at one time i used to sell steel cleaning rods that had a built on muzzle guide , T handle . The rod was flared at the end so as the guide would not slip off .
The key however to using those steel and stainless , is the muzzle guide and a soft jag made of brass , German silver or such. You don’t want the steel hitting the rifling .
When it comes to whats good for a cleaning and loading rod . Yes a good hickory rod is hard to beat . Over time however when used in the modern cleaning application , the tips can become lose and eventually break or pull off. But if built properly , that takes some time to happen .
I say modern because today cleaning jags are the most common used . Where in the historic context , tow worms were far more common .
I would also point out that not only must the rod be strong enough to push through , it must be strong enough to pull back as the backward motion is actually tighter . The reason for it being tighter is that a small amount of the cleaning patch bunchs up on the back side of the jag as you pull out . Thus the larger the amount of patch material you have behind the jag , the tighter it will get . That action is why jags have rings cut to them , in that it give the patch a place to bunch up and helps the jag hold the patch .
There also are 2 types of jags , button jags and necked jags .
Button jags work great when you have a rod that smaller then the jag itself . Because of the size difference, the patch wads up back of the jag and doesn’t wad up to the point it wont pull . But as you get down to smaller bores where the rod is often not much smaller then the jag and there is no room for the patch to wad up . that’s where the necked jags come to play . That neck and then resulting taper back to rod size , gives the excess cleaning material place to go as you pull the rod back up in your cleaning motion .
Also when it comes to using a RR with jag attached fro loading “ this isn’t uncommon “
All of the above again comes into play if you have excess patch material around the ball . IE if your using an oversized precut patch . What happens is as you push the ball down , the excess material ends up not only around the ball but also around the jag . As you withdraw the road , that extra material wads up and the jag grabs it .. Thus it tries to pull the patch an ball back out .
Using less patch material buy cutting at the muzzle will work to solve the problem as long as you don’t set the ball to deep prior to ramming it home , adjusting your jag size or loading without a jag will also solve the problem
