Cleaning a CF barrel

[cmoses]

So I let a friend borrow my mag for a while, and when I got it back the barrel was caked with paint inside. He was shooting some crappy oil based walmart paint and it has dried and made the barrel very sticky inside. I have boiled barrels before to make it easier to clean, but this one is a deadly wind, so I thought I would make sure that it was safe to boil the carbon fiber. I'm not sure if this would affect the epoxy or the fiber itself.

[SockMonkey]

I cleaned up a cocker for a friend that had several year old paint residue from crappy paint and breaks. Just running hot water from the tap through it pretty much cleaned it all out. But I guess I don't know if it was oil based or not. Maybe oil based wont come out as easy.

[CatoRockwell]

Hot water, rubber squeegie. wash, squeegie, repeat.

If it won't come out still, try hot water and soap. Let it soak and then wash squeegie repeat.

[kcombs9]

I never got to boiling point but I did stove top hot water on a J&J ceramic to clean it out. and it worked fine.

[factoid]

I would guess the carbon fiber used to make barrels is probably not terribly heat resistant, because that wouldn't be a design requirement. Usually with CF you don't make it heat resistant unless the specs call for it.

That said hot tap water should be fine. Use dish soap...that stuff is great against oils. Get a swabbie style barrel cleaner and get it wet and soapy and just run it through a few times. I dont' think you'll have much trouble getting it off.

Then use a standard squeegee and warm water to rinse all the soap suds out, because soap buildup in a barrel can be as bad as oil buildup.

[phizz]

Try rubbing alcohol 50-70%

[kwik175]

Let it soak in hot water with a strong concentration of Dawn dish soap. I am not sure why Dawn is different from others but I work on an oil rig and we use it to clean up after work and it removes all kinds of oil based substances. We actually get it by the case at work.