How often do you clean a rifle bore?

[Wincheringen]

I'm also in the camp of 'let the rifle tell you' other than my .204 which gets 400-600 shots through it in a varmint season. That one does get cleaned at the end of the season.

I never use harsh brushes either, foam cleaner and patches only.

 

[Oldtrader3]

I do not use Rem Oil or WD 40 for anything having to do with firearms. Here in the soggy Northwest, I have had too many problems with rust using anything but quality gun oil.

I normally clean after going to the range, unless I am going back with that rifle the same week. After hunting for a week, I clean everything when I get home.

 

[Ridgerunner665]

I've never owned a bore snake...but if I did...I'd agree with what Guy said...should be excellent for a quick cleaning.

 

[nvbroncrider]

Yup. I used to clean too often.

In competition, we were shooting 80 round matches, with NO opportunity to clean, and sometimes a match the very next day.

I was fretting about cleaning my barrel and a very seasoned competitor told me not to worry, that I'd paid Krieger for a barrel that didn't need to be cleaned much. That slowly sank in. I gulped, ignored the barrel, paid attention to the wind and shot good scores on the first and second days of a 600 yard match. Never did clean the barrel during that match. Accuracy at the end was just as good as at the beginning of those two days of shooting, nearly 200 rounds since the last cleaning. Still shooting 10's & X's at 600...

Learned something that weekend. Ridge is right, a barrel will tell you when it needs cleaning.

My .25-06 has a fairly rough Remington barrel. Accurate, but rough. When I was using the all-copper Barnes bullets, it needed a cleaning BEFORE hitting 20 rounds! If I pushed it to 20 or 25 rounds without a cleaning, accuracy went bad, real bad, real fast. Kind of soured me on soft copper bullets at high velocity through a rough barrel...

So, one Remington goes 200+ rounds between cleanings. The other at about 20 rounds, depending on ammo. Rifles are different, and need to be treated differently.

Regards, Guy

+1

I recently just cleaned my 22-250 after close to 500 rounds. It's hard to clean one when it's shooting under .250" for a 3-shot group. At around round 450. It will tell you when go clean her.

 

[filmjunkie4ever]

With smaller bores, 25 cal and smaller I usually clean every 40 rds or so.

With my bigger bores 50-60.

 

[ElmerThud]

This is a really tricky one for me...I always deep cleaned/copper scrubbed evry time - however many rounds I fired. Now after 30 years of shooting I've decided not to. Just to see if groups stabilise tight whenever I take the rifle from the safe.
All I do now is push a swab with Butches on & a dry patch to mop up. That's just to remove any carbon in the breech/tube.
Can't tell you yet if it works better this way or not, but give me time. ATB ET

 

[Vince]

I let the rifle tell me when it needs to be cleaned.
Some like to be dirty and some like to be clean.

 

[usmc 89]

200 or so out of my 6x47 lapua before I think about cleaning it. I never clean it down to bare metal a few patches of bore tech and I am done. I do however clean the action at the end of the day. I think with the 308 I won't clean it, probably just run a patch with oil on it down the barrel once in awhile.