gunlaker wrote on Jul 14^th, 2026 at 9:27pm:


I'm not Joe (although I played him once in a Mel Brooks movie) but I don't feel tightness in my "good" schuetzen bores right in front of the chamber when pushing initial wet patches and follow-up dry patches through. Sometimes a bit of tightness is detected when old frostiness is detected in that area in barrels on "veteran" rifles, and sometimes a slight tightness is detected in shiny bores out toward the muzzle but I rec'lect that indicates a bit of choke in the bore and that puts a grin on my face.

Chris:

Fouling usually start from the first shot down the barrel since a bullet has not yet laid grease down until after the first firing.

To prevent fouling being initiated by the first bullet I wipe my barrel with Bore Butter to pre-lube it.

Bore Butter is too viscous for very hot days so I uses a 50:50 mixture of Bore Butter and Alberta Schuetzen Lube to pre-lube the barrel on very warm days.

Following shots should lube your barrel from the lube in your grease grooves.

Whenever there is a ceasefire I always push a cleaning patch through the rifle and follow that with a pre-lube of the barrel before the restart to prevent the hardening of fouling in the barrel.

When I restart firing after a break I always put four shots into the bank to ensure my rifle is stabilized before going back to shooting scoring shots.

Dave

For some reason I've never prelubed my bores except when shooting black powder. Dave I'll give your routine a try.

Joe I will try pushing one in from the muzzle to see how it feels, but I'm pretty sure what I see is from some fouling.  You make an interesting point about the generous lube grooves.  When this happened to me I was shooting the Hoch 322205 bullet which has only three small lube grooves.  It's the first time I tried it in this rifle.

Chris.

I'd love to try some of that 300MP powder.  I remember when John Louis first posted about it.  I've never seen it in B.C.   I might be able to mail order it from back east somewhere.

I think I have 2 or 3 pounds of this current lot of powder.  I have a can from a different lot so might crack it open to see if it's any different.  

In one of my CPA's I had that Hoch 322205 bullet shooting quite well with 4227 and Alberta Schuetzen lube.   In my notes I have a piece of a target from 2022 with 7 of 10 shots into 1.1" at 200 meters.  The remaining three would probably have been right in there but I wasn't using wind flags.

That would have been from the same block of lube, but a different lot of 4227.  I've only ever bought two blocks of that lube from Dave and it turns out I first used it in January of 2016 so I guess it is a little old now   

Chris.