TargetTalk

The recent discussion on compensators has sparked my interest in how people clean their compensator. The short and long Morini compensators have their unique cleaning challenges as does the Matchguns MG5 comp.

With my CM84, I gave up cleaning it and went with the plain sight holder/tube.

I welcome your thoughts, techniques and tricks,

Brian

In my opinion, the best thing is to prevent it from clogging.
There's a fat/ grease/wax, which is used to prevent the nozzle of welding tools from sprinkles. I just lightly cover the inside of the comp, and all you need for cleaning the comp is a towel.

To clean this compensator http://www.morini.ch/fotoart/82.jpg (for the Morini 84E) sometimes I use pipe cleaners

Greetings,

I would try an ultrasonic cleaner. The challenge will be finding a cleaning solution that will dissolve the Lead.

Also, be sure the solution will not attack the parent material. I do not know what the compensator is made of.

Cheers,

Dave

I gave up on my Morini compensator (one of the early designs), after spending a LONG time scraping the accumulated crud out/off. I'd fired a couple hundred rounds before I decided to give it a bath. I moved it back to where it's just a sight mount, and haven't worried about it. I haven't noticed any issues with accuracy. If I call a 10, it's still a 10.

I suppose if you have one of the new long ones that you have to take off every time to fit the pistol in the box, you might be able to stay on top of the cleaning process, but I'm not wild about losing my "zero" every time I pack & unpack the pistol. This may be more psychological than anything, depending on how repeatable the compensator mounting system is. The sight would have to be off by 1/10th of a mm to shift the impact by a cm at 50 meters, and 0.1mm is a significant amount of slop for a linear fit. However, if the compensator rotates at all, you could easily see a significant windage error because of the long "lever arm" to the top of the sight.

That said, I suspect an ultrasonic cleaner would do a nice job of cleaning if the gunk hasn't fossilized too badly. Not sure what solvent you would want to use, and the used solvent would definitely qualify as hazardous waste.

Soak the comp in Kroil overnight. The stuff seems to work its way under the lead/carbon buildup making it easy to chip off.

Follow that with straight Simple Green cleaner and brushes. SG is excellent at removing gun crud from comps, bores, and actions.

Both of those products can be used in an ultrasonic, but the cleaning action is very aggressive and can attack bare or anodized aluminum. Blued or stainless steels, no problem. SG in an ultrasonic will clean those metals like the day they left the factory.

At least for my (new style) CM84 compensator, each initial re-attachment is not very repeatable. The most obvious variation shows as a sight picture with a canted front sight, so I have to readjust / re-sight a few times before it looks straight (allen key on a flat doesn't guarantee position, still some fiddle factor!). Once straight as a sight picture, it is well close to "zeroed" again. It appears that our eye's ability to discern even a slight cant is very fine. But it's not a process I want to perform each time I shoot.

No matter, I recently shot with the standard sight holder again, and I like it. In the meantime, I bought a pelican case so I can fit other items, and this box will fit the gun with the compensator installed.

Kel

Edit: The barrel receives the allen bolt in a hole/recess, not a flat. Fiddle factor comment still applies. -K