Barrel cleaning...your opines and experiences:)

by rob , Friday, January 15, 2016, 19:46 (3174 days ago)

I'm starting to see more and more guys suggesting not cleaning barrels, or at least not getting carried away with it. Reid Hendricks of Valor Ridge and former Marine says he never cleans his barrels and they just get more accurate and he is very specific that he doesn't even pull a dry bore snake through them. That's on AK's, AR's and his M14. Kyle Defoor, instructor and former Seal, says at most he pulls a dry bore snake through his rifles one or two pulls max and insists that removing the copper fouling from the first four inches of barrel is detrimental to accuracy. Even John Barsness, a few years ago, had an article on barrel cleaning and he insisted its detrimental to clean them down to bare metal and remove all the copper fouling....but he DID clean them. On the other hand, bench rest shooters who obsess about the nit pickiest details clean obsessively and go through all kinds of barrel break in voodoo. Just curious what y'all think. My Mini-14 isn't the most accurate thing (16" stainless tactical model) but it's "ok". I might just experiment a bit with whether accuracy improves or degrades by not cleaning it.