Cleaning your inner barrel is not as hard as it sounds.

I hear a lot of people say to clean your barrel with silicone, pieces of paper towels, and leave the barrel inside the blaster. In this guide, I hope to spread some light on what you should really do to get the best accuracy and life of your internal parts.

Cleaning Your Inner Barrel: What cleanser you should use?

The first and most common mistake I see people do is clean their barrels with some sort of lubricant, normally silicone. Silicone is great for lubricating things that need lubricating. You should never lubricate the barrel and should keep it as dry as possible.

Some reasons as to why this is:

1. Silicone can drip into the hop-up. The whole purpose of the hop-up is to give the Gel a backspin, but if it is lubricated, it will not grab the Gel enough and will skew the accuracy and hop-up effect.
2. Any excess silicone firing with the Gel will mess up its flight path. This means less accuracy.
3. Dirt will actually stick to the silicone and you will never truly clean the barrel.

What you should be cleaning it with:

1. Rubbing alcohol. Most people will not think of this, but especially if you have been using silicone, it is great at removing any lubes and dirt. It is also completely safe for the plastic and even the bucking as it will dry quickly and does not damage the rubber or plastic.
2. Water. Obviously, this can’t damage anything on the gun, like the rubbing alcohol, and will dry eventually.

I like rubbing alcohol better because it dries faster, does not leave any residue (there might be some minerals in the water when it dries), and it will remove lubricants unlike the water that will just try to rinse it or move it around.

Cleaning Your Inner Barrel: What you should use to clean it with?

Many people use paper towels, tissue, and toilet paper. These will all scratch your barrel, which will reduce accuracy. While these materials may seem soft like they couldn’t scratch anything, they are actually rough, at a microscopic level.

What you should be using:

1. Cut-up cotton tee-shirt. This will not scratch the barrel by itself, but it will occasionally have lint which will. They are also washable, so you can reuse them.

2. Gun cleaning patches. .22 caliber is best, you could also use a little larger (.27 cal). Keep in mind the barrel is between 7-8mm (depending on what type the inner barrel is, typically tight bore barrel are between 7.3mm and 7.1mm).

3. Microfiber eyeglass cleaning cloth. These are specifically designed to not scratch delicate lenses, which means it will also not scratch the barrel. Like the tee-shirt, they are washable and reusable.

Obviously, you need a cleaning rod, which most (AK’s seem to be the only ones that do) blasters do NOT come with. So you may need to buy a gun cleaning kit, a .22 one will do the job.

Cleaning Your Inner Barrel: Why you should remove the barrel from your blaster?

When you are cleaning with the barrel in your blaster and you put the cleaning rod into the barrel, you can’t see how far down you are going. And if you have a hopup attached you may damage it. 

You can find tutorials online about how to disassemble your blaster.

WARNING: Only do so if it DOES NOT void your warranty.  

And that wraps up this blog about cleaning your barrel.

Hope it was helpful 🙂