About Bore Tech Eliminator...UPDATE

RiverRider

RiverRider

Handloader
Dec 9, 2008
1,427
59
I have purchased a large bottle of BoreTech Eliminator because of the glowing recommendations I have seen right here and have been trying it out over the last couple of days. It seems to really go after metal fouling and I like its innocuous physical properties. BUT...I do not think it works as well as advertised.

I followed the directions on the first rifle. After the wet patch / wet brush / wet patch / dry patch cycle was completed I decided to just do it again to see if there was any metal fouling remaining in the bore. There was. In fact I did three cycles per the directions and was still seeing blue on wet patches, so I dried the bore and gave it a good brushing with Sweet's and completed the job.

Thinking that maybe my brass jag was the source of the blue residue that continued to appear on my patches, I tried Eliminator on the next rifle. After the first cycle I patched the bore dry, then ran a few patches soaked with Hoppe's No.9 through it and let it stand a couple of hours (believe it or not, No.9 will remove metal fouling completely, it just takes forever and a day!). The next Hoppe's-soaked patch revealed that there was indeed metal fouling still in the bore after the first cycle of Eliminator used per instructions.

So...you guys who are sold on the stuff: do you have an alternate method of using it? If there is some method by which I can use Eliminator only and get all the metal fouling out of my rifles I will continue to buy and use it. If not, then I'll just use it up then continue to use my regimen of Hoppe's No.9 and Sweets, which I KNOW will remove every last trace of jacket fouling.
 
RR, I like the stuff alot. I do not do it per their instructions. I completely soak and patch and soak the bore in it. I continue to hit with soaked patches pushing blue fluid out of the bore until it is gone. I will wait between 15-30 minutes between wet patches in order to let it really soak in and usually if the bores are bad, the patches will come out DARK BLUE. I am not sure it works any better than Montana Copper Killer, but it smells much less and does attack copper. I don't scrub the bore with a brush either.

I think your brass jags are giving you the false positive, since I use the Tipton plated jags, they don't give off any copper signs. It is very good stuff, but it isn't a miracle worker, the only way I see to use any of it is to saturate the bore and keep pushing the copper out. I think you will always get traces, but for the money BTE seems to be the best so far.
 
Copper jags are not your friend with aggressive copper cleaners.
 
I'm pretty partial to the Montana Extreme stuff, bot the Copper Killer and the regular Bore Solvent. Just make sure that you have plenty of ventilation...
 
Yes, I am aware of the possibility of "false positives," which is why on the second rifle I swabbed the bore dry then soaked it in Hoppe's No.9. This solvent is not aggressive enough to put blue on a patch due to the jag's brass composition.

I have some Montana Extreme solvent, but I cannot use it in the house. My wife is susceptible to respiratory irritation and begins coughing and gagging within one minute if I so much as open the bottle. When the weather's nice I'll play with it some more---outside!

Scotty, thanks for your input. I do like the aggressiveness of Eliminator on jacket fouling and I think it handles carbon fouling quite well also. I do now know, though, that it will not work if used as directed. :shock: Maybe one of these times I will just keep pushing a patch soaked in Eliminator down the bore every 15 minutes to find out how long it takes to get the fouling out using it only.

I am thinking I may continue using the Eliminator as my preliminary cleaner, followed by Sweet's to get the stubborn remainder of the metal fouling out. Sweet's is mild enough to use indoors, but when used with a nylon brush does an excellent job on jacket fouling. I think I will ALWAYS use Hoppe's No.9 to finish up, though...it will get the Sweet's out, it will detect any remnant of jacket fouling, and it has some preservative properties which I believe negate the necessity of oiling the bore after cleaning.

I suppose my opinion of Eliminator at this point is that it is a good broad-spectrum, general purpose solvent.
 
As far as Hoppe's #9 removing copper, I've seen it a bit, but I imagine it's more that the Hoppe's is dissolving dried solvent and copper residue from earlier passes with something like Shooter's Choice or one of the foams, in my experience. Those are the only times I've seen it. Perhaps if left long enough, it might dissolve a little copper? I can't really say.

I can speak to the issue of how I use BTE and how I find it to be better than any other solvent out there. My process is simple. I start with a rifle that needs cleaning, and run three soaked patches of BTE through. Invariably, these will come out bluish, with the third one the most blue. I let that sit for 8-10min, and then run a couple of wet patches through. These come out navy blue, almost always. (Unless the rifle hasn't been shot much or it's not generally a fouler by nature.) I repeat the 8-10min soak and two wet patches until the first wet patch comes out just tannish, instead of bluish. Once I get a patch with no blue, I let it soak one more time and then if a wet patch comes out tannish instead of bluish, I dry patch it until it's all clear. Then I generally follow with a little Birchwood-Casey Barricade, as I know a clean rifle will always go out for some fouling shots before I take it hunting.

For equipment, I like to use the Tipton nickel plated jags, like Scotty mentioned. Anything with copper in it will turn patches blue, so I also have some tape (soon to be replaced with heat shrink tubing) over the brass end on my Tipton carbon rod. I don't use brushes on my own rifles, as I never let them get that dirty. But if I need a brush, I keep a supply of nylon bristle brushes handy in standard calibers for when I'm working on some derelict or neglected rifle.

I've tried everything else out there, with and without ammonia, and chased them all with BTE and gotten blue on my patches in varying degrees. Cleaning with BTE first and chasing with everything else just gives me wet, clean patches, with no blue. I don't work for the company, and I don't own any piece of it or stock. I just know a good solvent when I see it. For me, that solvent is BTE. If you find another to be better for you, that's fine, too. But I'm betting if I cleaned your rifles my way, nothing else would get any blue after the BTE treatment. At least that's been my experience so far.

One thing to keep in mind, the first time you use BTE, you're going to get a lot of copper you didn't know about. It's going to come out in layers and it's probably going to take a while. I had one rifle I had to clean for six solid days, working a total of about 10hrs, and going through over 400 patches. I got layers of copper and carbon out the whole time. Once I got it clean, though, the follow-up cleaning after not quite 40 shots at the range went in less than an hour. That's another little benefit - over time, BTE will help season your bore and you'll end up cleaning less and getting less out each time.
 
CatskillCrawler":v5pym2bu said:
I've never seen Hoppe's #9 remove copper. The Hoppe's Elite will but #9 too?
Click to expand...


Hoppe's No.9 will remove jacket fouling. I am not saying it is fast, or that it's a good way to do it---it is just not aggressive enough to remove all the fouling within a reasonable amount of time and there are much better ways to attack jacket fouling. I have tried it in years past and it will work, but it can take a week or longer to finish cleaning a rifle. I am just saying that if there is metal fouling in your bore and you let it soak in Hoppe's No.9 for a while, you'll get blue patches out. Next time you're halfway through a cleaning project, run a couple of patches soaked in No.9 through the bore then let it sit for 30 to 45 minutes. You'll get blue on your next patch.
 
I have not tried BTE but I have seen similar results (layer avter layer of carbon and copper) with Wipe out. I never followed up my wipe out with BTE though. CL
 
Again, I agree with Dubyam about BTE, it takes awhile to get back down to metal and get the bore clear of copper.

Another method I use, which was taught to me by Nodak7mm is to use a patch soaked in Kroil and rub some Iosso bore scrubber on it. Pretty similar to JB's bore paste. This stuff will destroy and move all of the other stuff out of the bore and leave you with a bore of strictly copper. Then, you can actually get to work quickly removing the copper. I work the patch through in 1" little strokes. I can almost guarantee your patches will come out black... I love the stuff. Takes alot of work out of cleaning and gets straight to the point. I don't mind cleaning, but I don't wanna drag it out for days. The Kroil/Iosso works and in conjunction with BTE is awesome. Just my way of doing it, but it works for me.

I do use a final coat of Gunzilla to protect the bore. A WET patch of oil, then a few patches to wipe excess out. Also, I store all of my rifle muzzle down in a silicone gun sock in my safe, so all fluids and contaminates will exit via the muzzle instead of moving rearward into the action..
 
dubyam is absolutely correct on the first time use of bte. A fellow I hunt with brought over his fathers Remington model 721 in 30.06 and asked if I could set it up for hunting. It turns out the barrel was NEVER cleaned from when in was purchased new (hard to believe) I looked in the barrel and could hardly make out the rifling. I first thought it might be shot out so I looked at it with a borescope and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Talk about fouling. I won't go into how long it took to clean but after roughly 1/2 of a large bottle of bte and nylon brushes and set up periods for the bte to work the rifling looked brand new. The rifle shot great. anything brass on your cleaning rod will give a false reading with the use of bte.
 
Scotty, I thought the Eliminator did a great job on the powder fouling. It seems to be pretty much GONE after the third patch or so. Next time I clean I will try letting the bore soak for about 10 minutes between patches and see how long it takes to get a patch through without turning blue.

Last night I pulled one of the two rifles back out of the safe and ran five patches of Eliminator through it to see if it picked up anything left behind by my finishing up with Sweet's and Hoppe's. All I saw was the "false positive" from the jag, which by the way was only residue and much fainter than the fouling that continued to show up during my initial cleanings with Eliminator. I also proved for myself that the false positive is possible by wetting a patch with Eliminator and rubbing the jag down with it. Yup, it does pick up blue off the jag, but not enough to explain what I was seeing the first time around.

Next time I shoot these rifles I'll try just pushing Eliminator-soaked patches through about every 15 minutes and see what happens.

I also have been storing my long guns muzzle down. I had seen commentary about oils and solvents flowing onto the wood and softening it over time. I use lubricants very sparingly and was not concerned about that, but I have seen deterioration of rubber buttpads and that is the biggest reason I adopted the practice. I protect the muzzles and crowns with Caplugs.
 
RR, another trick that I was taught here is to soak the bore in Kroil before cleaning. Sometimes after a long day at the range, it could be a few days will I get to the rifles. The Kroil, acting as a penetrating agent, seems to get underneath alot of the crap and it will usually wipe out a ton of gunk with the first patch, even enough to call it clean enough to head back to the range if it isn't horribly gunked.. I am a big fan of Kroil, it really is a nice penetrating oil, and like Hoppe's #9 the scent isn't bad!
 
I finally remembered to order some non-bronze jags and received them a couple of weeks ago.

As it turns out, I found that BTE does indeed get the job done quickly on at least one of my rifles, a 700 Classic in .223. It only took about half an hour.

Another rifle took much longer, my 6mm-284. I think it must have quite a bit of erosion in the throat that's catching a lot of jacket metal (SURELY the bore is not that rough, I hope!). I ran three wet patch / nylon brush cycles on it and the patches never would come out without blue residue. I finally gave it a vigorous scrubbing with Sweet's, and after that the BTE patches started coming out white.

Next time I clean the 6-284, I'll try the Kroil treatment first and then BTE. If I can get away from using ammonia laden solvents, I will.
 
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