Carbon Ring - Solved!

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:36 Background
01:06 Pressure Issues
02:46 Diagnosing a Carbon Ring
03:56 What it looks like
05:03 Why it forms?
06:27 Solving The Problem!

[Lethal_Intent]

The whole brush nylon, bronze etc damaging a bore always makes me laugh. Like you said monolithic copper solids and FMJ at huge pressure and temps are fine so abit of elbow grease or drill in this case isn't doing anything.

[DarthLepard]

I did the exact same thing...6 Dasher and after about 40-50 firings I started to get heavy bolt lift. Carbon ring. Took an old aluminum cleaning rod, marked it like you did, Hoppes on nylon brush with a cordless drill and just like that no more pressure issues. I clean my gun after every match and no incorporate this after my normal barrel cleaning process. works like a charm

[andriesfourie]

You get split rods. I bought one of them, and always use the short back end to clean my chamber. If you use one of the front ones, you don't have to smash anything. It is also shorter, so no wobble! They usually split in 3. Terrible to use as intended, but works great for cleaning out your chamber

[Halfmilesniper]

Good info Piet. That was amazing how loose the primer pockets got, wow. I don't know if you have CLR available there in SA, but CLR (Calcium, Lime, Rust) works pretty good on carbon. Erik Cortina uses it and because of him I have given it a try as well. Just be extra careful if you're working on a blued gun, since bluing is rust.

[owned]

.223 Chamber brashes are fantastic for removing carbon rings, paired with a pistol cleaning rod chucked into a drill. You can also use your standard 25 caliber brush on your 6mm barrel, throw some JB bore cleaner paste on there and it will pull it out without having to go too far if you haven't let it get too bad.

[francoisdavel]

My .308 went from 2825ft/sec on 42.5gr of S335 behind a 155gr bullet to 3000ft/sec on the same load. I remembered this video. I tried this cleaning method tonight and based on what I saw on the bristles I had a nasty carbon ring. I will go and validate speed on my pet load again on the weekend.

[tomdick]

the drill with the cleaning rod is something ive been doing since they invented cordless drills. It doesnt hurt anything, its cleans it really really good. I even use a bronze brush. Like its been said before you shooting a molten hot bullet down that barrel several times a little brush isnt gonna hurt anything.

[ajbuschm]

I'm going to play Devil's advocate here and say that I don't think the carbon you showed in the borescope video was the main culprit. I'll explain...

I have bore scoped many a dirty Dasher chamber and I have seen worse that were causing no trouble. Carbon that does cause trouble is almost always in the freebore area and not in the end of the neck. The freebore area is usually cut only .0005" larger in diameter than the bullet and it takes very little carbon buildup to cause issues in this area because of that. Carbon in the freebore area can cause the same higher pressure as commonly seen by bullets jammed into the lands. Carbon in the end of the neck area that you highlighted in the video can build up to about .015" thick radially without impending on the bullet space and so I believe it highly unlikely that the carbon in that area was causing a problem. I say this coming from the experience of personally wearing out approximately 12 Dasher barrels in the last 4 years. I also ruined some brass from over pressure in that time.

In my experience carbon buildup usually only causes an extreme overpressure issue if the load is already running at max pressure or beyond. My guess is the carbon exacerbated a pre-existing hot load condition. Also, brass often shows more pressure signs with a hot load on the 3rd or 4th firing when the same load didn't show pressure on the 1st or second firing.

I could also tell in your bore scope video that your freebore on that 6 Dasher chamber is very short. I'd estimate something like .050". Most PRS shooters in the USA are using a freebore between .135" and .180". Longer freebores result in lower pressure with a given powder load so I would expect you to hit pressure faster with your chamber. Small neck diameters on Dasher chambers also cause pressure problems sometimes. I'd recommend at least a .274" neck diameter unless you are neck turning.

In short, I don't know what your load is, but if you are running a 109 Hybrid faster than 2, 900 FPS in a 6 Dasher with a barrel 26 inches long or shorter you are running it too hot and are asking for trouble. Do yourself a favor and slow it down to about 2, 850 FPS and life will be great.

I trim my brass super short so I don't have to trim as often.

Good luck!

[andrewsmith]

Fastest way to get the carbon / carbon ring out is: clean the barrel to "spotless clean" then put it into a freezer. After a few hours, take out the barrel and pour boiling water down the bore. The thermal shock cracks the otherwise unbreakable carbon and if you put a bucket at the bottom, you will see a whole bunch of carbon particles in the water, job done. A trick from an old timer full bore target rifle shooter in Australia :)

[Marathon]

I just wanted to thank you for the idea of using a drill to clean the rifle barrel. The thought of using that technique would have never entered my mind. I tried it and it works. Now I am going to the range and validate my squeaky clean barrel. Thanks again.

[davemiles]

This is very helpful and I seriously doubt that a nylon brush will damage the rifle considering all the other stresses and strains a rifle is subjected to.

[mickroberts]

As an experienced F class shooter, I have to make some comments here, for the accuracy sake. Firstly, carbon ring is not a result of trimming cases too far back, it has little to do with it. It is a normal process of carbon adhering to surface at the point of discharge. You cannot stop it or minimize it, you can only push it forward or backward. Make sure your bore always has a little bit of graphite inside, bores do not like dry first shot at all. This is where most of the carbon gets deposited. There are no issues using the power drill to get rid of the carbon ring, just don't do this to the rest of the barrel. Not because you will damage anything, you won't. You don't want to over polish the bore, for a variety of reasons. Instead of breaking perfectly good cleaning rod, just use old 3 peace rod that you likely have in the kit. Lastly, forget the nylon brush. Use bronze brush. Patch with CLR first and hit it with abrasive compound before resorting to drill. You will not damage your barrel with bronze brush, that is an absolute horseradish, I cannot believe people still believe that stuff. Happy cleaning.

[Flyerhawk_]

Absolute life saver! I had pressure isues with my 6.5 lapua out of nowhere i couldn't eject the cases. Had to pound the cases out of the chamber from the muzzle end with a cleaning rod. The case bodies were massively swollen. Just checked and yup i have a carbon ring!

[dkhmr]

Pre treat with CLR if you can get it. I have spun a brush/rod with my drill in the throat also. Barrels are about the cheapest part of shooting.

[jeffreyyoung]

I get that problem with shooting black powder, where the bullet is seated on the powder, and makes the last inch of seating the bullet a real pain!
Seeing my rifle is a modern one with a removable breach plug, it is easy to see and work on removing the carbon ring when cleaning.
But it is a real drag when you are working on trying different loads to see how new components are performing!

[conservativesniperhunter]

Bronze brushes are softer than barrel steels so there is no way that they can damage the rifling or the lead in the barrel.

[Zak]

Thank you ! I did the same on my 6mm CM a few months ago and people told me I was crazy. Carbon fibre rod with nylon brush only pushed in far enough to get the ring. I didnt see how I could destroy the barrel....and surprise, I didnt. Its shoots great again !

[perchowski]

Dealt with this about 6 months ago.. velocity started getting crazy high in my 6.5 creedmoor load out of nowhere and started to get pressure signs. Did some research and found out about the carbon rings and looked in my chamber with my borescope and sure enough I had the dreaded carbon ring. Velocity went up close to 100fps.. cleaned the carbon ring and all was back to normal.

[georgemorgan]

I get carbon rings on .308 barrels with factory ammo. Stainless steel match barrels seem to attract it worst, even though the rest of the stainless barrel is easier to clean. Scrubbing out the ring by hand with a nylon brush every time seems to prevent it from getting out of hand. Same with .22LR. My stainless match .22LR starts getting a ring after 50 rounds. The regular CZ 457 hardly gets rings at all.

[kochj]

I have a 17 Remington gas gun, which shoots lights out, amazingly even with mixed brass, but my brass is sized down shoulder, bumped 223/5.56 brass.. and it gives me a short case that definitely will develop carbon ring same as your situation. Thank you for this insight.