.. those who have cleaned their rifle barrel, and those that still have to.
What a story. Cleaning is not just going through the motions with brush and solvent.
Firstly, nylon brushes are not for cleaning. They are for spreading copper solvent in the barrel. If you think you are cleaning with a nylon brush, you are in the category of "still have to".
Secondly, I think you should identify what the problem is. What needs to be cleaned is a function of what bullet material and what powder you use.
Are you cleaning lead deposits, moly, plastic, copper or carbon ?
Each one needs a different approach, and different solvents. There are some solvents that work better on one or the other, but none will be efficient for all.
And the bronze brush. The longer you hesitate to use it, the longer it takes to get the barrel clean.
You cannot wear steel with bronze. Yes, diamonds are cut with bronze blades. That argument is as logical as saying I've seen high speed water jets used to profile cut steel, so I should avoid getting the barrel wet.
You will not clean the barrel with a nylon brush. I got a reply to one of my posts on another forum from someone who claimed nylon brushes do clean because nylon wears steel. He once saw a boat propeller with a groove worn into it from nylon fishing line. I replied with my water cutting steel analogy.
Then there's the "my barrel shoots better dirty" school of thought. No, it doesn't shoot better dirty, all you've done is found the optimum seating depth for minimising barrel harmonics with that amount of fouling. When it fouls more, or when cleaned, the harmonics change, and accuracy is gone again. Basing accuracy on a particular degree of fouling - I think this is when people say "it took x number of shots for my barrel to stabilise after cleaning". Yes, it clearly did, because you optimised the harmonics for a particular degree of fouling. It's as easy to optimise barrel accuracy for no fouling - keep it clean - then your baseline for accuracy is always achievable without guessing, or wasting bullets.
I get the impression that people consider their barrels to be made of candy floss, and treat them accordingly. They fall into the "still have to" category.
And then the people who say they don't like to clean to factory new bare metal, so they leave it dirty. Here's a newsflash : once you start putting rounds down the tube, the molecular composition of the rifling in contact with the powder and the bullet is forever changed. You can never revert it back to "factory new", because "factory new" no longer exists, but you can clean it.
Here is some interesting reading to go with your barrel cleaning sessions :
