Never realized barrel gets this dirty!

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Smok3y

Member
Sep 25, 2018
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NC, United States
So I started airgunning last year for a couple months, took as break and came back this fall. I guess the rifles I had shot previously were sent to me clean and I never did get that many rounds through them to need a cleaning before trying something new. I had been trying to find a feel that I liked more than really giving rifles a full, long workout. 

Well this year with the Impact has been very different. I have shot more rounds with it than all the others I tried combined. I’ve found that the opinions around cleaning are similar to 22lr. Some will say you never need to clean and others will say clean all the time. I have found that it depends on your uses, needs, and your rifle. I just finished up 600 or 750 rounds, lost count of tins. The last two tins had shown a decline in consistency (more fliers than I had been getting, which had been very few previously). I tried to give the first of those two tins the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the wind that day and me trying a couple new parts were having the effect. But the last tin this week wasn’t up to it’s previous standards either. So I decided to clean it along with my 22lr from competing last week. 

I am shocked at how much more filthy the Impact was than my powder burners! If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought the Impact’s patches were from a black powder rifle or something. I used Ballistol, because it seems popular here and I have plenty. I was on the 7th wet patch before the patch stopped being black. And I mean black. It started lightening up some and getting grayer after that, but easily took 3 times the number of patches my 22lr did earlier. I have been too busy the last couple days to go back out and shoot to confirm that it brought my accuracy back to where it was, but I have to imagine that is what it was after seeing these patches.

Anyway, I was just extremely shocked at the dirtiness of the barrel. I would not have guessed that it could get that dirty with just pellets. Just sharing my surprise at my first airgun dirty barrel cleaning experience. 
 
Every one seems to have different luck with them based on their shooting habits. When I would just take pellets from the tin I would get lead streaking after about the same amount of rounds as you and the accuracy would also drop off slightly. The patches were black from lead and Baristol and took as many to clean too.

Then I started lubing the pellets. The bores are shiny and stay spotless after several hundred rounds now. (I micro polish the bores of my air guns until they shine when they are new.) I'll pull a dry patch through once in a while too, just to keep the bores honest. But they hardly even show a streak of lead anywhere at all with a good polish job and lube. I look at them with an endoscope bore scope all the time to verify condition.
 
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Fair question. I actually cleaned 3 22lr rifles because we played around a little too, shooting with various not competition rifles. The comp only had 150 or so. The old 514 probably only had 100 or so, because it just stays stored as it was a rifle in shot as a kid with my dad. The hunting rifle may have had 300 or so. I don’t usually clean it, but decided to while I was doing the others.

I still expected those with the powder and carbon and such to be much worse. I had no expectation for the air rifle, and I think that was why I was shocked. I fully expected the hunting rifle with all the cheap ammo it sees to be way worse than a rifle with nothing but lead going down the barrel.

I found it interesting.

I may have some new rifles around again soon depending on some future decisions! We’ll see how some choices play out the next couple weeks. You know how I like to try stuff out. I have always been pretty good about not keeping several, because I hate having options to shoot, but I am considering it.
 
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It’s not that the pellets are dirty. The pellet or any projectile traveling down a barrel is going to leave traces of the said projectile on the inside of the barrel.

if you want to better understand this scenario Take a pellet and a cleaning rod and push the pellet through the barrel. Once you push it through the barrel take a powerful magnifying glass or a loupe and look at the pellet. You will see the rifling marks cut into the skirt on the pellet. If you don’t have a loupe, you should still be able to see shiny places on the skirt from the contact with the barrel. This contact leaves traces of lead and graphite in your barrel

Take your pellet rifle and a small patch ( I use monofilament line ) and drag a patch saturated with Ballistol, or Break Free CLP through the barrel a few times. Then pull a dry patch through the barrel until they come out clean. Then go shoot about 50-100 pellets through your barrel and repeat the process and you will see that there is an accumulation of lead and graphite. 



I only clean my barrel when I think I’m getting to many flyers.

This is an enlightening article from Pyramid Air's Blog from B.B. Pelletier.
https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2008/02/how-to-lubricate-pellets/



As a side note when I first got my Marauder it wasn’t very accurate. So I cleaned it after each shooting session using bore paste for one cleaning only, and then about 3-5 cleanings later the groups tightened up. 
 
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