The gun world is chock full of "experts" who express contradicting opinions. Barrel makers get questions about cleaning, barrel break-in, etc. - and if they don't really have a reasoned opinion, they will often recommend whatever they recently saw an advertisement for, what they were told in the army thirty years ago, or perhaps what Uncle Joe uses, if you get my drift.

The fact that some people take them seriously is part of the fun in being an "expert".

So would you consider yourself an expert or an "expert"? Also, what barrels do you use for custom builds so we can check their recommendations.

The fact that Krieger and Bartlein barrels have produced world champions every year is what makes them experts. The fact that GA Precision has produced untold number of deployed Sniper rifles, George Gardner is a smith AND a shooter (inventor of Bushnell's G2 reticle) makes him and his company experts.

Unfortunately for you, the rest of the world cares more about what they recommend than a lone gunsmith in Alpine Texas.

According to charlesb, I am a fool, I attempt to fool others, he certainly can't be fooled by me and I fall for gimmicks that are comparable to "nekkid" women. Like I said, he's just wind. I assume he isn't a formally trained gunsmith?

That's no problem for me. - I am expressing my opinion here, something that a small group here has some kind of problem with.

You are of course welcome to assume anything that you like.

I have all of the tools necessary to be an official "Texas gunsmith". ( Two pound maul, can of axle grease, big screwdriver )

I do not build custom rifles, but I do customize rifles on occasion. I'll be purchasing a barreled action for the current project. The one after that, a 98 Mauser, will be getting a Shilen barrel unless I see something that I like better, when the time comes.

It's hard to say what Shilen's recommendations are. - I've never bothered to look as I will be buying a barrel, not recommendations.

Yes, I consider myself to be an "expert".

According to your website you do build custom rifles:


Actually, its not hard at all to say what Shilen recommends. It's clear as day on their website and what do you know....they recommend a coated cleaning rod:

That's nice.

- And this proves - what?

There are many "expert" opinions about cleaning, and cleaning rods. I thought that this was well-known.

I am half of the staff here. - I thought you had a burning interest in what I do.

If you do not like my opinions, well gee that's just too bad. - Feel free to whine and nit-pick though, if that is your thing, and that is how you want readers here to think of you.

LOL, I could care less what people think of me on this forum. I think YOU need to be more worried about what readers think of YOU. YOU are the one with a business listed in your signature. YOU are the one that has a website that advertises custom guns. YOU are the one that appears to disagree with everything everyone says on this forum. YOU are the one that has a history of challenging everything & everyone.

To be brutally honest, I spend alot of time researching online forums, websites, social media, online reviews anytime I'm interested in a product or service. If I were in west Texas and needing gunsmith work, there is no doubt I'd find threads like this or find the glaring misspelled word on your website and I'd move right along to the next gunsmith.

I'll listen to anyone, particularly a gunsmith with years of experience, but in the end, if Dave Petzal says that Dewey rods are as good as anything, then I'll use a Dewey rod.

Good idea!

That will be 125 miles NNE in Odessa.

Tell them I sent you. I appreciate the heads up about the misspelled word. I am dyslexic, so this happens to me on a regular basis. There is no spell-checker when you roll your own HTML.

I care about what some of the people here think of me. With others... Not so much.

If they only had the transparent plastic "nekkid woman" handle...

I wish I could find that old ad, it was a hoot. Archive.org has some of the older gun publications, the ones where the copyright has expired. Maybe I'll run across it again someday.

The coating on the Dewy rods is not soft, it will not trap carbon and drag it through the barrel. I have been using them since they came out. I shot competition and cleaned the barrel after every target. I only clean with a rod guide in the chamber. The first pass is with a patch with bore cleaner, to push out the burnt powder followed with three more passes with clean patches with bore cleaner ( NEVER PULL THE PATCH BACH THROUGH THE BARREL) push it through then remove patch, then I use carbon remover and wet the barrel, let it set for a while then push 2-3 patch with bore cleaner. Then push dry patches till they come out clean. Have used the same two Dewey rods since 1982 and the coating is still there. They have been down the bore thousands of times. The barrel were all Shilen s/s barrels. I have only used a brush on used rifles that had been neglected and not cleaned. After every match I put a plug in the barrel and fill barrel with cleaner let it stand over night remove plug and dry patch till dry.

Two very good points there, about not pulling a patch back through the barrel, and about keeping a rifle barrel clean for the best accuracy. When I was a kid, the prevailing wisdom at that time was to run a wet brush back and forth ten times, then do the same thing with a solvent-soaked patch. No wonder there are so many stories floating around about wearing out a good barrel by cleaning it! A lot of these stories go back to when barrel steel was much softer than it is today.

There are an amazing number of shooters who have convinced themselves that a buildup of copper and carbon is necessary for good accuracy. Various rationalizations for this are put forward, but my personal experience has never borne the idea out. - I have always seen the best accuracy from rifle barrels that were broken in so that copper does not tend to stick so readily, and then kept clear of carbon buildup between shooting sessions. Barrels that are kept clean tend to come clean without undue effort.

An interesting development is the new Hodgdon CFE powders, designed to markedly reduce copper fouling, which in turn should reduce the amount of cleaning required. I intend to try CFE 223 out on my .223 bolt gun this summer. It is not too bad about copper fouling in the first place, but less fouling is always going to be good. It will be interesting to see if the new powder will shoot well with that gun, and if it really does run significantly cleaner.

I have never tried plugging the barrel and filling it with solvent overnight, except with a few stubbornly dirty old war horses that I encountered, back when I collected military surplus firearms from the two world wars. That was some years ago. Do you soak the bore mainly to address copper, or carbon fouling? I seem to have the most difficulty with carbon.

My opinion about a coated cleaning rod comes from experience with the behavior of different materials, and from the history of cleaning rifle barrels. Generally speaking, cleaning rods have progressed from wood to brass, to aluminum, to steel. The older materials are characterized as being too flexible and too soft, resulting in grit becoming embedded in them which abrades the bore. This, in combination with the "ten passes" theory of the past has understandably enough resulted in stories about destructive wear from cleaning. The "never clean your gun" camp likes to dredge up those old stories, thinking that they are proving a point about the dangers of cleaning your firearm.

It seems to me, as I have stated before, that coating a steel cleaning rod with plastic serves no demonstrable purpose. The nylon is certainly not going to be more resistant to embedded grit than steel is. With proper use, a coated rod is unlikely to cause any significant damage, but cleaning rods are not always properly used.

If I were informed about some clear advantage to be had from coating a perfectly good steel cleaning rod with nylon, then I would be interested in trying one out. But no-one has offered any explanation for it at all.

It concerns me that stating my opinion on this has led to harassment and even personal attacks in place of reasoned discussion. Readers here may be led to the conclusion that Texas hunters respond to a fact, or an argument that they have no legitimate counter to by behaving like malicious, uncivilized oafs. Thus a tiny minority manages to make the rest of us look bad.

This is not good for the reputation of Texas hunters or for THF, which is read by shooters and hunters around the country.

We're convinced because it proves itself time and again. I am an imperfect sinner, same as everyone, but I don't lie, I don't cheat, and I don't steal. I see it monthly, with cut rifled, and button rifled alike.

I had a customer on the range two weeks ago with a brand new, unfired barrel, that had been thoroughly cleaned. Job one is to get a good 100 yard zero. It was a custom build, with great parts, and it was shooting 2 MOA at 100. He asked "what's wrong?" I answer, keep shooting, it will get better. At the twentieth round it started to shoot tight, and did so the rest of the day, for another 100 rounds.

Last month another customer arrived with another well built custom, again, we checked zero. He said "it usually shoots better than this", I ask "is the barrel clean?" Yup, cleaned it perfect last night. We had to keep shooting it until it got better, and it held up all day.

Sure a rifle can put three in the same place with a clean barrel, clean it again, and it'll put three more in the same place. But myself and many others don't want a rifle that HAS to be clean to shoot well, it handicaps me.

It sounds like if you are going to sight in dirty, then cleaning the gun right before a hunt would be unwise. That makes a lot of sense as most rifles, almost all of them in fact are going to shoot different clean than dirty.

My recreational shooting mainly consists of one-gun matches with my son, where we both shoot the same gun, five-shot groups at 100 yards, and if one of us flinches out his group to be bigger than 3/4", the other one gives him a hard time about it. Five-shot groups of 3/8" and less are not unusual, but 1/2" appears to be the average. We shoot clean.

I've noticed that most benchrest shooters do the same. Shooting clean is by far more popular among target shooters than it is among hunters.

I assume that you shoot at long range with a dirty bore. You might want to try clean living, er I mean shooting sometime, and see if it provides you with any kind of edge. Many precision shooters find that it does.

I have not competed with a clean bore and never will. I have seen plenty of evidence on my range to know better. The rifle does not shoot the same for the first 10-20 rounds.

Friday I will be checking in and confirming zero in NW Oklahoma for The Heatstroke Open. Saturday morning we will start at dawn and quit between 5 and 7. Sunday begin at dawn, and quit around 1. This year they told us to bring 350 rounds. We have to carry half the ammo, snacks, all our gear, walk, climb hills, and ride UTVs when they are available. We cannot stop to clean. There's not time, and we get no other opportunities to check zero. Once Saturday starts we have to run what we brung for two days and 350 rounds.

Make as much sense as you want. He's still not gonna get it.

Nope. Brace yourselves for another ridiculous response. Reminds me of this:

Do you consider Dewey a pretty knowledgeable company when it comes to cleaning rods ?? Simple yes or no will suffice for an answer.

Any chance you could be wrong?

Are you the same fellow who until very recently only shot 10-20 centerfire rounds a year but is now going to be doing a lot of shooting? Maybe as much as 250 rounds a year?

sounds correct

If the right size patch is used it will not flex the rod! if the patch is too big it will flex the rod thus dragging on the bore!