barrel question

[mtbugle]

I have been using JB compound to clean/lap some rifle barrels and they never seem to stop making the patches black within a couple of passes.  Wondering if this is really still powder residue or if it is cleaning off the bluing from inside the barrel.  Must have 150 passes by now.  I don't have a new barrel to test this hyposis on.  What is your experience with new barrels?  Do you use JB by itself or do you have the patch wetted with solvent also.  Thanks Don.

[LaOtto222]

If you have a new barrel and it is perfectly clean, you will get black patches as long as you keep running that polishing compound in and out. The black is from the steel you are removing. You do not remove very much, but you are taking some out every time you stroke the bore. I have a rifle that I stroked 600-700 times in total, not all at once. It shoots great not with little copper fouling. Stop giving it strokes, when you get the barrel smooth so it does not copper foul quickly. It is different for different barrels. I always cleaned mine thoroughly before polishing, but I know some people use the polish to remove copper fouling. IMHO you should clean first, then polish. I have polished and then went back and done it again, until I get the results I want - no copper fouling. This makes for longer shooting session before accuracy starts to deteriorate. Good Luck and Good Shooting

[quickdtoo]

It doesn't matter what abrasive you use, it will always turn the patch black, I've used JB non-embedding compound, JB Bore Bright, USP, Flitz, Maas and Simichrome, they all do it. I use Kroil with the JB compound, but to be honest, they all seem to do about the same job. But you can see the difference between Flitz and JB about a third of the page down in the bottom Varmint Al link on polishing dies, Flitz is a tad more aggressive.

Tim

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/Store/ProductDetail.aspx?p=1159

http://www.varmintal.com/ashot.htm#Break

http://www.varmintal.com/arelo.htm