I went digging around here because I thought I remembered reading of MOS-based lube before.
And I had. In more than one thread here back around 2010 there were a few different guys complaining of the brown gunk they found in the grooves after cleaning when using MOS in their lube. That it took carb or brake cleaner to cut the gunk and return their bores to shiny metal.
I also read enough threads to find that some folks, as seen by the support here, don't have that problem. Has anyone sorted out the how/why the brown stuff? I even read of father/son shooters where the son wouldn't use it but the father loved it-so that rules out weather differences.
I'm just curious where the naysayers are now. Or will this thread kick up another "spike" in folks who try it and don't like their results after a few sessions and cleanings. Or maybe the solution to brown barrel residue was found in the years between, and I didn't read enough threads?
Anybody still around that had the difficult to remove brown stuff problems?
Wade, you are partially right. I was the main screamer about this at the time. But it wasn't MOS that was the culprit, it was Bore Butter. I had been using it for a couple of years (or more) in a GPR and I gradually started noticing my cleaning patches were not getting really clean anymore so I started looking into it to see what was going on. After I had cleaned the rifle and dry patches were almost clean I put the rifle in the corner to dry then ran a tight dry patch down the bore it came back covered with a brownish, greenish, thick mess on the patch. So I cleaned it again with the same results.
Accuracy was the same. No change at all. Up til recently I had always cleaned the same way and my dry clean patches had been clean, so had the barrel. What changed to cause this? What was it down in my bore? Well the only thing different was now I was using Bore Butter and was this stuff the seasoning they talked about? So I tried to clean it out with basically no luck. That's when I soaked a patch with brake cleaner and ran that down the barrel. Now that worked! A couple of soaked patches and a few dry ones and I had a clean barrel again.
Remember I had been using BB for several years and had a lot built up. So it was more noticeable.
After that I tested a lot of lubes both commercial and home made and found good things and bad about most all of them. I still use a Bore Butter patch for my first shot when deer hunting. I leave my rifles loaded until I take the first shot of the season and the BB patch will not cause that rust ring around the patch even if left loaded all season. That can't be said of all the lubes out there. Yes I know that Mink Oil from TOW is just as good but if you don't have any then BB works pretty good for the first shot too.
I have used a lot of Original LeHigh Valley and I'm now shooting some of Mr. Flintlocks lube and find I like them both. But only for a target lube, not a hunting load. I haven't noticed any real buildup of either one down the barrel like I did with BB. No problem cleaning my barrel and all I use is water.
