doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Aluminum Cleaning rods ?

Damascus:
I am 100% in agreement with you. Under no circumstances should anyone put a dirty aluminum cleaning rod in their mouth. I'll generalize further and state that one shouldn't put anything dirty in their mouths.
BTW: How did you explain to your dentist what happened to your fillings?
Wood as we all know is absorbent and will pick up whatever chemicals it's exposed to so after a while your going to be dragging God knows what thru the bores of your firearms. I have this same issue with bore snakes.
At least with metal rods, either steel or aluminum, they can be cleaned periodically and that's exactly what I do with mine.
Jim

Hi Italiansxs.

Well I see that you must live in a totally sterile environment it must be extremely hard to rear children because that is how they first learn about the world they are going to inhabit by putting what ever they can hold in their hands straight in their mouths clean or dirty I wont list what my sons manages to eat. As a one time lover of tobacco though now a reformed character I am guilty of putting a dropped pipe as well as a cigarette in my mouth more times than I can remember, also eating tons of unwashed fruit and holding the end of a not so clean piece of string in my teeth while struggling to tie a knot. Eating all sorts of unclean things straight from the sea Oysters for one also unpasteurised milk, there is a saying here �You will eat a ton of muck before you die� and I have! Exposure to unclean and strange items that sometimes pass for food does improve the efficiency of your immune system so I am informed. My age now is a long way past sixty something and I have eaten every thing from a Mc Donald�s to Beluga Caviar and every stop on that gastronomic journey in between, and as we say still fit enough to run for a bus amongst other things.
I do not explain any thing to my dentist because I pay the bill they are my teeth to do with as I please he also knows if he looks at me the wrong way I will vote with my feet and visit the next dentist down the road who will welcome me with open arms!
The absorbency of Ebony is in fact extremely low due to the closeness of the grain also like Teak it has a natural antibacterial quality as well as being so dense as not to float on water, the cheaper rods are well varnished and to finish my favourite choice for gun cleaning is lashings of that that grand Brit potion �Young�s 303� bore cleaner which can be used as an antiseptic that slight whiff of phenol gives it away, this was once stated on the tin before the �Joy Police� took a hand in things by banning any potion or powder useful to the average Brit citizen but I am still using my extremely large vintage tin of the stuff so any life form adhering to my gun barrel or cleaning rods does not stand a chance it will be shuffled of its mortal coil immediately!!!!

My defence rests!!!!!!!

It's been a long winter. We are drifted in today. What about brass cleaning rods ? I think I may have a fiber glass one, too.

I got an Outer's shotgun cleaning kit in 1960. Came with a 3 piece aluminum rod. I have never bought another. Have lots of different handgun and rifle rods, but only that one for shotguns. I did have to glue the 2 piece handle back together about 30 years ago. I wonder how many thousands of dollars worth of barrels that rod has been through and I have never worried once.

The aluminum oxide on exterior of the rod will wear steel. It is the same stuff on the oxide sandpapers used to polish steel. Rifle rods,being thinner, usually flex and make contact with the rifling when the rod is stressed. Segmented rods increase this contact. Muzzle loaders, who generally are using softer steel alloys have run cycling tests with various ranrod materials to see which cause problems. Aluminum was not tested as it is not commonly used for ramrods. The results were interesting. Hardened Steel as in the military rifle rods caused some wear but not too bad, fiberglass was clearly abrasive, hickory wood caused minimal wear and brass was also minimal. Pretty important stuff to muzzle loaders as they run a rod through the barrel one or more times per shot plus the cleanup afterwards. Most of the damage occurs at the crown but there was side slap with the rods down the bore as well. Bore guides which center the rod on the muzzle are effective at protecting the crowns.

I use jointed wood rods for cleaning shotguns. I've got a good quality one piece aluminum shotgun rod that I received as a prize at a shoot but I don't use it simply because I prefer the traditional wood.

For shotguns I don't think the choice of material matters all that much as I've never seen a shotgun bbl that I thought had been damaged by a cleaning rod although I have seen plenty that were damaged by lack of cleaning.

For rifles I use a one piece steel rod or one of the coated one piece steel rods like Parker Hale or Dewey makes & I always use a rod guide for both rifles that clean by the breech & the few that I have to clean by the muzzle. Unlike shotguns, I have seen rifle bores that were damaged by cleaning rods & or poor cleaning technique.

Damascus is probably correct in his view that if you don't ingest a few contaminants along the way you won't build up a good immune system. Anyone who lived or worked on a farm knows this.

Hey Damascus:
There's a BIG difference in eating foods that have probably picked up some natural contaminates(necessary for good health) and not the same as ingesting chemicals(cleaning fluids), powder residue, lead fragments etc. that one finds on cleaning rods. I've loved the smell of Hoppe's since I was a kid but I've never been tempted to drink it.
I'm a life long woodworker and ALL wood including Ebony is porous to a degree or the tree it came from couldn't survive.
Wood can and will absorb liquids and even wood treated with varnish will do so to a degree.
If you're happy with your wood rods by all means use them. I can only report on what I've observed in the last 50+ years of cleaning and maintaining firearms.
The primary firearms damage due to cleaning I've noted over the years has usually resulted in a worn crown and that's from inappropriate use of a cleaning rod.
ANY rod rubbed against the crown will eventually cause wear. A contaminated (dirty) rod will make it worse.
Jim