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Cleaning Exterior Stainless Steel Barrel Surface?
dja_3_hunter
Member Posts: 8 ✭✭
What do I need to use (cleaner, steel wool,etc.) to clean the exterior surface of a stainless steel rifle barrel? It has a few scratches that I would like to remove as well.
Comments
As for the scratches, your options are limited. Removing scratches involves removing metal. In other words, polishing them out with abrasives. If the barrel already has a matte finish you could easily hide, or at least minimize, minor scratches with bead blasting. A polished or brushed finish will require more work in order to match the surrounding surface.
However, if it's got tiny craters indicating it was bead-blasted, any abrasive you use will leave a shiny spot that may look worse than it does not. (A professional can easily re-do the entire part, & it will look great.)
So, analyze the surface carefully before you begin.
Neal
As has been prevciously stated, the only to match some matte finishes is remove the barreled action from the stock, and then remove the trigger group and any moving parts. Bead blast using virgin GLASS beads that have never seen steel.
Hope this helps.
Best
You don't need anything abrasive just find a product called ROR (Residual Oil Remover) by V-VAX Products ROR.net. We use it to clean our HD television camera lenses. You may be able to find it in a camera store, use it to clean your scopes, binos and rinse out your microfibers and hang to dry they will be like new.
But for Stainless Steel...
Spray some on a dry cleaning patch and wipe it down should take very little time to get down to the issue and clean it factory new. In my experience on matte SS it takes very little scrubbing to remove the guilty party. Once you are satisfied with your progress make sure to get oil right back on the steel for protection.
I used 3 patches and this took in all seriousness 5 to 6 minutes - no brushes, sandpaper, soap/water just the spray, a patch and then re-application of gun oil.
This rifle was beat to death when I got it. Keep in mind I had already done some work to remove the rust and stains previous to the before pictures. Wished I had used ROR earlier! If it's good enough for a $300k Fujinon Camera lens its good enough for my big box rifle and customs.
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