What method do you use to clean your gun?

[sse]

LOL

[mehavey]

Since I have tang-mounted aperture sights on every BP'r I own, pulling the barrel isn't my 1st (2nd, 3rd, 4th... Nth) choice.

Two feet of Tygon tubing slip-fitted onto the nipple of percussion guns; or TOTW's flush attachment (w/ Tygon tubing again) for the flinters.  After that it's all the same -- slightly soapy water cycled in/out of a coffee can using the pumping action of the wet patch --with extra short stutter pumps near the bottom to force-clean the breech residue.  

Pull/clean/oil the nipple recess/thread -- and done.
Pull/scrub the flint lock with a toothbrush soapy water/rinse, air/oven dry/light oil -- and done.  

[snake eyes]

[/color]

[Three Hawks]

Since I got shangaid into helping at the BP range at Scout camp about 30 years ago and most years since, and having to clean fifteen or twenty rifles and shotguns every PM, I got into the habit of using El-Cheapo-Supremo windshield washer solvent diluted with cold water 50-50.  I swabbed the bores with flannel donated by a fabric store.  I just swabbed until the bore was clean, then wiped the bore with Ox Yoke Wonder Lube.  When we opened the range after ten months of  the rifles sitting in an unheated room at the camp I noticed that the bores were all fine.  

When the idiot fire marshal, piss be upon him, decided from his ultimate head up his poop chute so far all he can hear is his intestines rumbling that BP was too dangerous and made us go to BP substitute, I quit and haven't been back in years.  No clue how the bores are now, but my three are all pretty much like new.

I got tangled up with a re-enactor who shoots a real live pre 1800 .35 cal. Pennsylvania Rifle,  and a Real Charleville Musket that was used in the Revolutionary war.  He cleans the same way I do except he uses lard.   His 200 and somethin' yr old rifle is like new inside as is his Charleville Musket.  That ol' windshield washer solvent and grease is magic.  The one thing I've learned is to avoid petroleum products like the plague.   EXCEPT for Dexron II automatic xmission fluid.  It is synthetic whale oil and used by the drop is also magic.  If getting windshield washer fluid is inconvenient,  I go for house brand window washing spray containing water, isopropol alcohol, ammonia and blue dye.   I could use Windex, but I was born cheap and had a relapse.  Cleaning a muzzleloading rifle takes about ten minutes, requires no hot water and about four square inches of cheap cotton flannel.

WD-40 is just kerosene and perfume.

My patch material is the thinnest pillow ticking I can find, washed and dried to get rid of the sizing, then ripped into 3/4" to 1" strips, soaked with hot lard and pressed between several layers of newspaper.  I keep the patching strips in a zip-lock bag in my shooting box.  I've been using the same chunk of ticking I got from the scrap bit at the fabric store for a dollar about 20 or 25 years ago.  The flannel came from the same bin.  I use the flannel for patching the .285" balls cast in an antykew ball mold I shoot in the .30 barrel I made for my T-C Hawken.    Talk about cheap shootin' the load is the 35.6 grain roundball, ten grains of 3F and home made caps.

All y'all's milieage may vary.

Three Hawks

[prairie dog]

Moose milk, soap and water, and Break free.

I would like to add that patent breach percussion guns were giving me problems.  I found that a 38 caliber bronze pistol brush would get into the breach of my 50 cal Lyman Great Plains Rifle and clean it out.  Removing the clean out screw and getting in there with a pipe cleaner also helped.  

My Pedersoli pistol also has a patent breach, a 22 rim-fire size brush cleans it well.  

I use a TOW clean out nipple and flush tube to flush out my percussion guns.  Since I glass bedded them I don't remove the barrel from the stock.  I do take the locks out to clean those.

My flint lock Trade Gun is a different challenge.  I do remove the barrel from the stock to flush it.  A plastic bristle 20 gauge shot gun brush helps remove the fouling from the coned flash hole and a breach scraper gets the fouling off there.  

The above cleaning methods have eliminated miss-fires and hang fires for me.

[Fletcher]

Just had a Boy Scout shoot/campout in my back yard this weekend.

About a dozen folk and 10 guns (plus hawk&knife and archery)  Mini-Rondy  :happy

[Bigsmoke]

Just had a Boy Scout shoot/campout in my back yard this weekend.

About a dozen folk and 10 guns (plus hawk&knife and archery)  Mini-Rondy  :happy

It's amazing how well that Ol' Thunder works.  It's been my go to for 20+ years, and no doubt always will be.
Thanks for keeping it going, Fletcher.
It's the best stuff north of south and west of east.
And I wouldn't say that if'n it weren't so.

John

[Two Steps]

It's amazing how well that Ol' Thunder works

Yep..I like it too.  Gotta get with Fletch and get some more, I'm down to about my last inch in my last bottle that I got from you some years back John.
Al

[Fletcher]

I will make a Trading Post offer - see that thread

[Big Medicine]

Without all of the chemicals and choices that we have today,  how did the mountain men of the old days (Jim Bridger, Joe Meek, John Coulter, and others) clean their rifles? It seems like I read somewhere that bear tallow/grease was used. Did they swab the barrel a time or two, dip it in the river, and call it good enough or did they even use water? I guess we'll never know, but do you think that they mis-fired often?

Big Medicine

[prairie dog]

We know they used gun worms.  I believe they used that with tow and water.  Oils? rendered animal fats, whale oil? sweet oil (olive oil)?

I'd bet Mario will be along directly to set us straight on it.

[James Kelly]

Dish Soap?

It all contains salt. Some is acid.

It has been said that a little, say Lemon Joy, in a stainless sink will pit holes through it in a few days. I personally have not tried it, but I know that such soaps are delightfully corrosive. Which I know because I am the retired Technical Guy for a company that sold corrosion resistant metals, sort of like Stainless on Steroids.

Soap and hot water. Good for cleaning and good for rusting.

Daggone metallurgists never know what they're talking about now, do they?

[Geezer in NH]

1/3 Murphy's oil soap, 1/3 denatured alcohol, 1/3 drug store hydrogen peroxide 3%. Soak bore for 10 minutes pour out and dry with clean patches. Wipe with a water displacing oil (wd-40)

Then coat with Rig grease. That has worked for me for over 25 years. I have never had a bad barrel treated this way.

[jimnbubba]

I remove the barrel , put a gallon or so of Hot soapy water in a 5 gal. bucket , put the nipple end in the bucket and run my cleaning jag with a patch on it up and down until the water is not coal black, empty bucket  and put in Hot water n run patches until clean , let barrel sit with business end down , use an  patch soaked in alcohol , let dry then use a patch w/silicon spray lube >

[Loyalist Dave]

Well we do have some references to troops being told to urinate down a barrel.  

I use water, and a drop or two of dishwashing liquid breaks down the surface tension, so helps the water as a solvent for the ash and residue.  Very soapy water may be an advantage for folks using a grease to lube their patches...help in cutting any residual grease.

After several rinsings of the barrel, I will use tow to scrub, or just use a cloth patch.

Some folks like to follow with a dry patch, then alcohol (to absorb water), then another dry patch.  The "WD" in WD-40 stands for "water displacement"...so for some folks this does work well.  

I follow with sweet oil (very cheap olive oil) or with a mixture of Olive Oil and Beeswax in a grease.  

The key is though to get all of the moisture out of the barrel or you will end up trapping it in the barrel with the steel.     I usually swab the bore and reapply the oil once a day for two more days after cleaning to be certain the rust will not develope.

LD