I've been reading about cleaning guns with paper towels-Bounty is recommended- over on the "Arbiet Macht Frei" site. Yesterday at the range I cleaned 2 rifles with paper towels, ripped off a strip and wound it around an undersized brush as I do withh cotton patches.
But.
I was told by several/many machinists that paper is hard to cut, very abrasive.
In the '60's at Carter's Ink we cut ~1 1/2" of carbon paper with a normal-looking shear, all day long. That's how we cut carbon paper to the 8 1/2 X 11 size. The blade was changed every Friday afternoon, sent for resharpening. After zillions of pieces of paper were cut.
I'm not sure that paper has much kmore abrasive stuff in it than cotton.
Unless somebody can tell me why not to, I'm going to Bounty for a lot of my cleaning.
Comments?
joe b.

I think a lot would depend on the paper in question.  much paper now is recycled and will vary from batch to batch. some of the towels are promoted for absorbancy, others for durability.  I know that optical makers warn against using paper products to clean optical glass and that even a single swipe with a paper towel or napkin will leave microscopic scratches.  Glass is harder than steel as far as I know.  perhaps its fine abrasive qualities are just what we need to clean a bore and heaven knows we use use other abrasives and solvents for bore cleaning.

In the far dim dark past I worked for a very short time at Simplicity Pattern Co where they had close to 60 printing presses of various sorts and used gazilllions of tons of paper every year.  They even had an in-house paper mill to make the thin brown paper the patterns were printed on.  Their paper was very tough and abrasive and they had to get very special imported blades to cut it off the take up spools on the presses. They were sent out to a special shop in Detroit for sharpening and cryogenic treating---and this was back in the very early 70's before Cryo-treat was common.   I bought a blade that had been dropped and broken (the employee who did it was canned) and made several knives from it--it made super knives though it required a awful lot of very slow careful hand held grinding to avoid overheating.

And then there is the issue of paper patched bullets!
  Bill

A friend of mine uses paper towels on his guns, and claims they're the only way to go.  He uses them on a jag.

But if he ever cuts those paper towels to size with his wife's sewing shears, he's a dead man .

If paper can noticeably dull the edge of scissors, couldn't it significantly dull the edges of rifling?

I use cut-up white cotton socks, of which I have an endless supply.

Bent_Ramrod wrote on Aug 24^th, 2006 at 10:11pm:


If you knew more about women, you would know that it's not the dulling she is worried about, esp from paper.  It's that they end up in his tool box or out in the garage where she can't find them.   

Why the worry with dulling edges?  Even if it did happen.  Ever seen Metford rifling?   

Consistent edges are important.  Sharp edges, I think not.

There is more hysteria about paper patches than has ever been warrented by anything like data.   

Brent

MartiniBelgian wrote on Aug 25^th, 2006 at 5:58pm:


Sorry but I don't.   
Brent