Old School vs. New school cleaning
I have the original bottle of Hoppes gun cleaner that my first 22lr cleaning kit, I’ve kept it as a time capsule as to how long ago it was that I first got into shooting. I remember the first time I got a cleaning patch stuck in the barrel and when I bent the 3 piece rod and ended up going out and picking up a larger and stronger cleaning rod. We learn most of our wisdom from trial and error and putting large cleaning patches down the barrel of a 22 caliber rifle is a learning experience. I’ve only ruined one cleaning rod to date, but I really don’t use them very much anymore.
Bore snakes were really the thing that did in the use of me using cleaning rods. Ever since I picked up an my first AR15, which was a Bushmaster XM15E2 with a heavy barrel, I was happy to eliminate a considerable amount of time in gun cleaning. I was well aware that the direct impingement guns were dirty, but considering how many cleaning patches I went through on just the chamber, I was glad to have a boresnake. Another step to my collection of gun cleaning supplies were the Otis gun cleaning kits were another step forward for me because I got the same compactness that the Hoppes bore snake gave me with even more cleaning tools in a tiny case. I have a cleaning rod for rifles and one that is specific for handguns, but I’m using them less and less in comparison to Otis and boresnakes.