The Cleaning Pellet "Sandwich" Method

 Test cleaning with Cleaning Pellets v.s. a Standard Rigid Rod or Pull-Through Cleaning Kit

One of our forum readers came up with the idea of the oily sandwich, a method for maintaining his airgun between more thorough, full cleanings. This method requires the shooter to sandwich a number of cleaning pellets covered with a drop or two of a cleaning solvent, such as the Napier Airgun Oil between non-coated cleaning pellets. The principal is easy. Just shoot a couple of cleaning pellet rounds through your air rifle after every couple shooting sessions. The pellet sandwich will help keep your barrel clean and oiled with a minimum of fuss. After every couple thousand rounds grab your trusty Rigid or Pull-Through Cleaning Rod, some patches and Napier Airgun Oil and give your air gun a thorough cleaning.

You must be careful when using this method that you use the correct number of pellets to give you the optimum resistance. Too little resistance and the piston head will slam into the end of the piston chamber (not a desirable thing). Too much resistance and the pellets will jam in the barrel (not a desirable thing).

I tried this method on my Beeman R6. Our readers suggested the use of two oily pellets sandwiched between a dry front and rear pellet. Not wanting to push the envelope to far I used one oily pellet between two dry pellets. The combination of the three pellets was not enough resistance to do much good. As you can see above the cleaning pellets show little signs of grime while the first and second cleaning patches (using a cleaning kit) are covered in gunk. If I had added more cleaning pellets the results may have been better.

Does this method work? You be the judge in your own gun. Remember to add more pellets either oily or dry depending on the power of your air gun.

Kevin-Straight Shooters