Thread: Dirty or Clean barrel?

I brought a tikka t3x chambered In 300 win mag, I took it to the range to dial it in at 200 yards. Started sending rounds down range and the first 10 were flyers all over the place, wasn't till about the 20th the group tightened up to1moa at 200yards which I was more then happy with.
Got it back home thought I'd to it a favour and give a a good cleaning and ended up removing the copper fouling from the barrel, decided to take it back to the range to check it with a different load and hello she's flying all over the place again till it gobbled up another 20 rounds and same again back to 1 moa at 200 yards. Now I just use a solvent that removes powder residue, only to ensure the corrosive component is taken care of and only clean the copper fouling out when accuracy starts to drop away.
Lesson learnt is copper equilibrium in the barrel is very important to accuracy.

The following vid is from a guy that does a heck of a lot of extreme long range precision shooting and explains the importance of fouling etc.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_KRUAv3Byp4

Originally Posted by Magnus

I brought a tikka t3x chambered In 300 win mag, I took it to the range to dial it in at 200 yards. Started sending rounds down range and the first 10 were flyers all over the place, wasn't till about the 20th the group tightened up to1moa at 200yards which I was more then happy with.
Got it back home thought I'd to it a favour and give a a good cleaning and ended up removing the copper fouling from the barrel, decided to take it back to the range to check it with a different load and hello she's flying all over the place again till it gobbled up another 20 rounds and same again back to 1 moa at 200 yards. Now I just use a solvent that removes powder residue, only to ensure the corrosive component is taken care of and only clean the copper fouling out when accuracy starts to drop away.
Lesson learnt is copper equilibrium in the barrel is very important to accuracy.

The following vid is from a guy that does a heck of a lot of extreme long range precision shooting and explains the importance of fouling etc.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_KRUAv3Byp4

Great link. Lays it out in detail. Thank you.

I run my rifles the same way LT does.
I am lucky with 2 barrels that shoot POA cold and clean from the get go.
I have one that takes between 5 and 10 to settle.
Cold and clean is slower than fouled in all my barrels but it is usually predictable.
I only clean when I see accuracy wain or between 100-150 rounds.
Always clean and oil before storing for long periods. Never store with suppressors on.
A lot of people overclean their firearms.
Every rod or pull thru down that barrel is decreasing the life of it. I rather the projectiles do it.

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You’ll get as many differebt answers to this age old conundrum as there are leaves in the forest.

As already mentioned, every rifle is different. So do, some don’t, some sometimes do...

After a big session on the hill (e.g. goats) I’ll clean the rifle. But I always shoot a fouler shot through a clean barrel, before you get going on the next hunt. I keep a bunch of fouler rounds and will shoot one into the garden at home if needs be. I have one rifle that is awful on a cold clean barrel but a laser as soon as it is fouled, and for that reason alone I’ll never sell it.

Copper is the least of your problems, though it is the obvious one. Carbon fouling is what does the real damage to accuracy