Cleaning Both Your Barrels

by Loren Davidson

I recently discovered a nifty way to clean those hard-to-reach inner surfaces of plastic tubing. (This won't work on curved rigid tubing, for reasons which will become obvious.)

If your hobbies include guns, you will have one or more gun cleaning kits. If not, you can get the cleaning rods separately at many sporting goods stores. The 12 gauge kit works for 1/2" tubing; a .22 rifle kit should work for 3/8" tubing. The rod consists of several sections which are threaded. Assemble all the sections. There's a slotted piece of plastic that threads into the top of the rod, into which you can place a scrap of cloth. You can soak these in the cleaning/sanitizing solution of your choice. Insert into the tubing, rotating it to clean. Insert again from the other end if necessary. Change or clean your rag scraps when they get dirty.

I'm sure you can buy extra sections of rod to add if you want the extra length -- they all simply screw together. We found that, by working from both ends, the 12 gauge shotgun rod is sufficient to clean a 3-4' tube.