Barrel Seasoning?

Saw an article in Black Powder Hunting magazine a few years back that was authored by Ross Seyfried. He was talking about a process for a new barrel where he first used some 3M pads on a brush to scrub the barrel and remove all petroleum residue. Then he heated the barrel in an oven if I remember correctly and then started swabbing the barrel heavily with T/C Bore Butter to season it.

Anyone recall this article and what year/issue it was in?

Any thoughts on this process?

 

[Birddog6]

I think ol Ross ate some good ol bacon & eggs from grandma's iron skillet that morning & a bright idea for an article hit him. The scotchbrite pads are to smooth out the tiny burs & etc. left over from the rifling machine & is a barrel makers tip that has been done for years. Ask Don or John Getz what they do with theeir barrels. (Getz Barrel Co.) They have been making top quality barrels for years & years.

If today was in the 1700's it would be a great idea to season a barrel, as stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a Cast or Wrought Iron barrel , ya had to do Something to keep it from rusting. But todays modern steel is not porus like the old barrels were & not a cast iron skillet. With todays rust inhibitors, IMHO it is a TOTAl waste of time & poor use of an oven, altho now that I think on it, the bore butter would most likely be pretty good on some homemade biscuits, which is the only thing I can think I would possibly use it for.

1: Clean that bore good & I mean whistle clean. Take a breech scraper & scrape the face of the breech, use a breech brush & get all the fouling out of the breech area.

2: Swab that sucker dry. I even wad up 2 patches & cram then down the barrel into the breech in Front of the jag & force them tight in there & wait a few min to be sure they soaked up all the moisture, then take a worm & pull them out after a few min. This will absorb the moisture you didn't reach in the edges of the breech.

3: Use any good rust inhibitor, mineral oil, motor oil, Break Free, Ballistol, etc. to preserve the Bore til next outing. Make sure hou get enout of it to squirt out the vent & if percussion, remove the nipple & clean out under it. I take my clean-out screws out too if so equipped & clean behind them.

Some say all natural stuff & no petroleum.. I don't think it matters at all & have tried both lots of times, can see absolutely no dif.

I say C L E A N and No Moisture is the most important part. Then put whatever ya want on it as just about anything will keep it from rusting if you have bare clean metal first. You are gonna swab it out before ya go shooting anyway, so it makes no dif if it is oil, grease, petrol products or natural produces.

Go to ANY national ML shooting evento & see what they shoot. You will find 99% of them shooting Clean bores.

 

[Deadeye]

I remember that article but don't remember the date. I've shot with Ross and have great respect for most things he writes but not on that one.
Reread what Birddog says, he has it right.
Deadeye

 

[Stumpkiller]

I will testify that before I started using Natural Lube 1000+ and avoiding petroleum products (I only use hot, Ivory soapy water, T/C #13 solvent to clean and Lehigh Valley Lube as a rust inhibitor) I used to have to swab between every shot or I couldn't load the next ball. Now I shoot all afternoon without cleaning between shots. I had all but retired my rifles and was shooting a smoothbore musket because it was much more fun without all that rigmarole between shots. Now I'm enjoying rifles again. (Gawd, I sound like a weight-loss ad).

I never did bake my barrel, but switched cold-turkey off the WD-40 and CLP Breakfree (which I still swear by for 'catridge arms). I still oil he outside and works with CLP. No rust yet, but I understand the Lehigh Valley Lube has been re-formulated with disappointing results. I use J&B Lead Remover on tight patches to smooth all of my rifle bores and reduce the machining marks.

The process of forging the iron skelp and repeatedly heating (and carbonizing it) to pound around a mandrel added a considerable amount of carbon to the iron - which is how steel is created (Iron with 1.7% carbon according to Websters). The original barrels where somewhere between iron and steel. Certainly more so than a cast skillet (which I also swear by and season annually with oilve oil). Seasoning a barrel makes sense to me, and seems to work. I do make it a practice to run lubed patches down all my M/Lers monthly, just in case.

 

[roundball]

I'm not a metallurgist and have no scientific knowledge about seasoning as it relates to barrels...and my Chief-of-Staff has a number of cast iron pots, pans, griddles, all of which she cleans religiously, heats up hot on the stove, then wipes with cooking oil or something...so they're not "seasoned" the old fashioned way either, but they're spotless and never rust.

I treat my barrels the same way...clean and scrub them to the raw metal every time, get them bone dry, then slather the bores with natural lube 1000...they're also spotless and never rust.

But I don't use NL1000 with any thoughts about seasoning them, in fact I use a bore brush with every cleaning session because I DON'T want ANY build up of anything in my barrels. I only lube between uses to prevent rusting until I shoot them again...and repeat the scrubbing/lubing cycle all over again after each shoot...it has worked so well for so long that I'd be afraid to change it

 

This discussion came up on another forum a few years ago and we concluded that there is only ONE way to properly season a barrel.
First and formost STOP believing everything Ross says as he preaches heavy doses of 4 fg in your 10 fowler.
To do the job right start with a 300 pound pig on a spit, insert the barrel, stuff piggy with sausage, cook slowly over a hardwood fire for 12 hours while drinking your favorite brew.
I won't do squat for the barrel, but you and the gang will eat well and after 12 hours of drinking brew you won't care about the barrel! :: ::

 

[Zonie]

First off, the barrel has to be made out of the right stuff. There has been a lot of materials tried and after years of experimentation it's been determined that Oak is the best.
To season it you usually build a good fire inside of it. Not too hot mind you, you really don't want it to catch on fire you know. What your after is a good thick layer of charcoal on the inside. This layer should be firmly attached to the inside of the barrel. This is what will take off the "sharp" bite and gives the product such smooth easy loading qualities. Why I used to load several shots at a time when I was younger!!!
I think Jim Beam is pretty good at making and using these barrels, although Wild Turkeys barrels are often judged to be better. People in Kentucky seem to have a knack for making these.........what?.....barrels! I'M TALKING ABOUT BARRELS! Oh,.......Gun barrels! Well why didn't you say so?
I guess I'll try a little more of that nicely aged juice and think some more about it.

OK, As we all know, modern barrels are made out of steel. Steel, for all it's good qualities does have one quality which is not so good. It rusts a LOT easier than Iron. Niether Cast or Wrought Iron rust as fast as steel. Cast/wrought Iron is also more porous so it absorbs grease and oil a lot better than steel. You should note that when your wife is not swinging it at your head but is "seasoning" the cast iron frying pan, she heats it WAY UP. That opens the pores even more to help the oil get into the surface. This heating only has a marginal effect on steel.

IMO "seasoning" a modern barrel is not really a workable idea. Just clean and oil/wax it like you should and have fun shooting it.

 

[Randy]

It appears we have at least two schools of thought here. Those that "season" and those that don't. I understand the reasoning behind the process, especially in older barrels, for the reasons already given. All those old-timers didn't have the modern rust preventing lubes and oils available to us nowdays either. But in a relatively non porous, modern steel barrel I also think CLEAN, DRY, and OILED is all you need. Any buildup of "seasoning" in a modern barrel can only add one more varriable to contend with. But you still gotta do what works for you, otherwise we would all be perfect shots and this wouldn't be fun anymore.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Well, they may not be 'seasoned' exactly, but my rifles are lubricated with Natural Lube and cleaned with hot, soapy water, and then wiped again with Natural Lube for protection. I haven't used an oil based product inside the bores since I started with the Natural Lube.

 

[sse]

Buds - I am wondering whether, with our techniques in cleaning and preserving the bore of these rifles, we are leaving a little something in there that could be considered "seasoning". I used to think "yes" since I'm not sure I clean down to the white, but now I'm not sure, and I don't know if I should care, either. ??!!

Regards, sse

 

[roundball]

IMO, NOTHING should remain in the bore...and I also don't trust patches alone can guarantee every linear foot of the sharp 90degree land/groove relationships will be spotless...for me, each and every time I clean a bore it includes a good quality bore brush.

For example, my 32" barrels have 6 lands & 6 grooves so there's a total of 12 sharp 90 degree corners, that run the full length of that 32" barrel.

If I do the math, that's 32 linear FEET of sharp corner relationships for a spec of fouling to get stuck somewhere and missed by a soft cleaning patch...so I try to eliminate the risk by including a couple dozen strokes with a tight bore brush at the end of the hot water / soap cleaning job. (Then I use large fresh amounts of natural lube 1000 again)

 

[Randy]

What about the guys using teflon lubed patches and slick 50 and other products to reduce wear in their car engines? The manufacturers claim that slippry stuff gets embedded in the metal pores and stays there. It must stay there in those gun barrels too unless you go to real extremes to get it out.
I'm sure most of us clean our guns more often and thoroughly than a lot of old timers did. So is Roundball overdoing it? I say no, It works for him, and whoever inherits his guns someday will get guns with bright shinny bores.

 

[Chuck Deaton]

Slick 50, never considered it for patch lube.

 

[roundball]

When I got started in muzzleloading and decided on natural lube 1000 as my only lube, I heard some people say not to use natural lube 1000 because it builds up in barrels and then affects accuracy.
I didn't know if it would or not but I know if ANYTHING starts building up in a barrel, by definition it has to be because everything wasn't 100% completely cleaned out from that barrel the last time it was cleaned.

So I decided early on to use a cleaning regimen that would return a barrel to raw metal condition after every use so it's always starting out fresh. I even thoroughly clean & scrub a new barrel before shooting it and have been amazed at the amount of black crud, machine oil, etc, that comes out of one.

Maybe it's unnecessary but I'm a blue collar guy and even though my TC Hawkens are entry level mass produced rifles, I appreciate being able to have them.
Heck, I even keep a pair of cheap brown cotton "jersey gloves" laying on top of the cabinet and slip them on any time I want to pick up a rifle to check/wipe the bore, etc, don't want even a chance of a stray salty finger print left behind.
And Horse Doctor is right, whoever gets them after I'm gone will probably think they were only fired a couple times, cleaned, and stored in a dry closet for years or something.

 

[Crow-Feather]

Rooundball,
I do pretty much the same as you do except that I preserve with the natural lube and I lube patches with moose milk.
I have never had to clean a barrel while I was shooting at the range. For hunting, I do use the natural lube instead of moose milk. Both shoot the same, but the moose milk cleans better when going down the barrel.

C F

 

[Deadeye]

To each his own, I think sometime the reason the old timers didn't write down how they cleaned or loaded their guns was
they all had their own way of doing it. I don't use a brush when cleaning, I do use a scraper for the bottom, I use only thick flannel patches and windex for cleaning and a patch with WD40 for the final pass. I have a light that I drop down the barrel and after yrs. of shooting and cleaning this way my barrels are so bright and shiny they'll hurt your eyes to look. I use only spit to patch and can shoot all day without ever cleaning between shots.
I have about 14 long guns and do them all this way, some are 40 yrs. old, works for me, but others will have a completely different system that they swear by and it works for them.
Deadeye

 

[sse]

I know some of you guys manage, but I don't know how one can shoot all day and never swab once! I use spit and tried many shots and it got tougher and tougher, and I finally busted my ramrod (!) from getting it stuck. ??

Regards, sse

 

[roundball]

Natural Lube 1000 is one way to do it...I shoot a whole range trip without having to wipe between shots...
it minimizes fouling and keeps what is there very soft so the next ball you load, the soft fouling is pushed
back down on top of the powder charge, and expelled on the next shot...then there is a new single shot's
worth of residue in the bore, it's pushed back down when you load the next shot, and the cycle is repeated.
Basically there's not more than an individual shot's worth of fouling in the bore to deal with at any given time.
Other approaches may produce these results too...I got started using natural lube 1000 prelubed patches &
wonderwads when I got into muzzleloading, and time at the range is spent just enjoying shooting 35-50 shots
rather than cleaning the bore all the time...also cuts down overall amount of time needed for a range trip.

 

[steved]

Perhaps rifling depth has something to do with the different cleaning experiences. A seasoned T/C barrel, which roundball is known to shoot, has relatively shallow rifling and it likely doesn't hold much residue other than the one shot's worth, as explained above. I would tend to think that deeper rifling grooves found in other manufacturers' barrels would accumulate more residue, making each successive shot harder to load. I say this, mind you, without having any experience other than shooting with a T/C barrel. Just a hunch.

 

[roundball]

You need to read my posts again...just the opposite...I do NOT shoot a "seasoned" barrel.
In addition, I do NOT shoot a barrel with shallow grooves...I shoot TC 1:66" round ball barrels with .010" grooves.
And...natural lube 1000 works with all barrels, grooves, black powder, pyrodex, etc, etc...doesn't matter...been using it since the late 80's in a couple dozen rifles, various calibers, deep grooves, normal grooves, etc...doesn't matter.