Educate me on this infamous thing called a Carbon Ring.

mtnbound

WKR
Joined
Nov 8, 2016
Messages
1,707
Location
N. Idaho
I grew up in a family of hunters and shooters, and I have been shooting for decades with various cartridges and have never experienced a Carbon Ring buildup in a chamber. Yet I see it mentioned fairly regularly. I do not clean my rifles (other than black powder ones), and I have not cleaned them for a long time, so, in my experience, it's not caused by lack of cleaning. I have no supporting evidence, but I believe most people actually clean their rifles because it's always been done that way. I watched a guy at the range recently clean his rifle after every 4 shots. When asked why, he said it was to reduce carbon buildup and improve accuracy. I said ok and went back to shooting my uncleaned 223 rifle.

Is this carbon buildup from a particular powder manufacturer, powder burn rate, powder volume used in a case, shooting too little, shooting too much, weather, using inappropriate cleaning products, aliens, or what? I have a hard time believing that I, or anyone else in my circle, have just been lucky and never experienced one.
 
My understanding was this mainly impacted fancy custom rigs with extremely tight chamber tolerances
 
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