rust after cleaning

[B.Barker]

Ok guys I went hunting this weekend and after we got back to the cabin I cleaned my daughter's and my rifles. I plugged and poured soapy water down the barrels twice and wiped until dry. Then put a good coating of bore butter in the bores. Drove back home the seven hours and this morning checked the bores and had rusty patches! What happened? Is it where I didn't rinse with WD-40 or something else? My patches were dry when I finnished and I put a libral dose of lube on the barrels.

[Daryl]

Bore butter wasn't sealing moisture from the steel. I sugest you throw it away. It's lousy for a lube and perhaps worse as a preservative.

WD40 might have coated the bore to prevent the bore butter from causing or promoting rust.  Bore butter is simply a type of chapped lip seal - it isn't anything special. Great on skin, not so good for barrels.

WD40, by itself would probalby have been enough. It's all I use - dry patch the clean, WD40'd bore and vent before loading.;  Store the rifle muzzle down as well.

[rich pierce]

Too much hot water seems to open the pores to rusting.

[BrownBear]

I've had poor luck with WD-40 for long term protection, but for the short term you're talking, I would expect it to work well.  Hot water is a bummer, but cold doesn't seem to promote any rusting.  At least not five minutes later like hot water does!

Oh, and the best we've found for long term protection of metal here in the land of high humidity, fluctuating temperatures and lots of rain is Eezox.  It's even better than Break Free, which knocks the sox off of WD-40.

[Darkhorse]

You may be alright. Your culprit as Daryl said is Bore Butter. The much touted seasoning effect is at work here.
You can trap moisture under the seasoning. Worst case but it happens.
Lots of other nasty surprises can manifest themselves. I know. I used it for 10 years or so.
What your probably seeing is the set up bore butter itself. Patches bring out this nasty brownish gunk that look like greasy rust. Is that what your seeing?
The way I solved the problem was a good cleaning then running a patch soaked with brake cleaner down the bore until it came back clean with no brown. Then another good clean.
I always use a WD 40 patch after cleaning and it always has a little gunk on it, even with my hoarded Lehigh Valley. But I never depend on WD 40 to preserve anything. I use Jim Chambers bore oil for this.
The next thing I did was throw all my Bore Butter in the trash.

[Leatherbelly]

Amen!

[Daryl]

  If I live back East, or on the coast, I'd use something else, like one of the better bore preservatives. Here, with an ambient humidity of 50%, WD40 works just fine. We run from in the 20's to highs of 85% or so, but that's about it. Even when raining, it's in the 80's and 'seems' humid.  High humidity seems to last for only a couple to a few hours, not long enough to change the humidity in the gun lockup in the basement.  I've stored rifles and shotguns, including ML rifles for many years with only the last cleaning, drying and WD40'ing to preserve them. I've not had any rust, never- but then, we do live in a relatively low humidity area - that's the kicker.

[roundball]

Interesting...my regimen has been as follows:

1) Steaming hot soapy water and hot water rinse;
2) Dry the bore immediately to avoid flash rust;
3) Run a large dripping/sloppy wet WD40 patch up and down several times;
4) Dry patch that out;
5) Let residual heat from the hot barrel work while cleaning up the lock, etc;
6) Run lubing patches up & down several times that are plastered with lots lof Natural Lube 1000;
7) Dry patch that out before the next use;

Any lube will work if the following 3 steps are achieved religiously:
A) The bore must be 100% clean to the bare raw metal;
B) The bore must be 100% bone dry;
C) Every sq. in. of bore must be coated with lube to insulate it from the air;

Knock on wood...its been 18 years...so ya'll don't throw your bore butter in the trash...just send it to me...works fine here in North Carolina
 

[keweenaw]

One culprit I noticed in the water wash, dry procedure is the fact that some cleaning patch material just won't soak up the last of that water.  Hence the bore isn't all that dry when you run the bore butter down it. 

Tom

[roundball]

One culprit I noticed in the water wash, dry procedure is the fact that some cleaning patch material just won't soak up the last of that water.  Hence the bore isn't all that dry when you run the bore butter down it. 

Right on target...the metal has to be bone dry before covering it up no matter what lube is used...I mainly used old 100% cotton T-shirt or flannel material

[Leatherbelly]

RB,
  I'll look around.I think I kept some as souvenirs or for my trailer axles.LOL! Smells good.

[roundball]

I'm good...got a case of tubes last year 

[B.Barker]

I didn't use hot water to much trouble to heat water at the cabin. Plus I haven't used hot water for some time at home either. Cold water and soap was the cleaner. I've cleaned and will use other lube for storage this time to see how it works. Thanks guys.
Brian

[BrownBear]

I usually use rubbing alcohol on a patch followed by another dry patch after I think my bore is "dry."  With our high humidity and salt air, you almost have to use something extra.  Plain cloth of any sort just isn't going to do it.

[B.Barker]

Thanks brownbear.

[cal.43]

just as info, my old Mavi-Hawken had been laying the hole winter in the garage without that full cleaning stuff, only one wet , one dry  and one cleaning patch with oil after the last match. Then i used plenty of oil at the bore ( I donīt care about the brand) and thats it. At May this year there was no rust at all .
I wouldnīt do that with expensive guns but for the workinghorse itīs for me ok.

[Dphariss]

Ok guys I went hunting this weekend and after we got back to the cabin I cleaned my daughter's and my rifles. I plugged and poured soapy water down the barrels twice and wiped until dry. Then put a good coating of bore butter in the bores. Drove back home the seven hours and this morning checked the bores and had rusty patches! What happened? Is it where I didn't rinse with WD-40 or something else? My patches were dry when I finnished and I put a libral dose of lube on the barrels.

Were you using BP or a substitute?
Soap is also corrosive.
You have to use enough water to get the fouling out. If you use soap you need to rinse that out too with plain water. You need to run a wet patch up and down a few times then do the water thing again it removes fouling better.
If you leave water in the bore its gonna rust.
IMO telling people to use Bore Butter as a rust preventative is just a way to get people to buy more of their Bore Butter.

Dan

[Sequatchie Rifle]

Alcohol and good old fashioned cloth patches repeatedly until clean, then a light coat of breakfree!  Swab it after a few days to check for rust!

[JCKelly]

Mr. Phariss you are the only man I ever heard, outside of Proctor & Gamble, to say soap is corrosive. It sure is. & I thank you for saying so.
I might suggest that it is the hydrochlorid acid and salt (NaCl) that does it.

Back in the Day, when it was OK to have algae blooms in lakes & rivers, the Nice Soap people neutralized the caustic (used to make soap) with phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid is a rust preventatiive. The phos is a great fertilizer for algae, amongst other plants.

When we all decided to stop killing the fish, the Nice Soap people switched from phosphoric acid to hydrochoric acid. Some of you know it as muriatic acid. At some concentration, it eats the $#*! out of everything.

The Nice Soap people like to pump their product around whilst processing it. So they add salt, as in table salt, to make it flow better. Salt makes soap flow better kinda like it makes garden slugs flow better. All soap, all soap has salt in it. Soap with various orange or lemon additives is slightly more acid & Urban Legend has it, can eat a hold thru a stainless sink in a week or so , if left to its own devices.

My former employer sold a superaustenitic stainless which would tolerate all this salt plus a little acid. It was fine with us that the Nice Soap people like salt & hydrochloric acid. But we, at least I, did marvel at this pracice. I was the tech support guy, a.ka. Director of Technology.



 

[roundball]

Threads like these are always interesting with the different bits and pieces of information coming forward...but they have to be judged in the total context...the big picture...so no flame, just a different viewpoint as I'm just a practical guy and I have different conclusions about soap:

1) Soap has been used successfully by worldwide societies for centuries;

2) Households all over the world have had soap runnning through stainless steel sinks, dishwashers, washing machines, etc, for scores and scores of years and a worldwide trend would have been detected by now if soap had been eating through them all this time...ie: hasn't eaten through anything we, our parents, or our grandparents have ever owned during the 60+ years my Wife and I have been on the planet;

3) I've personally used steaming hot water & dishwashing detergent to clean a dozen and a half muzzleloaders several times a year for at least 18 years now...bores still look factory new today.


IMO, its kind of like when I first read that Hoppes No9 Plus BP solvent has the words 'contains kerosene' on its label...I paused...but then thought from a big picture point of view:  so what.
The stuff is fantastic and it turns out that by law, the words have to be there no matter how ridiculously small of a trace there might be.  So until one of my barrels gets eaten through I'll keep using dishwashing detergent to clean my muzzleloaders 

[Roger Fisher]

After soaking and cleaning/wiping the breech well, plain cool water does it for mine!  Dry and oil after of course. 




Did I say I'm cheap

[Daryl]

I'm with Roger - might as well go back to cleaning the way I've been doing for that past 25 years or so - plain cold water and squirt of soap.  It isn't needed for the lubes I use - even the mink oil patch fouling cleans up well with just plain water.  By the time I have dried, then WD40 the barrel, flush, not just a wet patch, the oil patch used to blast residual WD40 out the vent comes out clean - no fouling of any kind left, and here with faily low humidity, no rust at any time, either.

JC brought joggled a memory for me about soap - in that dishwashing soap will disolve the rivets in knife handles over time - that, I've seen myself, so the "Henkels" are all hand washed now.

As to the windshield washer fluid I've been using for a range lube, I might add something other than the liquid soap - think I'll put in just a bit of oil of some sort- neetsfoot, olive or maybe a soap- murphy's oil soap - just a bit to reduce evaporation. Once shaken, then lubed the patches will maintain their lube just fine.

[hanshi]

I don't think I've really been using hot water.  I say HOT when I describe it but it is really only warm at best by the time it makes it into the bore.  I run wet & dry patches till I'm ready to finish up.  A squirt of Palmolive is always in the water.  I have a hair drier in my shop that I use to dry the bore and lock.  It really heats them up.  Have managed to avoid rust for 45 years.  Thank goodness for WD40 and modern gun oils.

[hookie13]

Can't help but notice that quite a few of you blokes use WD40!!! A few of us  have tried it here in New Zealand and we had problems with rust!!! Nobody could work out why this happened.
We now use CRC5-56 with no problems at all.
Could location and temperature play a part?
Hookie13

[Roger Fisher]

Well now Hok!  You may have 'old' WD-40!!  I recall abt 25 yrs ago I was using wd-40 to oil the bore and would get after rust and this was in humid summer.  An other shooter took said wd-40 out of my shooting box and thru it down in to the woods and said get some good stuff.  I also am using CRC-56 with no problems, ever since.  And am finding it hard to get around these parts. 



I'm told the 'new' WD-40 has dryer or 'more' dryer in the formula.