Cleaning the Stoeger X20S Barrel - Don’t Use Airgun Cleaning Pellets

One of our customers - Sid - recently decided to clean the barrel of his Stoeger X20 Suppressor air rifle. Having recently acquired an RWS pellet sampler pack that includes some airgun cleaning pellets, he checked in the Stoeger instruction manual and surfed the web for guidance before using.

Nowhere did he find information telling him not to use these RWS cleaning pellets, so he did. He correctly followed the advice available on-line and pushed a couple of the cleaning pellets through the barrel with a rod from the breech end (cleaning pellets are too light to shoot in a powerful spring-piston air rifle such as the X20).

Unfortunately this turned out to be a bad idea. The cleaning pellets became lodged between some baffles in the sound moderation system and there they stuck, partially blocking the barrel. Not a good situation!

Fortunately Sid is not only careful but also resourceful. He thought carefully before acting. Seeing that the sound moderation baffles are concave from the breech end and not wanting to stuff the cleaning pellets further between the baffles, he was able to blow the pellets back out of the barrel by using an air compressor. He VERY CAREFULLY gave a couple of blasts from the muzzle end with 60lbs of air pressure and the cleaning pellets emerged the way they went in.

Phew!

But as Sid says, “I do believe I got lucky. No change in accuracy after this incident and there’s no noticeable decline in power after 18 hours in the open breech cocked position. Please advise others in the airgun community of this issue so that they don’t encounter the same problem”.