Cleaning the 17 HMR - The Easy Way!

All of my center-fire rifles copper the bore to some extent.  If I go too long without cleaning they buildup significant amounts of copper that can be a real chore to remove.  Since the 17 HMR uses a jacketed bullet at 2550 fps, I figured it would be just like my center fires.  I use a 17 cal cleaning rod for my 204 Ruger so I was set in that department.  The first few times I cleaned the 17 HMR barrel I was looking for the green-blue color on the patch that tells me copper is being removed.  You know what I found?  Nothing.  Nadda.  Zilch!  There was no sign of dissolved copper whatsoever.   I shined a light at the end of the barrel and even took it outside in the sun looking for copper and never found any.  I'm not saying it doesn't copper foul at all, but if it does it is minimal.  Ramming my cleaning rod through a barrel with lands only a few thousands of an inch tall just to get powder fouling out makes me a bit nervous, so I looked into a bore snake.  Dragging a dirty rope down the barrel didn't sound like the best idea either so I kept looking.

Somewhere in my internet searches a forum member mentioned a patch worm.  What the heck is a patch worm I thought to myself.  I tracked it down to this Patch Worm.  It is essentially a length of weed wacker string with one end sharpened to pierce a patch and with the other end having a small fitting slightly larger than the string.  For different calibers a different size button is slid down the string to the large end.  That button is a little smaller than the bore.  Then you use the sharp end of the string to pierce a patch and slide it down the string to the top of the button.  Soak the patch with some solvent, push the sharp end of string through barrel out muzzle, and just pull the patch through.  Bloody genius!

Me being fiscally challenged I skipped on the nice commercial version at a whopping $6.50 and headed out to the garage.  I cut about five feet of weed wacker string and headed back to the basement workbench.  With the gentle use of a lighter, I heated the end of the string and pushed the end into some sheet metal I had laying around.   Then I sharpened the other end of the string with a Dremel tool with a sanding drum.  I used the same Dremel setup to carefully round the previously heated fat end of the string so it fit the bore with a patch over it.  A little trial and error and had a good fit between my flannel patches and the bore. 

Time to test this thing out.  The little Savage was dirty having close to a hundred rounds through it without cleaning.  Heavy carbon fouling was easily seen the entire length of the barrel.  I whipped out my general purpose gun cleaner that consists of a 50/50 mix of automatic transmission fluid and acetone in an old saline solution bottle, (remember that fiscally challenged thing I mentioned earlier?) and wetted down the patch.  With the excitement only a do-it-your-selfer would display, I pulled the patch through the barrel and held the gun up to the light looking through the barrel.  Son of a gun!  That looks pretty clean!  I'm sure it's not as clean as I'd get it with a rod, but this is so much quicker and doesn't risk damaging the rifling.  I ran another wet patch followed by two dry patches and called it done.  I intend to use this cleaning method on the 17 HMR from now on.  I'll probably still pull out the rod and jag on occasion, but not after every session.

I posted a picture of my home made patch worm below.  Another nice thing is it stores easily in a ziplock sandwich bag which fits inside my gun case a lot easier than a cleaning rod.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.