June 1st, 2011

T.K. Nollan’s Barrel Saver Cleaning Rod Guide

Smart shooters know the importance of using a quality cleaning rod bore guide when cleaning barrels. The rod guide helps center the rod in the bore, preventing uneven wear on the rifling. Good bore guides also seal off the chamber to prevent solvents and gunk from flowing back into the bolt raceway and trigger housing. While most bore guides are “better than nothing”, the best designs are custom-sized to the chamber and also have a very tight clearance around the rod shaft. This prevents the rod from bowing and from dragging on the critical throat area of your rifle. We use Lucas Rod Guides for many of our rifles. The Lucas two-part design, with a caliber-specific insert, provides a tight fit for the rod.

T.K. Nollan’s Barrel Saver System
While many readers may have seen or used Lucas Rod Guides, T.K. Nollan makes another very high-quality cleaning rod guide that is favored by top benchrest shooters such as Tony Boyer, Dwight Scott, and Dick Wright. If, like many short-range Benchresters, you do a lot of barrel brushing, it may be worth investing in the $135.00 Barrel Saver.

T.K. Nollan Barrel Saver

T.K. Nollan’s patent-pending Barrel Saver is a precision-machined system designed to provide maximum protection during barrel cleaning. The Barrel Saver features a double O-ring “fail-safe” seal, and a stainless steel outer tube with straightness held to within .001″. To help ensure optimal alignment, a bushing, custom-sized for your action, precisely centers the outer tube in your action. Models are offered for Hall, Stolle, Grizzly, Farley, Remington, RFD, Nesika Bay, Borden, BAT, Viper and similar 2-lug actions.

Each Nollan Barrel Saver comes with two (2) metal guide tubes, one for brushes and the other for jags. As you can see in the slide show below, these brush/jag tubes run INSIDE the larger diameter guide which slides into the action and chamber. This “tube-within-tube” design, combined with the 0-ring for the chamber, ensures that the cleaning rod stays precisely centered, even if you brush fairly aggressively. While we strongly advocate bore-brushing only in the outward direction, we know some shooters prefer to brush back and forth. If you are a “back and forth” cleaner, you NEED a product like the T.K. Nollan Barrel Saver.

T.K. Nollan Barrel Savers start at $135.00 plus $9.00 shipping for PPC-type chamberings. Custom sizes cost $150.00 plus $9.00 shipping. Each Barrel Saver kit comes complete with two Rod Guide Tubes and spare O-rings. For more info, visit the Barrel Saver website, or contact T.K. Nollan at this address:

TK Tool Co. – Precision Benchrest Tools
tknemail [at] gmail.com
401 South Cimarron St.
Catoosa, OK 74015
(918) 633-2966 (Call before 9:00 PM CST)