Dang! That was crusty!

[johnf]

I cleaned my Benelli Nova for the first time tonight and it took forever. Most of my guns I can clean in about 20 minutes, and this thing took nearly an hour. I've only shot about 150 rounds through in, but it was the nastiest gun I've cleaned in a long time. I couldn't believe the number of patches I went through. I did buy it new and didn't do any kind of initial cleaning so I'm thinking maybe there was some kind of factory gunk in there. Is that plausible?

All my other guns are single shots, exept for a marlin 336 30-30 and a beretta pistol, and they are never that bad. Is this a normal thing for a pump shotgun?

I was equally impressed with the ease and speed in which the gun broke down.

[Strut_Buster]

yea shotguns tend to foul up worse than a rifle i find. did you run a few patches through before you first shot it?

[johnf]

No, I didn't know I needed to. Is there a trick to getting them clean faster, or is it just the nature of the beast?

[slugshooter]

Benelli packs their guns in some type of grease before they ship them so they don't rust just in case they sit in the box or on the shelf for awhile, you definitely need to get all that grease out of there before you shoot( 20/20 hindsight huh ), anyhoo, after a good cleaning I season it with the T/C Bore Butter, once that grease is gone then cleaning isn't any different from any other type of shotgun and seasoning it with the bore butter will only make it easier.

[johnf]

When you season it with the bore butter (I've got some) do you do it just like you would cleaning? Running it through the barrel then putting patches through untill they come out clean and dry? Do you do this with other riffles too or just shotguns? I've never heard of this before.

I bet I used 50-75 patches on that thing last night. By right thumb is killing my from pusing that rod through so many times.

How do you get the choke tubes clean? I rubbed them forever and never got all the staining off of
one of them.

[slugshooter]

The best thing to do when you first clean that Nova, is use a brass brush, I used to clean that gun and couldn't figure out why the barrel never looked clean, after I used the brass brush it got everything out and was much easier to clean. As far as the bore butter, you can buy the stuff in the tube or buy the presoaked patches, what I do is just coat a patch liberally with the butter and run it through the bore several times making sure I coat the whole barrel then look inside the barrel and you can see if you've got it all covered, then take a clean patch/patches and run it through to get out the excess. Thats all I use for my shotguns, I use that to lube my shotguns and I fire slugs out of it and everything, the barrel doesn't seem to get as fouled up as normal and cleaning seems easier. You can also buy the T/C #13 Bore cleaner, it's supposed to remove the powder residue and such without ruining the seasoning in the barrel.

[slugshooter]

As far as the choke tubes, good luck, I can get the barrel shining bright after a good cleaning and buttering, but even I haven't figured out the secret to getting the choke tubes that way.

[ZooBear]

Ive shot thousands of rounds on trap and sporting clays and talked with hundreds of shooters and gunsmiths. Not one has recomended seasoning a shotgun barrel with bore butter.
Clean it with a quality bore cleaner, oil it and call it good.

[slugshooter]

I don't think it hurts, whether or not it helps is in the eye of the shooter.

[AJ]

Every gun, be it rifle, shotgun, or handgun should have the bore cleaned prior to shooting. Some guns have a protective coating in the bore. Guns can have who knows what in the bore. Clean the thing out with some good solvent prior to firing the first shot.

Sorry slugshooter, Bore Butter in a shotgun barrel does nothing. The Benelli has a chrome lined barrel so your bore butter is a waste of time. Once the bore is clean, you can coat it with a good product like Slip 2000, Rem Oil, or something that works.

Cleaning a shotgun is easier than a rifle. Use some powder fouling solvent on a bronze brush. Hoppes #9 works good. Scrub a couple times and patch away the residue. Depending on how many times the gun was fired, a plastic remover may be needed to cut the plastic fouling from the wads. Brownell's Wad Solvent works great to help soften adn disolve the plastic fouling. I ahve had great success with Slip 2000. I coat the bore after cleaning and cleaning is very quick. I usually just run a bore snale through and its done. I recoat with Slip 2000 and we are good to go.

[Tominator]

[ QUOTE ]
guns have a protective coating in the bore

[/ QUOTE ]

yep, i think they used to use "cosmolene" (sic?), anyway, my benelli montefeltro had a good amount of that in there.

haven't heard anyone mention "the bore snake" i love my bore snake. even on dirty guns it seems to clean pretty fast. might want to get one of those.