Does runing a brush from bore to breech affect a guns accuracy?

[RedTape]

I've never heard anyone say to clean from the muzzle. I was told to always clean from the breech to protect the crown. I also always use a bore guide to keep the oil and particles out of the action. Other than possible damage to the crown, I can't think of any way you would damage the barrel by cleaning from the muzzle as long as you're using a quality rod.

 

[SMS]

I think there is a lot of urban legend with damage resulting from cleaning from the muzzle....or damaging the throat when cleaning from the other end.

Didn't the Garand Collectors Association or some other group do a test that showed it would take 10's of thousands of passes with a rod from the muzzle to noticably effect accuracy?

Just clean it...that's more important than what direction you clean it from.

 

[shortgrass]

Running a rod from the muzzle is the only way to do it on an M1 / M14, so you have to put up with it. However, in all other cases, you want to do it in the opposite direction since the crown is the most important part of the barrel.

I wouldn't say ,"the crown is the most important part of the barrel". I don't know as there is a "most important part". It takes a combination of 'important' parts of a barrel to make it accurate, like rifling, the chamber and all it components (neck & throat, concentricity of chamber to bore), and the crown.

 

[shortgrass]

In gunsmith school they taught that you should clean from the muzzle because you could nick the chamber cleaning from the breech. And that it was easier to chuck the barrel in the lathe and recrown than to repair a nick or gouged chamber or throat.

I graduated from a two year school in N.C. and their instructions were, " clean from the breech end , if possible. ALWAYS use a bore guide, wheather cleaning from the breech end or the muzzle end, to protect the chamber/throat/crown, which ever applies".

 

[LightningCrash]

I think there is a lot of urban legend with damage resulting from cleaning from the muzzle....or damaging the throat when cleaning from the other end.

Fortunately for me, steel is significantly harder than aluminum and plastic.

 

[doctorjj]

I think there is a lot of urban legend with damage resulting from cleaning from the muzzle....or damaging the throat when cleaning from the other end.

Didn't the Garand Collectors Association or some other group do a test that showed it would take 10's of thousands of passes with a rod from the muzzle to noticably effect accuracy?

Just clean it...that's more important than what direction you clean it from.

I agree with this. I do my best to clean from the breech when possible and only use coated rods. Still though, how much "damage" could occur from a nylon coated rod touching the muzzle a couple of times, at super slow speeds, while cleaning. It seems like one shot of a copper coated bullet flying out at 3000 fps would inflict WAY more "damage" than I could ever do with a plastic rod by hand.

 

[eby42]

What I've always heard is that if the weapon design allows it, go from breech to bore. If not, be careful and avoid segmented rods, steel cleaning equipment, etc.

The problems arise when you have segmented steel rods that start to bend and expose the threads, and start jamming that down the bore without being careful.

When you get right down to it, the barrel of a gun (especially a military one) is probably a lot tougher than any of your cleaning equipment, so if you're halfway careful you're probably G2G nearly all of the time.

I use a Tipton carbon fiber rod on my rifles, FWIW.

 

[WhiteyMacD]

You clean from back to front to keep from jacking up the muzzle crown. The "micro fingers" thing is so BS. You aren't forming steel at room temperature with bronze wires.

Bore guides are cheep and if you have an expensive rifle there's no reason to not use one and clean breech to muzzle. Good barrels and fitting are expensive.

+1

The method is only to protect the barrel crown, all else is pure BS.

 

[MR.T.]

No need to use "rods" and worry about messing up the crown, and no need for a Bore guide and other special tools and such, I have two words that can solve this issue in an instant. And it is always what I use when cleaning the bores of any of my rifles. A Bore Snake.

http://www.eabco.com/BorSnake.html

 

[JWE]

I think there is a lot of urban legend with damage resulting from cleaning from the muzzle....or damaging the throat when cleaning from the other end.

Didn't the Garand Collectors Association or some other group do a test that showed it would take 10's of thousands of passes with a rod from the muzzle to noticably effect accuracy?

Just clean it...that's more important than what direction you clean it from.

Yes the GCA did.

It doesn't really matter which cleaning rod you use. On the rifle(s) they were experimenting with, they were pretty abusive as they could be while scrubbing the bore; bearing on the muzzle of the rifle, so that it was slightly bending during the entire stroke. On the rifle they abused it started with a muzzle wear of 2.0 on the gauge, and to get it to reach 3.0 on the gauge it took 66,000 strokes. And when test fired afterwords still held an 1 1/2 inch group. Pretty interesting write up. It was in the Spring '09 Journal.

Even with the M1 during WWII and post war, if cleaning from the bore end caused a problem, the gov't would've found it with the rifle, as they had gauges to measure everything on the rifle.