Barrel Cleaning

Mike, I don't know about the FX 400 but I have two FX 500s and have shot over 40,000 JSB Kings unlubed and have never cleaned either. If accuracy is still good don't clean. Have fun, Scott

When/if point of impact starts to change.

I clean the barrel of my FX royale 400 .22 after every 70 shots otherwise accuracy goes South and gun start giving shotgun pattern.

New smooth twist barrels are very poor in this respect.

I clean my .177 Royale after approximately 500-600 pellets, before pulling a couple of tight patches through I give the couple of inches of twist a scrub with a nylon brush, seems to be doing no harm as the rifle is a tackholer, other than cleaning when it was new I haven't cleaned the barrel of the Royale 500 as yet, only put 3-400 through it so far and will wait to see when accuracy drops off.

I use bore snake. Pull through

plinking or even hunting, 500-1000 shots.
competition 10-20 shots

Between my brother and myself, we own 3, .22 FX rifles. The barrels in these 3 rifles each see thousands of rounds between cleanings. Accuracy is incredible, with smooth twist barrels being great to shoot and a pleasure to maintain. 

It seems the recent Fx barrels are quite prone to loosing accuracy and require frequent cleaning. I also keep a fish line and patches with me always.

hnsmz - How recent do you mean by "recent FX barrels"?

By recent i meant that in the past there weren't many posts about accuracy issues related to fx guns. It's been a couple of years that such posts have started to rise in number.

By recent I mean that at least the fx which we ghave been buying here for last 6 months gave these problems.

"mubhaur"I use bore snake. Pull through


I am not sure that pulling a bore snake through from the breech would be too good for the breech o-ring, is it a bore snake with the copper bristles ?

Click to expand...

It's bore snake with simple patch of soft cloth

Okay, might have lost something in the wording, boresnakes are used here to give a powderburner a quick clean and usually consist of brass/copper bristles between the soft cleaning material along its length, I use a pull through made from braided fishing line with a loop for a cloth patch on the end.

Just wondering ... what is FX recommendations on all of this? Method / frequency?

"hsnmz"By recent i meant that in the past there weren't many posts about accuracy issues related to fx guns. It's been a couple of years that such posts have started to rise in number.

Click to expand...

if im trying to get every shot 100% best i can do i clean my barrel every 10-15 shots . i believe it helps but im only talking about 1/16" to 1/8" at 30 yd.
and im not sure that the time ot to clean isnt just giveing me a rest-relax. either way, i dont consider it an issue. 
like somebody else said id like to hear fx's opinion?

The reason I asked about "recent" was, my brother's FX Royale was purchased in January of 2015 and it does not have any issues that require the barrel to be cleaned so frequently. And just for the record, I am talking about incredible accuracy at 40 to 50 yards off a bench. Many times almost hole for hole accuracy at that distance!

I am not saying I don't believe you guys who are struggling with accuracy of their new FX rifles, but if there were a major change in the way FX was making the barrels the problem would be rampant. Just near the end of 2015, 1kshooter purchased a new FX .22 Independence and he has posted on this forum several times about how accurate the rifle is and unless I missed it, I have yet to see a post where he talks about cleaning the barrel frequently. 

I wish I had an answer as to why you need to clean the FX barrels so frequently, but I am at a loss. 

Edit: An idea just came to me. It is possible to get a build-up of patch material at the barrel end in the area of the air stripper. I have seen this happen where the build-up of patch pieces and fuzz would mess up the accuracy. Cleaning the barrel would temporarily move the build-up out of the way, but after a few shots the patch material build-up would start to interfere with the accuracy again. Cleaning the barrel would improve the accuracy again for 50 or so rounds, then it would slowly get worse. The cure was to remove the moderator, which was difficult, clean out the patch build-up and re-install the moderator. Ironically the more often the barrel is cleaned, the more likely this issue is to happen.