Remove Leading From a Gun Barrel

Revision 1.01

PPU 38 Special

Taurus 727SS


I had a chance to spend some range time with a Taurus model 627SS Tracker chambered for .357 Magnum / .38 Special, 4" barrel, shooting Prvi Partizan (PPU) 158 gr (10.2 gram) Lead Round Nose (LRN) 38 Special bullets.  I previously posted a review of the Taurus 627SS and loader accessories.  On this trip, I was interested in how the gun would perform with lead bullets and wanted to know what failure mode would show up first.  I want to be confident in self-defense situations, but also might trust this gun in the field against larger wild animals where it's not kept in perfect condition.

I shot about 300 rounds over 3 days and the only cleaning I did was to wipe down the front sight with alcohol or water to remove the smokey smudge that builds up after about 80 rounds.  Alcohol pads are great to remove the soot collection.  Licking your finger to wipe soot away works less well, and probably introduces lead into your body.  Half way through the third day, instead of shooting with a free hand double action accuracy of about 5 minutes of arc (MOA), the bullets started dropping about 8 cm over 15 yards.  Precision was still holding, but all the bullets were curving low about 8 cm on target. 

Adjusting the sights didn't change the impact point, and that made me really suspicious because the only way that could happen is if the bullets were being lobbed out of the barrel at a very slow speed.  If you do a gravity calculation, you can see that a bullet falls about 8 cm in 0.128 seconds.  Because I was 15 yards (45 feet) away creating the 8 cm drop, that means the bullet was traveling 45 feet in 0.128 seconds or 350 fps. They're specified by the manufacturer at 890 fps, but they were coming out of the barrel at 350 fps - a 60% loss in velocity!  That means the barrel was really clogged, and I'm lucky it was a barrel meant to handle 357 pressures while I was shooting only 38 specials!

Lots-O-Lead

The first two photos show what I found back home, looking down the front of the barrel, back illuminated with a LED illuminator.  Looks like pictures of cholesterol plugged arteries! The lead was pretty much untouched after running a brash brush about 50 strokes and trying three different bore cleaners.   Looking at the cleaners I used, they all indicated they would remove copper.  Yup, I guess so.  But not lead!

The third photo is the finished barrel after about three hours of work including dissolving lead into liquid mercury and hundreds of strokes with pure copper abrasive.  If you can see two scratches, it's because I first tried to (and failed to) poke the lead chunks out with a screwdriver.  Resolution/focus of the pictures is the best I can do without a macro lens on my camera.

BEFORE
BEFORE AFTER
lead1 lead2 holster


Below are the tools I used.  Towel covers the work surface.  Red flashlight with LED on the end of a flexible shaft illuminates the bore interior. Chore Boy dish cleaning abrasives ($1.21 after tax) were unfolded (they're normally folded in on themselves to keep them a ball), magnifying glass, dental spoon, biological disection poker, chemistry spatula, bore cleaning rod with copper filaments pushed through the end loop.

armscor


Photo below shows what about 75 strokes of copper strands accomplished. Clearly a pile of lead started to accumulate on the towel.  This would work, but would take a long time. This is similar to the Lewis Lead Remover toolkit that uses brass weaved disks instead of copper filaments.  Others recommend wrapping the copper filaments strands around a normal brash brush.

hornady


Peroxide and Vineger

You can read several places on the web about using hydrogen peroxide and vinegar to form a chemical complex with the lead and create Pb2(CH3COO)2 (lead (II) acetate), possibly lead (IV) acetate (need to research this a bit more).  Most of the lead will dissolve into the liquid solution you but into the barrel and the rest can be wiped off the barrel with a cleaning patch after you remove the liquid.  Lead acetate is water soluble, so this can gets into your system easily and even through your skin.  Realize that because there is probably already lead residue on your hands, just getting the peroxide/vinegar solution onto your hands will do the same reaction and create the lead acetate solution right on your skin. Although it used to be a medicinal drug, we now know lead acetate is toxic.  If clean your barrel with this method, you'll have toxic solution coming out and toxic crud on your barrel wipes. If you there is a company using chemicals or a college nearby, ask to speak with their lab manager and ask if you can add your liquid to their liquid inorganic waste collection. They probably have a waste stream for the used cleaning patches, too.

You can lower some of the threat of lead acetate solution by putting it into a strong liquid acid to push the hydrogen back on the acetate and make acetic acid (vinegar or film camera fixing agent) and a lead precipitate.  The toxic problem is the lead part of the equation.  The lead turns into lead chloride if you use hydrochloric acid or lead sulfate if you use sulfuric acid (battery acid).  Both of these new lead compounds are also toxic (see MSDS lead sulfate, lead chloride).  However, unlike lead acetate, they are insoluble in water, so they precipitate out of water so you can filter it and dispose of it easier than the lead acetate.  These precipitation reactions are some of the "qualitative analysis" chemical reactions freshman college students learn.

For perspective, lead sulfate is the white powder that forms on your car battery lead terminals, so you have probably dealt with it before, blown it away with an air compressor hose, or washed it away with the hose down the driveway.  No, you should not do this.  You'll probably get Parkinson's disease if you continue being careless. Notice that car mechanics are now do work with latex gloves, unlike the old day.

Liquid Mercury

I have some liquid mercury I've been trying to get rid of or find a use for, so I decided to try that method.  BTW, if you want to try this, I have lots of extra mercury and I'd be happy to sell you small quantities.  If you have a clear lab bench to work and understand how to work around chemicals, it can be a safe, quick, and thoroughly removing lead.  Federal law requires only 1 pound maximum can be shipped between private parties, and it needs to be done via FedEx - USPS and UPS won't do it. 

Notice in the picture below, the mercury is shiny and has a high surface tension (tends to puddle up easily and won't wet the container it's in).  After reacting with the lead it will be different.  I have the tip of a little suction bulb showing on the right side of the picture, but don't plan to move mercury that way.  It doesn't pick up well because it's so heavy.  That is one of the reasons mercury protocol is to always have a non-metallic catch basin under your work so that you catch any spills and can lift the mercury back up and pour it into a storage container.

 magtech

As shown below, I used electrician's tape to plug the front and side vents.  Next time I would try to find something that the mercury/lead didn't stick to.  (Next time I may experiment with foam ear plugs.  I'm not sure if that would block the mercury or allow it to get into all the little foam holes.)  After sealing off the front of the gun barrel, I poured the mercury from the film canister into the gun barrel.  Lastly, I sealed the chamber with another piece of tape.  Shake. Tilt around.  Tip back and forth.  Agitate. Basically move the mercury around to react with the lead in the barrel.

5-star-loader


After 5 minutes with mercury, I removed the rear tape and poured the mecury back into the films canister.  Some little mercury drops escaped through the barrel venting holes and fell out when I remove the tape.  Part of the mercury protocol is to have a backdrop to catch any mercury that gets loose.  After reacting with the lead, the mercury now has a scummy-like film and it wets to the container, leaving a layer of dirt/lead filmed onto the container.  The tape also has residual mercury and lead.

 5-star-sideview

The lead turns into a black amalgam with the mercury and soft barrel wipes are enough to take it out.  After running two wipes through the barrel twice each, they were very black and extra black powder fell out of the barrel as the wipes were pulled through.  There were two patches of wet mercury on the swabs.  I probably should have used more time than 5 minutes. Continued agitation for 10 minutes or more probably would have created a lot more black powder.  Repeating the process would also have been an option.

5star-w-magtech38s

Rather than handle the mercury more, I wanted to see if the lead had softened overall.  To do this, I wanted to see how much lead or amalgam the copper weave or filaments could remove with physical scrubbing.

Copper Abrasive + Lots of scrubbing

I cut the Chore Boy pot scrubber sock into small sections and then folded/rolled the copper filaments into a blob, which I pulled 1/2-way through the cleaning rod end attachment. 

holster

The copper pads shredded apart a little bit each time I pushed it back and forth in the barrel.  This was accelerated on my specific model of handgun because the porting at the front of the barrel tended to break apart the copper pieces quicker.  Notice I used a white piece of packing paper (like newspaper, but no print on it) to collect the lead and copper.  It would have been easier to use an uncrumpled piece with a single fold to catch the granules, because then I could tap the granules down into the fold use it to guide the granules into a collection vessel.

transfer bar schematic

holster

I repeated the scrubbing and as each copper bundle shredded apart, I created another and continued.  I did this about 5 times before the entire scrub pad was used up. I checked the barrel after each round and would notice where the largest deposits were at and tried scrubbing that part of the barrel more.

The picture below shows the final collection.  I noticed a few LARGE flakes of lead that came out of the barrel.  They were about 3/8" x 1/4".  It looked like the copper broke apart, but at the same time remained pretty "clean", so I was able to jostle the pile and the copper shreds would float to the top and I could pick them up and separate them with a pinch.

holster

Lead granules and the lead/mercury pads were collected in a ziplock bag of hazardous waste.  I did not weigh the lead because I couldn't separate out all of the copper, but my guess is that was at least a gram, maybe more.  That is a LOT of lead taken from the barrel (10% of a bullet or more).  Take a peek at the pictures on the top of this web page and see the difference in the barrel when clean.

holster

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