12-29-2020, 04:12 AM
High_n_Dry Wrote:There seems to be two schools of thought, either try to keep the barrel clean of copper or let the barrel reach a equilibrium and leave the copper in the barrel.
I'm more of the 2nd school of thought. In my other guns, I clean. the barrel after a couple hundred rounds with a couple patches with Boretech and then run a bore snake through. Boretech does carbon and copper and I can see plenty of blue after the carbon is out, so I know I'm leaving copper in the bore.
The reason I built the Grendel is for hunting, but also to try my hand at long range shooting. In this context, I would like to maintain accuracy. I'm leaning towards doing the same regimen as I do for my other rifles. The part I'm a little stuck on is that many people say to leave the copper until you see accuracy problems and then clean out the copper. If you believe in the equilibrium theory, it seems counterintuitive that you would want to get out all the copper out and start at square one again.
Your point is well taken. Suppose it takes 500 rounds until copper build up degrades accuracy enough to need correcting, a hunter may be fine for years. A match shooter might need copper removal after only two or three matches. If you start with a copper free barrel, you will likely have another 500 rounds problem free. A partial cleaning might only give 300 rounds problem free but would get back in the accuracy zone with less fouling shots. A trade off like a lot of things in life. Then there is the CFE 223 type of powders. If I recall correctly from an article I read CFE would take out copper from a previously fouled barrel. It would be a nice range report to shoot one mag of non copper reducing powder loads, then a mag of CFE loads and keep alternating and see how long if ever it would take for copper to degrade accuracy.