proper cleaning methods ?

[shademtman]

ok.. over the years, i have heard both sides of the story.. one person cleans the barrel with hot soapy water, the next guy say's OH NO! never do that you'll ruin the season in the barrel , just swab out with grease. Personally i NEVER use soap, and if only shooting a shot or two i just swab it clean with a greased patch, but i do sometimes pour hot water down and give it a good scrubbing. I put together a kit some years back, and the gun is a real shooter, the way i clean mine has never been an issue. I am thinking of building another, mabye a Jim Chambers kit early Lancaster or York..... So was wondering how everyone else cleans up the old smokepole ??

[Hank in WV]

I just pump cold water through mine. Works great. Welcome to the forum.

[flintlock62]

I always use (moderately) hot soapy water to clean my rifles.  I have been doing so for years.  Black powder contains two ingredients that say this is a must.  First there is potasium nitrate which is an oxygenator.  Secondly, there is sulphur.  Sulphur melts when hot and then resolidifies when it cools back down, effectively sealing the potasium nitrate to the metal.  It is the film of sulphur is what one needs to removed in order to get at the potasium nitrate to remove it.

There are many chemical products made for black powder to remove the fouling other than the hot water method.  They just cost more, so I do not use them.

What NOT to clean your rifle with: Any petrolium based product!  There are a few people who will attempt to refute what I have said and if they do, I would like to know their reasoning.

Properly cleaned and a patch coated with mink oil or some other suitable black powder grease such as Wonder Lube run down the bore, I have never in over thirty years of shooting, had any rust problems.

[pathfinder]

The cleaning subject is just as volitile as "best caliber,best lube"debate. Try them all and use the one that works for your lifestyle. I've found they all work, the one thing I always use now are terrycloth towels cut up and way undersize jags.

[Sir Michael]

Pathfinder has the ticket.  Try out every cleaning method you can ferret out.  One of them will be the cat's meow for you.  That the best and only method.

[Three Hawks]

I play at the Scout Camp every once in a while on the Black Powder Range.  We use the very cheapest pre-mixed windshield washer fluid we can get our booger hooks on. (Usually Wally World's) This to clean ten very well used T-C Hawkens at the end of each day.  Those rifles are used every day during the six weeks of Summer Camp, then stored in an unheated building the remainder of the year.  None have barrel damage.   For the long months of storage the Range Master has been coating all metal inside and out with White Lithium Grease.  The stuff stays put and keeps rust away.

For my own rifles at home, I use the hot soapy water routine, The soap I use is Fels Naptha bar soap grated into the bucket, no synthetic detergents.  After the barrel's clean it gets a boiling water rinse.  While the barrel's hot, I swab the bore generously with lard.  So far all I've needed is a wipe with a clean patch before shooting again.    As I enjoy fooling around with my guns, they each get the bore wiped out and recoated fairly often.  I haven't seen any rust or dirt in any of them between shoots.  Sometimes I use veg. shortening instead of lard.  Pretty much anything to keep moisture off the metal.

YMMV,

Three Hawks

[IronDawg]

 As I enjoy fooling around with my guns, they each get the bore wiped out and recoated fairly often.  I haven't seen any rust or dirt in any of them between shoots.  Sometimes I use veg. shortening instead of lard.  Pretty much anything to keep moisture off the metal.

YMMV,

Three Hawks

Man I'm glad someone else just owned up to that. I am liable to get up routinely and just go grab a rifle, lay it on the table, check the flint angle, screws, reswab my barrel, shoulder her and look down the sites, sometimes just remove the lock and just "make sure" I coated the insides real nice and thourogh, and wipe her back down....... I was startng to think "am I wierd??"

[Three Hawks]

"Am I weird?"

Well, of course you are, wassamattawiddat?

Although, upon thinking about it, what is so weird about assuming the aspect of someone who lived two or three hundred years ago, living in a manner consistent with current thinking on cruel and unusual punishment,  killing soft, furry, unoffending little animals with anachronistic, even primitive weapons, then eating them?

All that sounds like a little bit of Heaven on Earth to me.

Welcome to the club, brother.

Weird ol',

Three Hawks

[Wyoming Mike]

Everyone has their own method for cleaning.  If it gets the barrel and the outside clean and protected by definition it is good.

As far as barrel seasoning goes, cast iron skillets and the old soft wrought iron barrels need to be seasoned.  'Seasoning' does nothing for steel barrels and frying pans.  The seasoning myth came about as a sales pitch for Bore Butter years ago.  All it does, usually, is eventually gunk up the barrel and drop accuracy until it is cleaned out.

I tried hot water cleaning early on but I got flash rusting in the barrel so use room temperature soap and water.  Some people get good results with hot water cleaning but I never have.

I use TOW's Bore Clean cut 50/50 with water and just put patches down the bore until clean.  It usually only takes four or five.  I put a couple of patches with Ballistol and water or moose milk down the barrel to catch the last of the graphite and kill the soap.  Probably don't need to do this but it seems to work for me.  I use these patches to clean the outside of the barrel and the lock.

I then protect the barrel with Ballistol.  I run a patch soaking with it down the bore.  Some people have issues with it but It has worked for me and I don't have to clean it out before I start shooting.

[jim m]

mildly warm water with a drop of dish soap, followed by plain water, several dry patches, then ballistol. I have one rifle that I've cleaned this way for 3 yrs and during the summer I pulled the breech plug for an inspection. bore looks like new. I aggree with several others that what ever works best for you is the best way

[jtwodogs]

Relatively new to the sport even though for years I used lithium grease as a retardent and it worked well, in the unmetionable dept (Modern muzzy'), now that I am shooting the older models I have learned a little, one thing I have learned is not to pay big bucks for a little vial of synthetic gun oil. Wyosmith once told me big waste of money go get a can of Mobile One. The stuff is as synthetic as you get, and works wonders as far as a moisture retardent.

Still use the hot soapy water method, the reason I like the water near boiling is that the heat from the water dries the inside of the barrel quickly. jmho.
 

[shademtman]

aaahhhh...... i might have stumbled upon the answer here.... you see i have often wondered what the early frontiersman did.. for one  thing... very doubtful they used hot soapy water and stuck there gun away.... if they did..... bet there scalp ended up on some indians belt.... a man with a unloaded gun would be easy pickin's for a indian.... (heck some where easy pickings with a loaded gun)... hence i never use soap, doubtful they did much either.... but what i do..do... is shoot my guns reguarly....imagine they did to....fact is... they don't sit idle long enough to get rusty.

[flintlock62]

The fact is, all ML rifles must be cleaned after firing, whatever method is or was used.  Soapy water is MY choice, if one wants to use a different method, then fine, use it.  I use it because I know it works.  A little flash rust develops?  So What. I run mink oil patches down the barrel until they come out clean as the last step.  Again, that is my choice.

Commercial products are available, if this is your choice.  I have read that some of the old timer mountain men may have even used urine to clean their rifles a time or two.  If you want to use that method, it's OK by me too.
 

[shademtman]

flintlock62......yup.... sounds logical enough.....

[LRB]

The problem with hot water is flash rust. Rust is iron oxide. every time you get rust, you are losing a little of the bore. Very little, but it adds up over time. Or I should say, it subtracts over time.