Anybody tried those bore snakes? I bought a couple but haven't even opened the package.
love the bore snakes for 22lr
your never going to get copper out with a bore snake it isn't what they are for , but to spray some hornady one shot and run the bore snake in a 22lr a few times it cleans the chamber and the barrel well enough that if you do that every 500 or so rounds you can go a long time before needing a more though cleaning.
also nice for pistols I and shotguns
it is not a replacement for deep cleaning but it can be good maintenance and get your lube/corrosion protection down the barrel for protection as well as get the carbon out
if you shoot 20 rounds a year you can go a long time on a copper cleaning in your deer rifle maybe once a decade at most , but getting a corrosion protection down the barrel and the bit of carbon out as well as getting the chamber clean. at the end of the season , also nice if you were out in the rain.
make sure to pull strait and re-grab every foot or so
my 9mm pistol rounds are mostly hi-tech or powder coated probably close to 10-1 vs copper so I don't have copper to clean in the 9mms so it is just carbon a bore snake every 500-1000 rounds seems to do fine for me. I hose the glocks out every 2-3K with the one shot and everything just keeps running.
so there are uses for them , they are not a replacement for a good rod and jag but they are a very portable solution to keep in your range bag or truck.
guns like a 10/22 where you might start having issues mid day at an Appleseed shoot you can run one in prep if you let the RO know what your going to do or they can help you run it and then you have a clean chamber again and might have you running the rest of the day
normally the round count is only around 250 a day for an Appleseed , depending on ammo and the lube you use that can be enough to have issues. humidity can also play a part.
no good way to quickly pull the bolt and run a rod on a 10/22, we keep a rod around for stuck cases and cartridges but the snake gets the crud down and out the muzzle without pushing any back into the action
I also keep a brass rod in my pistol range bag , about 8 inches of brass round stock as a squib rod , I haven't needed it for myself since I put it in my bag but it has been used a couple times for other people at shoots.
It is in there because I had a round that had a bulged case get stuck in the chamber it wouldn't fully go into battery but I also could not get it out i had to disassemble the slide and bring the barrel home separate from the gun. a squib rod would have had us back in shooting in a couple minutes.
if you can quickly fix equipment failure you can re-shoot a stage in some cases or at least not scratch.
we also usually have a spare gun also.
Saturday we were shooting with a guy who had a PCC carbine failure right out of the buzzer on the first stage , yesterday at a USPSA shoot , he ended up running to the truck to get his spare gun for the next stages we shot 6 stages.
there were a bunch of failures yesterday I would guess most ammo but some mags saw a Sig MPX with feed issues , a CZ shadow , a Sig 320 and a M&P2.0 all have issues as well as a couple Open guns in other squads that I am not sure what model they were.
when your running them hard and with current ammo unavailability you might have ammo that isn't your favorite brand , eventually you end up with a bad mag if you run them long enough. it happens.
especially when you get high round counts