Benchrest shooter Bill Gammon offers a nice product that helps prevent solvents and oils from marring the finish of a fine wood stock, or a painted fiberglass stock. The STOKBOOT also prevents solvents from softening the bedding, while guarding against nicks and scratches. Gammon’s STOKBOOT fits over the rifle stock during cleaning of the barrel. The quilt on the outside soaks up the solvent before it reaches the stock and holds it until it evaporates. A twin layer of vinyl on the inside stops any solvents from getting through, but Gammon cautions that you should not leave the STOKBOOT on overnight, because solvents could soak through. The basic colors are Red, Wine, Black, Blue, and Green. Typical retail price is about $17.00.
Gammon explains how he came up with the STOKBOOT: “My wife Barbara and I started this business in 1992 as a means to support a very expensive sport, namely Bench Rest. My wife had been in the sewing business for many years. Her experience included sewing, layout, cutting, and management, so it was only logical that the next step was opening our own business. I had complained about having to use a rag over my stock to prevent solvents that I was using from ruining the paint job on the stock, and also seeping into the bedding area and softening up the bedding. So between her expertise in the sewing world and my practical knowledge, we came up with our first STOKBOOT.”
Gammon sells wholesale only. His STOKBOOTs are available through popular retail vendors including: Accuracy Arms, Borden Rifles, Bruno Shooters Supply, Russ Haydon’s Shooters’ Supply, Sinclair International. European dealers are: Reloading Solutions (UK), and Heinz Henke (Germany).
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’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)
In 2011, Hornady will be offering a new stainless-shell, heavy-duty Ultrasonic Cleaning machine, which fits nicely between the cheap, low-capacity machines sold on eBay, and the large industrial machines which can cost $1000.00 or more. Hornady’s new Lock-N-Load® Magnum Sonic Cleaner™, with a $317.08 MSRP, provides triple the size and twice the power of the original Lock-N-Load® Sonic Cleaner™.
Dual Transducers for Faster Cleaning
The new machine, priced at $317.08 MSRP, features two transducers. This assuredly will improve cleaning performance and probably reduce processing time, compared to single-transducer machines in the same size range. The new Magnum Sonic Cleaner also has a heat-setting control, allowing users to set the correct temperature for best cleaning efficiency. Cheaper machines just have an “on/off” switch. The new machine comes standard with a durable metal-mesh basket.
SPECIFICATIONS
Magnum Sonic Cleaner Machine
3L Tank (3.2 qt)
Tank dimensions: 9.4″ x 5.5″ x 3.9″.
MSRP: $317.08
Chip Lohman, Managing Editor of Shooting Sports USA Magazine, has authored an excellent article on barrel maintenance and cleaning. Chip’s article, Let the BARREL Tell You — Match Barrel Care, Part I, appears in the January 2010 edition of Shooting Sports USA, which is FREE online, in a digital e-zine format.
Chip Lohman is a talented writer, an NRA-Certified Instructor, and an active shooter. Like most writers, he maintains a healthy sense of curiosity. The debate about the proper care of a match barrel is a hot one, spiked with folklore and old wives’ tales, Lohman said. He and his staff set out to set the record straight: “We tried to interject some science into the discussion of cleaning a match barrel,” he explained. In his article, Lohman writes:
Why worry about a little barrel fouling when the throat is subjected to a brutal 5,600° F volcano at 55,000 PSI? To investigate these and other questions about taking care of a match barrel, we spoke with a dozen experts and share their knowledge in this first of a series of articles.
After listening to folks who shoot, build barrels or manufacture cleaning solvents for a living, we concluded that even the experts each have their own unique recommendations on how to care for a match barrel. But they all agree on one thing— the gun will tell you what it likes best. Because the life expectancy of a match barrel is about 1,500 to 2,500 rounds, the objectives of cleaning one should include: preserve accuracy, slow the erosion and remove fouling—all without damaging the gun. This article doesn’t claim that one cleaning method is better than the next. Rather, we set out to interject a little science into the discussion and to share some lessons learned from experts in the field.
In 2011, Hornady will be offering a new stainless-shell, heavy-duty Ultrasonic Cleaning machine, which fits nicely between the cheap, low-capacity machines sold on eBay, and the large industrial machines which can cost $1000.00 or more. Hornady’s new Lock-N-Load® Magnum Sonic Cleaner™, with a $317.08 MSRP, provides triple the size and twice the power of the original Lock-N-Load® Sonic Cleaner™.
Dual Transducers for Faster Cleaning
Chip Lohman, Managing Editor of Shooting Sports USA Magazine, has authored an excellent article on barrel maintenance and cleaning. Chip’s article, 
