Many serious hunters opt to perform rifle maintenance and conditioning themselves. However, many find it difficult – or even impossible – to achieve the proper cleaning and surface finishing results using the options available to them. These can include steel and bronze wool, sandpaper wrapped around a dowel, brushes and other homemade remedies.
For rifles, an area that often requires periodic conditioning is the chamber. Even new, higher end rifles can arrive with small pits and occlusions in the chamber as the machining process utilized by manufacturers is very difficult.
However, a less than highly polished chamber can create several problems for the rifle owner, including ejection problems and scarring of brass casings.
As an alternative, many rifle owners are turning to a flexible, drill-mounted hone called the Flex-Hone. Available from Brush Research Manufacturing, the product is characterized by the small, abrasive globules permanently mounted to flexible nylon filaments.
Available in a variety of lengths and grits designed to meet the various bore or gauge sizes of most types of guns, the Flex-Hone for rifle chambers safely and thoroughly cleans out any chamber damage that has occurred from oxidation and corrosion or blend out scratches, nicks and pits to produce a beautifully polished chamber surface.
Naturally, the product is not to be used in the barrel as it could affect the existing rifling.
For hunters of smaller game, the flexible hone also works well with shotguns, where it can be used to smooth the barrel, chamber and/or forcing cone. Used in a shotgun barrel, the flexible hone removes oxidation, corrosion and residue for greater accuracy and less wear. Like with the rifle, when it is used in the chamber the polished finish allows fired cases to extract more easily.
The forcing cone can also be polished using a specially designed tapered flexible hone. Forcing cones are the first thing the shot and wadding encounter as the transition is made from chamber to barrel, the cone literally forcing the larger diameter payload down to barrel size, so it is subjected to considerable force, as its name implies.
This can lead to considerable fouling build-up close to the cone. Not only does the fouling create added resistance but can induce corrosion to take hold under it. Even regular cleaning may not remove it all. Honing with the Flex-Hone will ensure fouling build up is minimized.
For instructional videos on the use of the Flex-Hone on rifles and shotguns, there are several YouTube videos available here.