Thread: BSA model E 303

This may prove useful to csmiffy and anyone else restoring old guns. Lots of tips and tricks, home made solutions, and other neat stuff for fixing, cleaning, or otherwise working on guns in regards to cleaning solutions and techniques. As usual, do some extra reading on any item you decide to try, they may be mildly to extremely dangerous if misused.... some may even damage your gun!

Homemade Firearm Related Products


Aside from plain old elbow grease, I'm a big fan of Wipe-out for all but the worst bores. It's pretty impressive how bright and clean it can get most sad looking bores. Won't obviously fix any metal erosion, but it does a wonderful job on the rest. I'm usually not a fan of wonder-chemicals, but a fellow ran it through the bore of a rifle I'd bought at a gunshow for the action and ended up with a nice bright shiny bore... now I'm a believer as they say.

For really terrible old barrels, especially those with red rust or lumps of unknown material that score brass jags and resist brushes, a cell phone charger powered electro cleaner often works great to get through the majority of the junk to see if it's worth going further. Actually found rifling in an 1894 that was assumed to be shot smooth, and surprisingly grouped to 15 cm after that... not great for most guns, but for ghost rifling I was surprised to say the least. Only caveat is that electrocleaners are able to damage a barrel if used for too long or too high power, so best to choose a power supply that provides the minimum voltage and amperage to actually have an effect, hence the cell phone charger. Plus it has the added benefit of being less likely to electrocute you