Yesterday I took my Spencer in 44-40 to the range and shot 100 rounds through it. I'm not casting .429 bullets yet so I bought some cast bullets. They are a bit undersized so accuracy suffered and leading was an issue.

I got the gun home and ran dozens of patches of Shooters Choice, Kroil, Sweets, etc through the bore. All this did was make the lead look real shinny.

So I remembered the advise of Gun Turpentine and I had some. Took a nylon brush, wrapped it with a layer of paper towel and then a bit of "Chore Boy" copper pot scrubber fibers. Stuck it into the bottle of gum turpentine until the paper towel was saturated and ran it three times down the bore.

Amazing how much lead showed up on the Chore Boy and the barrel was sparkling clean.

Gum Turpentine is my new friend!

Wish I knew about the gum turpentine. I had a 22rf martini and when you first looked thru the barrel it looked like the craters of the moon. I cleaned that little rifle almost every day for a couple weeks. The lumps were still there. About a year later I figured what the heck and when done the lumps were gone and the barrel looked way better. I also have a 1895 win in 30-40 krag. That had the worst case of copper fouling I ever saw. No matter what I tried still got green or blue patches. So I set aside for about 6 months. Used a 8mm bore brush and wonder of wonders it cleaned up. I had posted before about the martini. Guess the solvents had finally worked their way under the lead. Tks for posting about the gum turpentine. Frank

A lot of hardware turpentine is paint thinner made to smell like turpentine.  It doesn't work well.  Make sure you get the poduct that says 100% gum turpentine, or says "Distilled from tree sap".  That's the stuff that works.  Or, come by my house.  I have an extra gallon can of it, and if you bring a jar, I'll give you a half pint or so; a few years supply.  A friend gave it to me when he moved, and I already have a quart can I've used for several years and have hardly depleted at all yet.

The only "magic" to turpentine is that it somehow makes the lead stick to the patch, and pulls it off the metal barrel.  It also is a penetrant that separates the lead from the steel, but I'm not convinced that it is better than other penetrating oils and solvents at that.  If I soak a stubborn leaded bore with Kroil and then tight patch with turpentine, it works as well as soaking with turpentine and then tight patching it.  But, Kroil alone and tight patch won't remove much lead at all.

If the barrel is rough and rusty, it mechanically holds onto the lead better, and is hard to remove it.  Personally, if it's really rusty, I use a solvent (turpentine is fine) and fine steel wool wrapped around a bronze brush.  Once I get the soft brown/red rust out and the grease out, then I plug the bore and fill it with Evapo-rust.  Let that sit overnight and then brush/solvent clean it again.  Repeat the Evapo-rust if it still has brown rust in it.  Keep doing those cycles until you have gray metal in the bore.  That's as clean as you can get it from the rust.  Don't get the evapo-rust on blued or case colored surfaces, it strips them clean to gray metal too.

Then, polish with JB's bore paste, or possibly even lead lap the bore to smooth out some of the pitting.  JB's won't really do much to polish it, will mostly just smooth the sharp and jagged edges somewhat.

dave

Have not used gum turpentine, but I like these 2 items;
Big 45 Frontier pad-kind of the professional equivalent of a Chore Boy.  One will last you years.  It's now my go to method (with WD 40) for removing corrosion and rust from the outside of barrels and parts (but not as a lube for the gun)

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For a chemical method, I use Wipeout Foam bore cleaner, with their accellerator--at Brownell's and other sources. It is just plain awesome on copper fouling and works well on lead too.

My 2 cents--but I will try turpentine sometime soon