I have a new ar 15 and I have read that cleaning an ar without the bore guide will damage the crown and rifleing on the barrel but it just doesnt make sense I have a chinese sks that is very accurate and I clean that thing roughly with alot of strokes back and forth from the correct side with no worries and it remains very accurate so why does the ar need a bore guide to clean it without damage??? Thanks for helping
AR 15 bore guide?
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Any rifle or pistol will suffer some additional wear and some degree of loss of accuracy if you clean it with any hard rod or if any contaminates on the rod contact the crown. To be truthful, except on very fine and accurate rifles, I don't worry about my personal ones either, but why are you cleaning an AR from the muzzle anyway?
eh? Older guns that had steel cleaning rods (usually military guns) often have to be recrowned from the abuse. Brass .. you have to beat on it quite a bit to damage steel with brass. Unless careless or cleaning it too much, I wouldn't worry about standard brass cleaning kits and their soft copper brushes. You fire a bullet that's copper down the barrel with significantly more force than your cleaning rod should apply. Another fubar in old guns are flexible cleaning rods that bend so much the rod is whapping the barrel as it flexes (also usually steel). Again, modern kits don't do that.
If you have a high end accuracy gun that you want to baby get a wooden dowel rod instead and use that. And as noted specifically for the AR you can pop a pin out and clean from the back instead, avoiding all contact with the crown. Most auto pistols you can take the barrel out and do the same easily. A few designs like revolvers require going in from the muzzle.
If you have a high end accuracy gun that you want to baby get a wooden dowel rod instead and use that. And as noted specifically for the AR you can pop a pin out and clean from the back instead, avoiding all contact with the crown. Most auto pistols you can take the barrel out and do the same easily. A few designs like revolvers require going in from the muzzle.
I know to clean it from the back toward the muzzle I know to never clean it from the muzzle but from what i read damaging the crown or rifiling is still easy to do even when cleaning from the right direction my question is if the ar bore guide necessary or not for cleaning an ar 15 rifle???
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The answer is in the info you've been given. You will have to make your own decision based on what you choose to believe.
P.S. I've never heard of anybody damaging the muzzle crown while cleaning from the breech, although it might be possible if using an abrasive and a drill motor.
Listen.. You can wear down a rock if you just drip water on it for a million years or have a hundred billion people walk on it over centuries. You can wear down a steel crown with a brass rod if you clean your rifle 20 times a day for the rest of your life too.
If you are typical you probably shoot 100-200 per trip and a trip is likely a month between. That means deep cleaning 2-4 times a year for most people. That means it would take approximately 300 years before the crown started to show signs of wear from the cleaning rod, and by that time, the barrel would be worn out in many other ways to go with it.
Its a non issue so long as you are not doing something that defies common sense. If all you are doing is jacking a brush and a cleaning wad down the pipe a few times a year with a brass cleaning rod and doing so only with a gentle pressure applied by your hands without any power tools or hammers or the like, it will be fine, for real. And if you are STILL worried about it, pop one peg out, open the gun, and jack it down the barrel from the rear using the aforementioned wooden dowel rod and a piece of paper towel soaked in cleaning solvent. I promise that the wood & paper won't hurt your gun this eon if it is indeed made of actual metal.
to put it in perspective, you repeatedly force an oversized piece of copper down the barrel at thousands of PSI and moving at thousands of feet / second while setting off an explosion and blasting the thing with hot gas. Nothing you can do with that brass rod should even get CLOSE to this level of abuse ... the cleaning supplies are softer and pushed thru with less force and the rod is smaller in diameter than the bullet.
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Yes... we're not talking about AK's here.Wait, people are actually cleaning their ARs?
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Do it like the Iraqis, take a piece of twine, tie a few knots in it, dip in motor oil, and yank that sucker through. Easy cheesy. Cheap boresnake and gun cleaner knockoff.
Just kidding. Seriously, boresnakes IMO are worth the investment. You can easily roll them up into a ziploc baggie and have em handy if you feel the need to do a cleanup in the field or at the range. True there are multipiece rods you can break down and do the same I suppose but the snakes the way to go. I only have one full length rod here at the house and thats got a piece of tape on it for a reason. When you own a 14.7 inch AR barrel and a pinned hider its nice to have a rod premarked at the end of your muzzle device so you can easily demonstrate against the closed bolt yes in fact it is over 16 inches. Not for cleaning purposes but to CYA. Once I latched onto using boresnakes I've never considered utilizing a rod again.
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They really are not that expensive. For a bolt gun or something like the AR15 etc......... where you can easily access the chamber end a rod is fine. A solid rod is better but a multipiece one will work. But when you are wanting to clean out a barrel from something semi auto like a 10/22 etc or most revolvers ......... without major disassembly including removal of the barrel your only option with a rod is the muzzle end and that can lead to trouble. Always if possible clean from the chamber end. Those cleaning stars they sell for the AR15 locking lug area are also worth picking up while your at it. That is one area that can be hard to attack without one and your only reason a bore brush rod should come anywhere near your AR15.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IOF6610..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=13S7R2GFHHSXPK9V9JV5
Best of luck.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IOF6610..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=13S7R2GFHHSXPK9V9JV5
Best of luck.
That's a whole other kind of dirty!
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Actually the AK's dirty reputation is the result of the most common ammo, and the fact that they can run without cleaning for so long. A properly maintained AK with good ammo does not get dirty any quicker than many other designs.
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An AK will actually shoot with good ammo?
I always thought they needed the proper amount of Russian soot to seal the gas piston
.I guess you could shoot good ammo in it, the big question: why?
Back on topic. I'm sure if someone could sell a cleaning rod 'condom' and make money from paranoid owners with it, it would already be on the market.
Or perhaps an exotic non-metal one-piece cleaning rod for an outrageous amount of money
?Brass rods have been used for decades and work just fine.
The muzzle crown wear on military rifles is most likely from a screwdriver or nail being used to clean dirt out when the muzzle was rammed in the ground... alot
. And what the bullet did when it went thru the rest that didn't fall out.And clean that AK at least every 3 years whether it deserves it or not
.What I meant was simply how dirty they can get, and yet still go bang.
Granted, I've also got an AR I haven't cleaned in a few thousand rounds.....
It's nowhere near "Filthy 14" status, but yup, it's dirty enough. :lol:
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Don't make me come down there Soldier!!!Granted, I've also got an AR I haven't cleaned in a few thousand rounds.....
I've got the luck of being able to keep a couple as range-toys and training beaters. Part of the reason why I've been shying away from cleaning them is just because I'm lazy - the other is because I want to see just how "dirty" they can get, in my hands, before I have to start worrying about them.
The defensive guns are kept pretty clean.
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