A bore or pipe must be cleaned, polished, lubricated, and preserved in order to allow for the free and ideal flow of projectiles, liquids, gases, or particulate matter that go through it. The process extends the life of a barrel, pipe, or flue, or extends the life of a device connected to it. In the case of firearms, cleaning a bore improves the accuracy of projectiles shot from it. A firearm bore is lubricated and treated in order to preserve the integrity of the metallic inner wall, grooves, and lands. Undesirable wear and tear of the firearm bore include oxidation of the bore's surface, chemical pitting of the bore, and physical scratching of the bore due to projectiles trapping residual particles.
Properly maintaining the bore usually requires the two separate actions of brushing and wiping of the bore. The brushing step is accomplished with a brush having a uniform transverse diameter as shown in FIG. 5 while the wiping step is accomplished by inserting a patch into the bore with one of the jags shown in FIGS. 6-9. A brush with a transverse diameter that is slightly larger than the bore's inner diameter is used to brush the bore and scrape grime loose that has been baked on or chemically bonded to the inner wall or lands. After the brushing procedure is finished, a jag with a patch is used to wipe grime out of the bore.
Most cleaning devices for the barrels of firearms are single-purpose devices, meaning the cleaning device is used either for scraping residues off the inside of the barrel or for wiping and lubricating the inside of the barrel. To perform both functions, a user would require two separate cleaning devices, a brush to scrape, and a jag to wipe.
In addition, cleaning devices may be single-action, meaning that the device is sent through the bore in a single direction. In single-action cleaning devices, the device is either pushed or pulled through the barrel. However, due to the design, the device cannot be pushed and pulled repeatedly inside the gun barrel. Thus, cleaning the barrel can be a slow laborious process.
Single-action cable systems and pulled-only series systems have a long reloading time between strokes, and people in the market report that they use pulled-only systems when they want to clean quickly but not thoroughly. Prior art spiral brushes attached to rods make it easier to clean thoroughly because brushing strokes may occur with no time delay between strokes, and the time saved makes it more likely for a user to run the brush through the bore many times.
FIG. 6 shows prior art jags for firearms that are loops, eye-lets, or slots, through which a patch is drawn halfway. Some jags are twists of wire extending from the jag's front-end through which a patch is drawn and pinched or punctured as shown in FIG. 7. The jag is capable of holding the patch to perform successive strokes without having to re-load a patch. The patch, however, is not distributed symmetrically around the jag, and the result is that these jags do not press the patch evenly against the wall of the bore. Some grime can be by-passed or missed on any pass down the bore. Another disadvantage of these jags is that when using regular non-abrasive fabric, the jag-patch combination wipes but does not brush and is again not dual purpose.
Thus, there are some cleaning devices that are dual-purpose but not dual-action or dual-action but not dual-purpose. However, these devices only have a single transverse diameter that is either too large to add a patch or two small to apply constant and even pressure against the walls of the barrel.
For the foregoing reasons there is a need for a combination brush and jag that has the dual-purpose of scraping and wiping and has dual-action of being capable of being pushed and pulled through the bore in repeated strokes while maintaining constant and even pressure on the bore walls so as to make cleaning a gun barrel or other types of bores and pipes more efficient.