Not like before
When I first bought them they were great. Now, the most recent ones, just smear the oils around without a messaging penetration. Very disappointed. Hoping Brownells go back the original material, probably cotton,.
leave lint, good for star chamber
Very good for scrubbing out star chamber of M4 and ok in cleaning out the lower half of my semi-auto hand guns. BUT, they leave lint behind, need to follow-up with patches, rag and compressed air. (Thus only good for the 1st stage or two, but not final cleaning or oiling.) I seem to remember in the past, these were made with better, more natural material.
Very handy, but...
I have used various ways to apply rust bluing solution, and swabs like these are usually the easiest way to do it. I really like the size and shape, but I find these swabs less absorbent than other brands I have tried. As a matter of fact, they don't seem to be absorbent at all, so when wetting them you'll either get them too wet or too dry, they never seem to get just the right dampness that's required for a thin coat of rust bluing. I assume that this is because they are synthetic, cotton or some other absorbent fiber (for example, like the ones you get in some Birchwood-Casey kits) would work much better. On the plus side, they are easy to rinse and seem to keep their shape after cleaning and drying, which is not the case with other, more absorbent swabs.
