots flicking about.
 
In a sabot you should not be seeing any copper fouling. The sabots stay intact while I the barrel and enclose the bullets.
^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^

That is why i asked. Are you using a bronze brush? Maybe the solvent is reacting to your equipment and not your bore.

There appears to be a reason they use certain brushes
https://www.boretech.com/informationcenter/resources/why-proof-positiver
I have been scrubbing my barrel for days and am still seeing blue on my patches! Is there that much copper in my barrel? Does the Eliminator just turn blue on its own? What’s going on?
 
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Boretech eliminator will turn blue just dripping it on a bronze brush. Nylon only brushes and jags with that cleaner. I like Boretech products.
 
What's left of the sabots will usually be around 10-15 yards in front of the firing line. If all is as it should be, they will be intact, but believe it or not, I once found a curly little strand of blue sabot plastic on the outside of a target bullet hole at 300 yards! I usually find sabots that are torn up when accuracy goes down. The fix for both problems is to start reducing powder charge little by little.
 
Some sabots lose petals and shoot fine. They come off after leaving the muzzle. The MMP Orange is a good example of this. The thinner the petals the more likely it is the base and petals will separate. The MMP Orange has thinner petals because its made for .458 bullets. There is a big difference between sabot failure and a sabot just losing petals.

Iver personally shot loads with peak pressures you will never reach with any loose sub and sabots. Around 35kpsi at over 2300fps in 50cal and well over 2600fps in 45cal. Sometimes they lose petals. Its no big deal unless you find a mangled mess of plastic.
 
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I was getting blue from just the soaked patches and a plastic jag before touching the brass brush.

I wouldn't have thought sabots would leave it there but I have also used FPB. Honestly probably no more than 20-30 rounds though.

So going forward hot soapy water for the powder and then bore tech for the copper fouling? I'm still looking at getting a new muzzleloader (missed out on a whitworth little while back) but before I do I want to make sure I'm not going to run into the same issues.
 
What's left of the sabots will usually be around 10-15 yards in front of the firing line. If all is as it should be, they will be intact, but believe it or not, I once found a curly little strand of blue sabot plastic on the outside of a target bullet hole at 300 yards! I usually find sabots that are torn up when accuracy goes down. The fix for both problems is to start reducing powder charge little by little.

I hope that's not the issue as I don't load it hot. My loads have all been between 90 - 120gn. In a TC triumph that's not too bad I didn't think.
 
As you mentioned shooting fpb bullets I would guess there is still copper fouling present. I used up a half a bottle of boretech before getting all the copper out of a sml barrel. A borescope is a good asset to determine if you really have one clean, there are decent low budget ones out there
 
The FPB will definitely leave copper fouling, especially if you push it hard. My son shot one using 100 grains of 777 pellets out of his Wolf and, after deciding that kind of recoil was not something pleasant, also found that he had copper fouling that needed to be removed.
 

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