by 5Tom » 13 Feb 2014, 12:44 am
I'm sure there will be a few that might chime in and say that you should "wear in" the barrel or "clean it regularly", but for a .22 calibre rifle, there won't be any need to clean the barrel or lubricate it.
.22 ammo have a wax coating (afaik) and that wax is used to lubricate the barrel as the bullet is passing through it. You will also find that it may take between 5 to 50 rounds of ammo until the rifle is shooting more consistant due to the wax (fouling) in the barrel.
Thing is, you'll also need to buy many different brands of ammo to test for group accuracy and for each brand of ammo you test, you will need to send between 20-50 rounds through it before the rifle settles down for consistant accuracy due to the new build up of wax/fouling.
Unlike most other rifles, particularly centerfire rifles, it's preferred to clean after each shooting session. A .22 you can just shoot and store away. If your keen to keep maintenance on it, spray and wipe some G96 on the barrel, action, trigger and chamber to get any carbon or oily finger prints of it, but leave the rifling.