The Annoyed Man wrote:That's an expensive cleaning rod.
Not to worry though, I don't mess with my rifle's bore too much. As long as it is shooting fine, I might run an oil patch through it once in a while, but that's about it. I
used to clean it fanatically, but it turned out that I got better results by not messing around with it too much. Marty, Crossfire's husband, told once that he had once made the mistake just on general principle of cleaning the barrel on a bench-rest rifle that he competed with, and it took him 375 rounds of handloads to get it back to shooting the way it was before he messed with it. I've found the same to be true of my Remington 700. I keep the action clean and properly lubed and other kinds of maintenance get done, but other than an occasional oil patch to protect the bore metal, I leave that barrel alone as long as it is shooting well.
If it's not broken, don't try to fix it.