How dirty should a new rifle barrel be?

[DartonJager]

Just picked up my newest rifle a CVA Cascade in 450 Bushmaster.
Put it in my cleaning cradle saturated the bore with Sharp Shoot-R Wipe-out Accelerator then filled the bore with Wipe-Out foaming bore cleaner plugged both ends and let soak for 1-3/4 hours.
Pushed a cleaning patch down the bore using a .45 caliber nylon bore bush that will not react with the Wipe-Out and add to the amount of blue that ends up on the patch.

I was rather shocked at how much blue was on the patch along with carbon fouling indicating a fair amount of copper fouling had been deposited in the bore. I have been using Wipe-Out as my sole bore cleaner for well over 10 years now and are very familiar with how much fouling and what types should be on the patch in direct relation to how many shots I fired prior to that cleaning and based on my experience I usually only get this level of coppery/blue fouling after 10-15 rounds.

I have cleaned many brand new rifle barrels and never recall one having been this badly fouled with copper.
I have included a pic to help people in forming their replies.

Like to add this is my eighth new rifle in the last 4-5 years and first new one in about 8 months and I could be wrong or just not recalling how fouled the others were all that well. Please let me now what you all think.

 

[Barrelnut]

Don't own a CVA, but they do look like nice rifles at their price point. It's probably an unlapped button rifled barrel and the lands could be a little rough after cutting the chamber. The color of the patch doesn't mean is won't shoot. Savage factory barrels are pretty much the same way but shoot great after a 100 rounds or so. I had an after marked barrel recently that was lapped with a "polished" throat. It fouled more than expected with some high SDs. But it settled in right around 100 rounds.

 

[jpd676]

I recently purchased two new rifles and used patch out to clean them. I didn't have that much blue on the patch but had more than I thought should be there for a test fire. One was a Savage and one was a Christensen's. I think that is probably normal.

 

[DartonJager]

Thanks for the replies.
Not concerned it wont shoot well just was surprised by the level of fouling. I let the barrel soak with Wipe-Out with Accelerator for 8 hours and are going to go finish cleaning it. Will post my results.
Again thanks for the replies.

 

[Window]

Just picked up my newest rifle a CVA Cascade in 450 Bushmaster.
Put it in my cleaning cradle saturated the bore with Sharp Shoot-R Wipe-out Accelerator then filled the bore with Wipe-Out foaming bore cleaner plugged both ends and let soak for 1-3/4 hours.
Pushed a cleaning patch down the bore using a .45 caliber nylon bore bush that will not react with the Wipe-Out and add to the amount of blue that ends up on the patch.

I was rather shocked at how much blue was on the patch along with carbon fouling indicating a fair amount of copper fouling had been deposited in the bore. I have been using Wipe-Out as my sole bore cleaner for well over 10 years now and are very familiar with how much fouling and what types should be on the patch in direct relation to how many shots I fired prior to that cleaning and based on my experience I usually only get this level of coppery/blue fouling after 10-15 rounds.

I have cleaned many brand new rifle barrels and never recall one having been this badly fouled with copper.
I have included a pic to help people in forming their replies.

Like to add this is my eighth new rifle in the last 4-5 years and first new one in about 8 months and I could be wrong or just not recalling how fouled the others were all that well. Please let me now what you all think.

It's common and nothing to worry about. Clean it well and bore scope to have a good starting point. Do whatever break in you prefer and start load development. After that, go put some meat on the table and in the freezer.

 

[ajvinyard]

Most rifles are usually filthy with cutting oil and small metal chips (dust sized) down the bore. Not to mention what oil or rust preventative they may have applied (and could turn your first patch who knows what color). Always clean a new firearm well and oil and butter the places you know need it before you head out to shoot for the first time.

 

[VLD Pilot]

I've had fairly clean new barrels and fairly dirty ones. It's good that you cleaned it before shooting it. Many don't.

 

[DartonJager]

Well have an update.
As I said, soaked my new CVA Cascade in 450BM for another 8 hours and then pushed four dry patches through it. Forth one while pretty clean, was still a little to dirty for my liking and I didn't want to use any more patches so I again saturated the barrel with Accelerator, filled the barrel with W-O foam plugged both ends and let soak while I charged the cases and seated the bullets in my first 35 450BM reloads which took about two hours.
Then I pushed six more dry patches through it.

Only the patch I used to plug the muzzle end had any blue on it and it was only the most extreme slightest of traces best described as three 1/4" long slivers of blue not even visible in the picture they are so small. The blue on the same patch in the top right hand corner is an instance of cross contamination from it sitting on the patch to the left of it from the 8/HR soak. The remaining five patches had very little carbon fouling to begin with and patches 5-6 had progressively less carbon fouling only and the sixth and final patch came out over 90% clean and I had not yet cleaned the receiver yet. After cleaning the receiver I pushed a last dry patch down the bore and it came out 95%+ clean . So I called it good.

This is why I absolutely LOVE Sharp Shoot-R bore cleaning products. W-O works awesome for me because I am almost never in a hurry to clean my rifles. Tremendous improvement in the cleanliness of my bore and I did no scrubbing of the bore at all. Used less than 15 patches making W-O very cost effective. Only draw back is it is admittedly slow as it took almost 12 hours of soaking to get my barrel clean, but to be fare it would have been considerably faster if I would have been more aggressive in my cleaning, but I had absolutely no reason or need to be in a hurry so I just let the combination of Accelerator and W-O do its job.

I will admit though I do use Boretech C4 Carbon cleaner on my rifle barrels when I do a deep cleaning of a heavily fouled barrel especially on my AR's after a high round count range session. I just kinda forgot to use it this time, but based on my results I don't think it was needed.
Included a picture of my last few patches to show the difference from first cleaning to last.