Over the years, we have found most people are taught to center punch the patch and run it down the bore of a dirty rifle. Sometimes this can result in a bent or stuck cleaning rod in your rifle because of the bore is actually restricted from the powder fouling (carbon) and copper left in the bore. To get around this problem, we wanted to share our knowledge on how to solve this matter.
**Pro-Shot suggests always using a bore guide when cleaning a bolt action rifle.
Solution# 1 Use the Cleaning Patch off Center with your Jag.
Using the correct size patch from the Pro-Shot Patch Size Chart, position your jag so the spear tip positioned about ½ to ¾ of the distance from the center of the patch out towards any of the outside corners on a square patch. On a round patch, place the patch towards any edge. This will make sure the patch doesn’t overlap as much on the jag and it will go through the bore firmly, but not so tight that all the solvent is squished off the patch as it enters the bore.
The purpose of the first couple of patches that you soak with cleaner/CLP is to thoroughly saturate the bore and push out any easily loosened debris. Then by letting the cleaner work on the fouling along with the scrubbing action of the wet brush that will follow will loosen the hard fouling. Once you have saturated the bore and run the wet bore brush through the barrel repeated times, then you can switch back to using your spear tip jag you can start moving the jag back towards the center of the patch in a few steps until you are back in the center of the patch. With the jag back in the center of the patch, the patch will be making uniform contact with the bore as it follows the rifling.
Often rifle shooters use wet patches after brushing to look for either a blue stripe (copper) or a black stripe (carbon/powder) on the patch. If you see either, you will know the barrel isn’t totally clean. If there is just a faint bluish hue to the patch, it is probably the solvent just pulling some copper out of the brass jag. Pro-Shot makes a series of jags that are named Trace Eraser that are made of material that wont leave a fake trace of copper.
While this is a quick solution, there is also another solution that would make your efforts even easier if you invest in more cleaning patches.
Solution#2 Use two sizes of cleaning patches.
First you should utilize a smaller patch for saturating/wetting the bore down at the start of the cleaning process and then a larger size patch for pushing out fouling loosened by your brush and jag to dry the bore. This solutions is truly the best if you can afford two patch sizes. After many years of cleaning rifles, we have found this to be the most superior solution to cleaning your rifle barrel without problems.