Toilet bowl cleaner

Cajun72 said:

Well has anyone ever used the works toilet bowl cleaner. To remove corrosion from a barrel?

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Good way to destroy your barrel. This stuff has 9.5% hydrochloric acid acording to the label. Keep all chlorides including table salt away from your rifle, they are corrosive. Yes, intitially they will remove rust by dissolving it but the acid will get into all of the nooks and crannies, attract moisture, and cause more rust. If you have already used this or any other kind of acid, you need to flush your barrel with a solution of baking soda and rinse well.

I used to use the works to clean wire edm parts. The gel worked great but the liquid not so much and that is a very very mild rust. I don’t think it would work well in a barrel.

Cajun72 said:

Well has anyone ever used the works toilet bowl cleaner. To remove corrosion from a barrel?

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Bar keeps best friend works pretty good, it’s a mixture of borax soap and pumice. I woudn’t use it on rifles.

Cajun72 said:

Well has anyone ever used the works toilet bowl cleaner. To remove corrosion from a barrel?

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Cajun72 said:

Well has anyone ever used the works toilet bowl cleaner. To remove corrosion from a barrel?

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I would try the vapor rust. Just used it to clean the rust out of an old CVA that had been put up loaded for 10 years. Did a good job and after a few hours of scrubbing the barrel looks decent

Any time I've used an acid on a gun (such as vinegar to kill mold on a stock or AF as a stain) I've neutralized it afterwards with household ammonia. I don't want any acid residue to come in contact with the metal. Water follows. Yeah, just plain old water would probably be enough, but why not perform the extra 30 second step just to be sure. And maybe the ammonia will kill some mold spores the vinegar missed.

Remember the "salt wood" stocks that Browning made in the late `60's-early `70's? Those caused all sorts of problems due to the salt in the wood. It didn't show up until years later, but people tend to take modern guns out of their stocks a lot less than they do their ML'ers. I know I very seldom take my cartridge guns fully apart (or even out of their stocks). Most of them I NEVER have.

Wow ......

Some toilet cleaners are muriatic acid. It can remove rust but it can chlorinate the steel causing irreparable scaling and rust.

Think Chlorine bleach.

Works is available in two different chemicals. The active ingredient in the blue bottle is HCL, and the green bottle is H₃PO₄

I have used cheap snow bowl toilet cleaner to remove rust and bluing, it works fast and easy but you will need to keep it well oiled afterward.

Molasses from the feed store, 8-1 with water being the 8 and filler up and wait 2 days. FADES BLUEING (but works wonders on rust).

Do not ever use anything containing chlorine in any form to clean your rifle. Not toilet bowl cleaner, not bleach, not anything containing HCl. It is all very corrosive to steel, worse than corrosive primers, and is difficult to completely remove from the crevasses in the breech plug and drum or touchhole areas. It is still corrosive even after you neutralize it with baking soda. Warm, soapy water always worked just fine for me for general periodic cleaning. If you need to remove surface rust, or worse corrosion, use a chelator like Evapo-Rust, but be careful, it might take some of the brown or blue color off the outside of your barrel. HCl can also do this, so you can get better results with the safer product.

You might want to check the ingredients in that and the ask yourself do you really want that in your rifle bore.

The old Coca Cola was good. The farmer I worked for had an engine from a F-12 farmall that was seized up. He dug a big hole, lined it with thick plastic, and poured a case of coke in there with the rusted engine. He had it apart after 2 weeks of soaking…..

Grampa used to hang a nail in coke to show us younguns it would eat there guts out. Did dissolve the nail

SDSmlf said:

It’s going to clean something, no doubt, though I’m not sure I want to use a product that contains near 10% hydrochloric acid to clean corrosion from a gun barrel. Many products (EvapoRust for example) and DIY concoctions for rust removal. It’s your gun, try it if you want and report back. Oh, make sure to wear your PPE.
https://ehs.cranesville.com/msds.pdfs/MSDS(T024).pdf

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Naval Jelly is also Hydrochloric acid and will remove rust but it leaves Chlorides if not rinsed and cleaned very well. Think salt (sodium chloride) and beware of chlorides. I think Ospho is phosphoric acid and actually helps prevent new rust to some extent.

dont forget to use t.p. for patches

boberator said:

phosphoric acid and actually helps prevent new rust to some extent.

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Phosphoric acid is the main active ingredient in metal preps I use before painting metal. It leaves an etched finish that paint adheres to very well. Personally I would prefer a smooth polished finish in the bore rather than an etched finish that stuff adheres to, but maybe that’s just me being unreasonable.

ronaldrothb49 said:

You might want to check the ingredients in that and the ask yourself do you really want that in your rifle bore.

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I already did and it is EDTA or a closely related chemical. These are not harmful to steel, and yes, I would put them into my rifle bore, while I would definitely not put anything in there that contains any chloride in any form, including the do-it-yourself primer and percussion cap mixes.

Well..... A rifle barrel is essentially a pipe.
Why not use some Liquid Fire drain cleaner?
In ALL seriousness, I would stick to bore cleaners and elbow grease.
I've used scotch Brite pads / 000 steel wool and valve lapping compound on badly neglected smoothbores with good results.
Good luck friend.

azmntman said:

Grampa used to hang a nail in coke to show us younguns it would eat there guts out. Did dissolve the nail

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For me it was a horse shoe that needed cleaning. Cake did not come in big jugs like now, but a 7 cent Coke did the job. I often wonder how they learned this stuff!