wolfmangreg
HAM Ranger
As with any pursuit, airgunning has some persistent myths, legends, and questionable nuggets of wisdom. Asking the HAM team to post their favorite examples of airgun related "common knowledge" that you believe, or at least, suspect, is a pile of bull scat. Like honest politicians or one size fits all hats - but airgun related.
Debate is welcome of course, but I humbly request that it stay lighthearted & fun (I'm goofy like that).
Will get us started:
"Cleaning with a bronze brush will ruin your barrel!!!"
No one will ever convince me that this has actually happened with a modern steel barrel. At least not in normal usage scenarios, & with decent cleaning technique.
Myths don't generally spring up out of the ground for no reason though, so I'll temper my stance with a few caveats:
- Have read that some airguns of the past had brass barrels. Bronze brush on brass rifling, long term? Yeah, I can see that becoming a problem. Really no reason to be using a brass barrel these days, though, since the aliens taught us to produce steel from iron ore.
- Crown or throat damage- not from the brush, but from contact with the cleaning rod. Steel rod, no bore guide and/or care taken to avoid contact in the crown or leade? No doubt that could be bad. But it's the rod, & more importantly, poor technique, that causes the damage, not the bronze brush. It's like blaming Sasquatch for those goats that were bled dry in Texas. Clearly, it was El Chupacabra.
- Removal of barrel "seasoning". Barrel seasoning could be it's own topic here, but most of us that have owned a number of airguns have had at least one that took a while to regain peak accuracy after a thorough barrel cleaning. Could be a couple shots, could take half a tin before it's back to peak. Can see where a fellow that hasn't experienced this before would start to wonder if bronze brush cleaning was a bad idea. But it's much more likely that black magic is involved.
Debate is welcome of course, but I humbly request that it stay lighthearted & fun (I'm goofy like that).
Will get us started:
"Cleaning with a bronze brush will ruin your barrel!!!"
No one will ever convince me that this has actually happened with a modern steel barrel. At least not in normal usage scenarios, & with decent cleaning technique.
Myths don't generally spring up out of the ground for no reason though, so I'll temper my stance with a few caveats:
- Have read that some airguns of the past had brass barrels. Bronze brush on brass rifling, long term? Yeah, I can see that becoming a problem. Really no reason to be using a brass barrel these days, though, since the aliens taught us to produce steel from iron ore.
- Crown or throat damage- not from the brush, but from contact with the cleaning rod. Steel rod, no bore guide and/or care taken to avoid contact in the crown or leade? No doubt that could be bad. But it's the rod, & more importantly, poor technique, that causes the damage, not the bronze brush. It's like blaming Sasquatch for those goats that were bled dry in Texas. Clearly, it was El Chupacabra.
- Removal of barrel "seasoning". Barrel seasoning could be it's own topic here, but most of us that have owned a number of airguns have had at least one that took a while to regain peak accuracy after a thorough barrel cleaning. Could be a couple shots, could take half a tin before it's back to peak. Can see where a fellow that hasn't experienced this before would start to wonder if bronze brush cleaning was a bad idea. But it's much more likely that black magic is involved.
) 
