Any ideas on this spot in my P-07 barrel?

[CCWLearner]

I haven't always practiced the best gun hygiene, but a fairly thorough cleaning after shooting is something I almost always do, unless I'm planning to turn around and go back to the range the very next day or something.  I have three firearms that I have owned for around 30 years and have fired quite a bit, and while the bores aren't in perfect shape, none of them are in really bad shape.  It's only now with this borescope that I can go back and critique what was really happening in there and what I might have done wrong along the way.

I think one of the important things I didn't do in years past, that I have been doing more recently, is to blast your bore out with some canned solvent like gun scrubber or electronics cleaner, after you use your traditional bore solvent and scrub on it with brushes or whatever you're using.  The old traditional method of using your bore solvent to clean and then wiping it dry and neutralizing it with oil, I think leaves traces of solvent in there which is not good, and also doesn't clean some of the crud out of the grooves that you physically miss with your patch cloths or whatever.  There were times when I was cleaning the barrel and gas block of this Mini-14 when tight-fitting patch cloths and VFG pellets were coming out looking totally clean, but then I took it outside and blasted it with electronics cleaner from breach to muzzle, tipped down over a disposable aluminum pan with a paper towel in it, and repeatedly got decent-sized batches of carbon bits that were about the size of a grain of sand.

So I have resolved to start doing that whenever I clean any of my guns, and only then come back and re-treat the barrel with some oil or dry lube.  I'm sure regular old gun oil on a patch cloth re-applied periodically is a good way to prevent rust in the bore of a weapon that is stored unloaded, but in case of guns that you keep rounds chambered in, what I have always heard and read is that you should wipe the bore completely dry to avoid compromising your chambered cartridge.  For my handguns that I keep loaded I am treating the bores with Eezox for that reason, since it dries completely, and the rifles at the moment have a coating of Hornady One Shot in them.  One Shot seems to leave more of an oily residue but those rifles don't have a round chambered in them.  In the past, a gun I kept loaded like my J-frame revolver I would have patched the vast majority of the oil out of, which is probably how I ended up with those rust spots, along with not getting all of the carbon removed when I thought it was clean, because patches were coming out clean.

[M1A4ME]

I've always (since the late 60's on shotguns and from the mid 70's on rifles) run an oily patch down the barrel after cleaning the barrel.  Yes, it can look clean (patches) till I put oil on a patch, then the oily patch comes out fo the barrel dirtier than the dry/clean patches.

Not sloppy oily, just oily.

If I pull the P07 out of the holster and shoot one 5 shot group (to make me feel better on a day when shooting new pistols with development loads is making me look like a bad shot) I will field strip it and clean it when I get home.  The bore scope still makes my P07 barrel look downright nasty.

My stored in the safe guns that only get shot a bit every few years (or not at all) get cleaned every few years like I'd just shot them.  Clean the barrel with Hoppe's#9, run and oily patch through the barrel, wipe off the outside surfaces with an oily cloth/rag.  I know I've gone as long as 8 years between one good cleaning/inspection and the next (group of 03/03A3/03A4 and M1917 rifles I used to shoot a lot 30 plus years ago) with no rust seen on, or in them.  3n1 oil lasts a long time.  Mobil 1 might, haven't used it that many years, yet.

[Joe L]

“Never aim your borescope at anything you aren’t willing to clean”.

Joe

[jnichols2]

Thanks for the advice from everyone.  I will take it into consideration, as far as the over-cleaning and mental anguish vs. any actual benefit of scoping barrels to find something to obsess over.

In any case, with the assistance of the bore scope, I did de-carbon my 30+ year-old Mini-14 down to bare metal for the first time ever.  This included not only the bore but also the op rod and the area around the gas block.  I also had a look at the gas block hole inside the barrel where I could see the erosion that has taken place there.



This was like a week-long project during which I ended up acquiring some new carbon-busting solvent because my old-school Hoppes solvent and Ballistol weren't getting the job done.  I was looking for some Boretech C4 but couldn't find any available locally so went instead with Hoppes Black carbon cleaner which ended up working great.  It melts carbon into this blue goo.

After I was done with the Mini-14 I decided to scope the barrel of my 30ish-year-old S&W M38-2 and lo and behold I found two rust spots near the crown, along with some spots with hardened carbon and some pitting from some past corrosion I wasn't even aware of.  This gun was put away clean and hasn't been fired for around two years.  It has been pocket carried a few times during that period, when my other pocket gun was offline for whatever reason.



Ballistol removed the rust spots, but didn't do anything to the carbon, so I used a small amount of that Hoppes Black carbon cleaner along with some scrubbing with a brass-reinforced VFG pellet, then Eezoxed the barrel and the chambers, once I confirmed most of the carbon was gone.  You can still see the pitting from some past corrosion in there:





Anyway I'll check it again probably next year and hopefully won't find any new rust spots.

Someday, when you are my age, you will wish for that week back.   

[recoilguy]

Thats funny right there!!!

[CCWLearner]

Thats funny right there!!!

Yes, I agree.

Probably not too many people lay on their death bed, saying they wished they had spent more time removing all the carbon out of that rifle.  I guess unless it blew up in their face from a barrel obstruction or something, then they might say that.