Contradiction in maintenance - barrel cleaning
 

I was reading through some of the intro to maintenance stickies and there is one point that I would like cleared up:

What should you clean the barrel with?

1) Nothing but the cloth
2) Rubbing alcohol and the cloth
3) Windex and the cloth
4) Silicone oil and the cloth

Also this:
https://letsbuildone.wordpress.com/m...rrel-dynamics/

Thanks in advance

0) Nothing
1) Nothing but the cloth
2) Rubbing alcohol and the cloth

Try the first three, seriously how foul do you suppose BB's are going to make your Barrel?
No Carbon, no lead, no copper, brass or heat. What exactly are you cleaning up there?

Just a cloth with a drop or two or silicon oil. Don't use anything that eats rubber or you will ruin hopup sleeve.

Never use oil or any kind of lubricant inside your barrel. Lubricant should stay between your barrel and hop up rubber, and not get inside where it will contact a BB.

Clean with a cotton patch on a regular basis. Once or twice a year you can clean it with a cotton patch and Windex, a strong solvent like acetone or alcohol is overkill unless you have glue in your barrel, and can also damage the finish on cheaper coated barrels.

Unless your gun has been subjected to adverse conditions (sand, mud, etc) where dirt has entered the barrel, just blow some duster into it from the chamber end and it'll blow out whatever dust/dirt might be in there.

Remember oil attracts dust and dirt. Also many higher quality (upgrade) inner barrels have a coating so adding oil on top of the coating isn't necessary and maybe even be detrimental to performance.


Edit: if the barrel DOES have significant sand/dust/dirt in it, disassemble it, remove the hop up rubber and run water through it it to clean it. Shoving a patch down the barrel and dragging dirt around will only scratch up the coating/inside finish of the barrel. So clean it out with water, THEN you can use a dry patch. If its just brass you can use silicone oil on the patch, it'll get extra dirt off; you shouldn't use so much it leaves a coating on the surface. Use the lightest weight you have, don't fucking grease the inside of the barrel.

Also don't get oil on the hopup. Be EXTREMELY careful about scratching it up, not only can it tear but scratching it up will affect how it performs (the oldschoolers who used sand paper on slick Marui hopup rubbers know what I'm talking about). You can clean the hopup rubber with water and dishwashing liquid to get the oil off. If you're using a GBBR you'll want to do this every once in a while since the oil in the gas system is being sprayed onto it (in extremely tiny amounts, you don't have to wash your hopup rubber after every game; you're going to do it maybe once every year or two depending how many rounds you put through that GBBR)

Agreed, no oil on the hop-up or in the barrel. Also, try not to run the cleaning cloth, patch, whatever through the hop-up itself or you may tear the rubber.

Remove your barrel grouping and look down the barrel, if there is even dust/debris a gentle wipe or two will suffice. If for whatever reason that's not enough, a drop of Windex or two.

Run a patch through with windex or alcohol on it
Then run a dry patch through until it's crazy shiny inside
Never use silicone oil in the barrel because, as stated above, lubricants trap dust and actually make the barrel dirtier faster. The BB isnt riding the walls, so lubrication isn't going to help anything.

BBs dont ride the top of the barrel. They just don't. The magnus effect doesn't work inside the barrel due to air pressure, and even if by some other principle the BBs were riding the top, you'd see a clear line across the top in a dirty barrel, and that's just not the case.

The only time you would put oil in the barrel is in real steel barrels where acid from your hands can tarnish or cause rust in the gun.

+1. Don't use any stuff such as Hoppers 9 or Gunzilla on airsoft. Those things only help real toys.
P.S If you decide to clean the barrel, make sure hopup is off. Otherwise bucking and sleeve might get damaged.

I used brake cleaner on my prommy before the beginning of this season. BB scum buildup was quite bad. Don't do it with any rubber, plastic or silicone exposed of course. It's supposed to be silicone safe but... meh. I redid my rhop patch at the same time.

At some point I will solder up a copper pipe so I can submerge a whole barrel to soak in acetone or similar cleaner.

Swabbed it out after the brake cleaner and all was shiny once again. The swab came out nasty though.

Well if you cleaned your barrel after every game like you're supposed to, you wouldn't need to chemically dissolve BB residue left in the barrel lol

Are you shooting corrosive bbs or something :) ? I only clean airsoft barrels when something breaks and I have to open the thing to replace the part or when AEG gets soaked in water, covered in mud etc. I still have an RPK I built more than 10 years ago. Barrel in that thing saw many thousands of bbs and probably 2-3 pull through's with a patch and a bit of silicon oil.

Unless you're on the other team, don't use silicone in your barrel.

A drop or two on a patch will not make sleeve swell or bbs drop 20 feet in-front of you but it will get rid of all the garbage that might be in the barrel. BBs will roll out of the barrel only if you dump half of the bottle down the barrel. Had it happened to me once in 15 years. During 36 hour Quebec event I was trying to fix the thing in the field. Was about to run a pull through and spilled oil. Bunch of it got in the barrel. I ended up running around for most of the weekend with basically no range.

I used to clean barrels with silicone oil, it can be done.
HOWEVER,
Switching to non-silicone options has reduced my number of pass-throughs with patches by 3/4s easily, and fouling is less of a thing.

Friends don't let friends use silicone on barrels.