mavrick10_2000 In the concentration that it is in - in WINDEX - that is a wives tail... Remember it is a barrel wipe and a bore cleaner not a lubricant... When i get back to home base I'll post an article, if i can find it, that disputes what you are indicating - unless you are using near straight ammonia... but then again I guess i do that with 'Butches Bore Shine" every so often also.
Ah Ha! - just found it on line.
On the road, a bottle of any of the commercial black powder cleaners is handy. That, a handful of patches, your jag, and a small "to go" bottle of Breakfree is all you need. Windex (yes, with ammonia) is a very good bore cleaner.
Dan Lilja of Lilja Precision Rifle barrels has never seen any damage in one of his barrels caused by the use of ammonia. Dan writes: "The rumor is that copper-removing cleaners with ammonia will pit and damage the interior surface of a barrel. Ammonia is very effective as a copper remover. We use solvents, such as Butch's Bore Shine, to remove copper during the break-in. We routinely leave Butch's solution in the barrel over night too. Again, I repeat, we have never seen a problem with ammonia in the concentrations found in commercial cleaners, in either our chrome-moly or stainless steel barrels. This includes examination with our borescope." Black powder enthusiasts have universally praised Dan's personal favorite barrel cleaning solvent, "Butch's Bore Shine."
I followed up this article with an e-mail to Dan about this - he can not understand where this whole thing came from. The ammoina serves as a solvent to foreign materails in the barrel including powder residue, plastic, minor lead deposits as well as it dissolves and removes residual oils from the bore. You are left with a clean bore + a dry bore as the ammonia evaporates so rapidly + carries water with it as it evaporates.
Again pure ammonia left in
liquid form in a barrel for days or weeks - that is a different story....
