Flexible honing tools for firearms are
used by gun makers, gun dealers, shooters, hobbyists, and gunsmiths to clean
and maintain shotguns, rifles, pistols and revolvers, and paintball guns.
Available in a range of sizes and for specific gauges, these versatile gun cleaning tools produce an
optimum surface finish in any chamber, cylinder, slide, magazine tube, or
smooth bore barrel.
Gun Cleaning Brushes for Pistols and Revolvers
Recently, flexible hones were featured in Gun Trade World, an
on-line magazine that covers firearms news, companies, and products. In Polishing up on Gun Maintenance (April
2012), Gun Trade World examined how
shooters such as our own Robert (Bob) Fowlie use the Flex-Hone to
polish the chambers of single-action revolvers. Slick chambers are a must in competitions
such as cowboy-action shooting, where every second counts. By causing brass cases
to eject more easily, slick chambers also improve reliability in semi-automatic
weapons.
Gun Polishing Tools for Shotguns and Rifles
Flex-Hone tools for shotguns can have
long or short stems.
- Longer-stemmed tools can be used to polish the
entire length of a shotgun barrel so that fired cases eject more easily,
reducing the strain on the gun's extractors and ejectors.
- Shorter-stemmed tools are used to polish both the chamber and the forcing cone,
where the shot and wadding are subjected to forces that create build-up.
Forcing cones can also be polished with industrial brushes that have
tapered profiles.
Although the Flex-Hone for
firearms is not designed to rifle bores, some barrel makers use this versatile
tool to polish their blanks prior to cutting for a smoother bore finish. Gun
owners also use the Flex-Hone for rifles. By safely and
properly removing residues from the rifle chamber, this tool produces a
wear-resistant finish while removing surface imperfections.
Barrel Hones: Types and Grits
As the article in Gun Trade World explains, gun
brushes and barrel hones from Brush Research Manufacturing (BRM) are 34 inches long and available in 10, 12, 16, and 20
gauge. When selecting a Flex-Hone for firearms, choice
of grit is a key consideration.
- Use 800-grit to
achieve a final finish. If your firearm has a decent finish already, this grit will
be the only one you'll need to use.
- Use 400-grit if
your gun has coarse tool marks or scratches. After blending them out, use an 800-grit
flexible hone to achieve the final finish.
- Use 180-grit
only if there are very deep scratches or severe pitting. Then use the 400-grit,
and finally the 800-grit.
Although most firearms with good
finishes only need an 800-grit
Flex-Hone, users may need to start with the 400-grit tool if there are coarse
tool marks or scratches.
Author's Note: This CR4 blog entry originally appeared in BRM's Flex-Hone Blog.
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