cleaningI come from the range. I run patch soaked with #9 through the rifle barrel (Mosin-nagant). It comes out grey. That’s expected. I repeat with clean path and it comes out equally dirty. And so on. Do I really need to repeat the process until patch comes out white? What if I just do it couple of times to get really bad residue out? What will be affected if I stop scrubbing at this point and how long will it take to produce noticeable negative effect if any?
There are fundamentally only two reasons to clean a barrel:
To preserve accuracy, which may erode as the barrel gets dirty (very, very dirty for most off-the-shelf rifles).
To protect and preserve the barrel metal from corrosion, whether from water or corrosive agents left from fired ammo.
As long as your accuracy has not deteriorated and your barrel is not corroding it is clean enough. You certainly don’t have to clean until you can get a white patch through the bore. A good high-ammonia cleaner (Sweet’s 7.62 or Barnes CR-10) will get most everything with a couple of patches (follow with some light oil).
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