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Cleaning my fowler?

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Buff1958

Buff1958

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I have been shooting and cleaning BP rifles for 50 years. Seems like the older they get the easier they are to clean.

I just finished up a Kibler fowler and have a 20 and 16 gauge barrel. They are hell to clean and I don’t know why.

two different problems.
One it just takes forever to get it to the point I have a clean patch.
The other is it pulls a vacuum. I can hear the air blowing out the vent on the down stroke but it is tough to ever get the patch back out. It pops loud when I jerk it out. At first a 20 gauge jag would not fit in the barrel but I sanded it down until I can get it in and is not particularly tight on the down stroke but I have to man up the last 10” on the up stroke.

What am I doing wrong?
Thanks
Buff
 

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Boy I wish I could help you with this but you are by far ahead of my knowledge. I hear of you making those Kiblers and WOW. I enjoy your writing.
David
 
How big is the touchhole? Something we don’t always think about is the volume of air in a big bore. And we’re trying to pull that air into the barrel on the cleaning upstroke through a small touchhole. Like trying to fill a 5 gallon bucket through a hypodermic needle.

If you haven’t tried a mop on a smoothbore, you’re missing out. You can buy a mop for modern shotguns and make a thread adaptor. Or (horrors) use a modern cleaning rod with an extender. The jag and patch is not the best for smoothbores in my view. A tow worm is another option that is more period correct.
 
I’m sorry to hear of your plight, but I’m surprised to hear you’re having trouble. I’ve got two smoothbores: a North Star West Chief Grade and a Caywood Type D. The Caywood has a reverse-coned touch hole that is at least twice the size of those on any of my other flintlocks, yet I don’t have any of the issues that you’re experiencing. I’m using a .62 jag with .45/.410 patches and find them to be plenty tight and effective during the cleaning process. Perhaps try reducing the patch thickness?

I recently purchased “Track’s Best Flint Flush Cleaning Tool” and I’ve found it greatly reduces my cleaning time. You might look into it and see if it’s for you.
 

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Do you soak and drain the bbl before starting to run patches? If I just ran patches up and down really fast without firstly soaking and draining most of the sludge in my Fowler it would create a lot of suction.

Here's how I clean my Chambers 20g Fowler:
I do this at the range. I hate cleaning it at home.
  1. Remove the lock
  2. Wipe the fouling off of the bbl around the touch hole, breach plug etc.
  3. Put a toothpick in the touchhole
  4. With a funnel fill the bbl up with water about 2/3 full
  5. Let it sit for a few minutes, dump it out
  6. With a rag cover the muzzle as I bring the muzzle back up to catch the dripping water from running down the forestock
  7. Repeat the filling it and dumping it process until I don't see any black sludge pore out
Next I use one of Dave Crisali's magetic cleaning tube systems. It works really well and doesn't leak!
  1. Attach the tube to the side of the bbl covering the touch hole
  2. Drop the other end into a jug of water
  3. Using my range rod with a cleaning patch suck water in and out
  4. Replace the patch and repeat until it comes out clean
  5. Remove the tube/magnet thing from the jug, let it drain, run the jag down hard to blow out any excess water, remove the tube from the bbl
  6. wipe it down
  7. Run dry patches down the bbl until it's dry
  8. Run oiled patches down the bbl
  9. Oil the outside of the bbl
  10. Clean and oil the lock
If I didn't have Dave's magetic gizmo I would after filling and dumping water, remove the toothpick and run patches until all of the fouling is gone, oil and done.
 
Another recommendation to try a wool mop. You can wet it with your favorite cleaning solution and it will wipe the bore. Rinse when done (or if particularly dirty during the cleaning process) and you'll get lots of uses from one.
 
I also prefer tow and worm for cleaning smoothbores. Tow will act like a mop, is washable and reusable for cleaning again or as wadding (just grease or oil it sufficiently to avoid it catching flame and starting forest fires) or firestarting material. I've even started using it for my rifled guns, but rifled or not I recommend following up with a patch to check cleanliness, either with the patch doubled over to turn the worm into a sort of jag, or with the worm swapped out for a jag, depending on what sort of ramrod I'm using.
 
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