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Ouch!

.338 Lapua Magnum KABOOM

I've often wondered about this happening. I see a lot of guys at my range cleaning between each shot or each string of shots to evaluate the accuracy of a clean/cold barrel.

Ouch! I have seen a ramrod fired from a BP gun, but being ballistically inferior the rod only made it about 30 or 40 feet and it pinwheeled through the air. It made a heck of a noise, but didn't seem to harm the gun at all.

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.

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.

I bet that was loud.

Was he cleaning from the muzzle end?

Usually when you clean from the breech end you have a big handle sticking out indicating that you have a cleaning rod in the bore.

Strange.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

If using a cleaning rod, don't most rifles' manuals recommend inserting the rod from the end of the barrel and then attaching a cleaning patch and pulling it through the barrel from the breach? And wouldn't it also be a bit difficult to insert a cleaning rod down a barrel through the breach because of the angle? However, I'm not real sure about this because I use snakes.

C-dub wrote:If using a cleaning rod, don't most rifles' manuals recommend inserting the rod from the end of the barrel and then attaching a cleaning patch and pulling it through the barrel from the breach? And wouldn't it also be a bit difficult to insert a cleaning rod down a barrel through the breach because of the angle? However, I'm not real sure about this because I use snakes.

I have always cleaned my bolt actions from the breech end, with no or tough access through the breech, I have used the muzzle, but like the snakes better for that. I still have an original cleaning kit for my Garand, an early model snake, but it has never been out of the package.

That kaboom was a bolt gun, in my humble opinion there should never have been a cleaning rod down that barrel.

Yeah, but should have been and "was" were apparently two different things in this case. Apparently he cleaned from the muzzle:(

Gunsmithing books I've read will typically state that more damage is done to a firearm's accuracy by overly aggressive barrel cleaning than anything else. For my cast bullet shooting, I rarely clean and even then, just run a couple patches. I've stopped using brushes all-together.

Nope - the guy wasn't "cleaning" - he was shooting some loads and the cases were sticking in the chamber, so he kept shooting and just kept knocking them out with the cleaning rod, got too used to doing it until he got un-coordinated - once. What was that guy thinking - after the first couple of sticky cases I would have called it a day and set to finding out what was going wrong. Details here @ post #19 http://forum.snipershide.com/snipers-hi ... ost2911537