About.com Rating



The Bottom Line

The Otis Elite is a heck of a kit, and it contains a lot of stuff. You can use it on many different calibers and gauges, and it will kind of work. But it's a hassle in many ways, and can be quite awkward - and the kit needs better documentation to explain the different components.

Ultimately, it's fancy, inefficient, awkward and overpriced. But, it's made in the USA.

 

Pros

 

• Made in USA.

• The various parts and pieces seem to be of reasonable quality (brushes are questionable).
• Contains a plethora of bore brushes.

 

Cons

 

• The Otis system of gun cleaning is awkward and inefficient.
• Flexible cables, which they insist on calling "rods," are much less useful than real cleaning rods.
• It is very expensive.
• Special patches don't properly fit the bore, even when you "pinch patch here" according to instructions.
• The bore brushes are not of good quality.
• Instructions are poor.

 

Description

 

• Gun cleaning kit advertised for use on .17 caliber through 10 gauge firearms and airguns.
• In my opinion, it is borderline for 12 gauge and will not handle 10 gauge.
• Otis system uses oddball proprietary items (patches, etc.) which you can't find anywhere else.
• Uses flexible cables instead of cleaning rods (although Otis calls them "rods").
• Contains a lot of stuff, and some duplicate items, packaged impractically and inefficiently.
• Its best feature is the presentation of bore brushes in clearly-marked tubes.

Value and Organization

When I opened the Otis Elite 1000 kit, my first impression was that you don't get much for the money (the kit sells for considerably more than a hundred bucks). My second thought was that, although most of the stuff looks to be of decent quality, it sure is packaged and presented in an unnecessarily complicated manner.

For example, the impressive array of bore brushes are lined up nicely, with each in its own well-marked plastic tube. That's good. But to get the brush out, you have to wrestle it out of the tube cap, where the threaded end of the brush is inexplicably shoved into a hole in the cap. Why? A simple plain cap would have done a better job, and made each brush much more accessible.

The first time I took a brush out of its tube, it immediately stabbed me with a too-sharp bristle... and after two trips through a revolver barrel and a total of twelve passes through the chambers in the cylinder, the brush was already showing signs of wear.

Hard to Find the Parts

Want a patch holder? They're stowed out of sight in a separate round zipper case, which is awkward in its own right. That case also contains some extra brushes and other goodies, so it can sorta-kinda serve as a small portable kit. Dig through its pockets to try to find the shotgun brush adapter, thread coupler, and other small items.

There's just no rhyme or reason to the kit. Parts should be presented in a visible and easily-identifiable manner, but only the brushes are done that way.

Why Otis?

I can't really understand the appeal of the Otis system. Their whole tenet is that you should drag patches and brushes through your gun's bore using their flexible cables, rather than shoving them using a rigid cleaning rod. In itself, that's not a terrible idea, but you have to get their special patches, learn a silly system of pinching and folding to use them, and tell yourself you're getting a good clean gun even though the patches don't fit snugly in the bore.

Sloppy Patches

That's right - I couldn't get a decent fit in the bore of a 44 magnum revolver, which is .43 caliber, even pinching the patch at the spot indicated for .50 caliber. I found myself craving a cleaning rod with a nice jag and some good simple patches, so I could actually get my gun clean.

Otis calls their most common patch size "all-caliber." Like the term "rod," it's just not accurate. There's just no substitute for a regular ol' patch on a good jag that fits the bore of the gun being cleaned.

They're Not Rods

And another thing, Otis: Stop calling them rods! A flexible length of cable is not a rod, no matter how often you call it by that name.

Shotgun Use

I got this kit for test & review because a reader asked my opinion of it for cleaning shotguns; therefore, I definitely wanted to give it a try in a scattergun. So I did, on a 12 gauge over/under.

I hated it.

The good was that, using the round rubber thing called a "patch saver," the patches fit the gun's bore very well, and I felt that the fit was conducive to good cleaning. Unfortunately, you have to take apart and put together the whole patch holder/patch saver assembly in order to change the patch.

The "patch saver" is a sort of a rubber grommet that goes on the patch holder and serves the same purpose as a cleaning jag: to hold the patch against the interior of the bore as it passes through. There are only two patch savers included in this kit: 20 gauge and 12 gauge.

I found the 12 gauge bore brush far too short (not enough bristles) to do a good job of cleaning. I used a Kleen-Bore ChamberMate on the chambers afterward, since I felt the Otis bore brush didn't do squat to help the chambers.

Learning What's What

Check out the small black & white piece of paper inside that tells you what the parts are, with tiny pictures. It's just about the only clue they give you about what's what, and even then it can be confusing since the photos are shown at different scales, so you don't know just how small or large the illustrated part may be.

Conclusion

I'm going to be more kind here than I was in my notes, but the bottom line is still the same. What we have here is a collection of fancy, overpriced trinkets that make it difficult to clean your gun, with a patch system which won't properly fit the bores of many guns, and which requires occasional resupply with more of their special, ill-fitting patches.

I'm not a fan.

- Russ Chastain



Disclosure: a Review sample was provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.