Bore cleaners

[stikshooter]

We play with B.P. weapons for enjoyment. Our ancestors used their B.P. weapons to stay alive. The only thing they had to clean their weapons was water. They didn't have Dawn , Ballistol and God only knows how many other choice we have to use to clean ours! Most of the products out there are made to sell . A lot of the companies don't give a Rats_%SS whether they work or not as long as we buy them.

And water was in short supply guess what they used (PEE) and they used it for real not for fun !!!!/Ed

 

[doubleset]

While we're doing "cleaning confessions", ...

I don't hunt, though I expect to use my Crockett rifle for some varmint control around here in favor of the AR-15/22 or my CZ 455. May also decide to do some squirrel hunting with it, but if I go off the property to do that my wife will complain that I should be shooting the resident ones. But in any event, my cleaning regimen with either the Crockett or GPR is the same and "at home", typically after a couple of hours at a BP match, having put about 25 shots or so through the gun.

I use Simple Green together with as hot water as I can get out of the laundry room faucet that's at the other end of the house from the water heater. So it's hot, but not painfully hot. And you really don't need terribly hot water for this to work as well as it will. I don't bother to use water out of our RO unit, but even the faucet water is heavily filtered by a big expensive whole house filter, and it's "county water" now. So it's pretty decent (modulo some scary chemicals the county keeps reporting are in it and blaming on a variety of sources). But I also don't think that water quality plays any significant role in cleaning BP barrels.

I pull off the barrel, remove the nipple, put it in a little container with 91% alcohol, and then flush-clean the barrel with a small bucket and the water/Simple Green mix in it. I do the soap flushing a couple of times, then flush a couple of times with clean water. Then pour a bit of alcohol in and out of the barrel and also run a couple of alcohol patches up and down to get rid of residual water. I clean through the nipple hole with alcohol on a couple of pipe cleaners. I used to just clean the nipple with alcohol and pipe cleaners, but recently have taken to "power flushing" it with alcohol and a small syringe -- since I discovered that got it a lot cleaner than just using the pipe cleaners, which I still use after the power flush. I used to worry about brushing out the (on the .32, VERY NARROW) combustion chamber of the patent breech before flushing, but on reflection, experimentation, and the experience of others, no longer believe that this is necessary with the sort of flushing I do.

That whole process is a LOT faster than it sounds.

Then it's time to oil it up and put the rifle back together. I used to use Ballistol for this, but I've begun using Montana Extreme Gun Oil because I've become unsure of how well the Ballistol works for long periods of storage. The jury is still out on this experiment. I'm also experimenting with running a patch or two with WD-40 through the barrel because I discovered that this seems to pick up some remaining fouling -- but I don't know if I'll continue with that. It's an evolving process. I know the knocks on using "petroleum" products on these rifles, but again, some of this is still experimental. I have not (at least yet) seen any of the detrimental effects of using regular gun oil or the WD-40; but I am careful to remove that as thoroughly as possible during cleaning or before shooting.

I do NOT use vinegar. It is a strong acid and hell on bluing, and I wouldn't even use dilute vinegar on a gun. I once used vinegar to clean calcium deposits out of a tuba of mine and almost ruined a $5,000 instrument with it. So I'm very careful with it now, even though its effect on steel isn't at all like its effect on brass. I've just gotten very careful using strong acids or bases on anything I value.

 

[user 28522]

I did find and read the thread “Boiling Water” that Notchy Bob suggested. It’s a good read and pretty easy to see why it was locked up. Seems many have small variations of how they clean but water is the clear winner being hot, warm or cool.
For me at least the flash rust that you get from hot water is a bit eye opening, so I have been using warm water and following up with compressed air and WD-40.

 

[doubleset]

It's kinda like the better mouse trap. You cand spend $1 for 2 mouse traps or you can spend $10 for a mouse trap but they both just catch mice.

I'm not sure what a $10 mouse trap would even look like, but I suppose there might be some that some city fellers might buy.

 

[Billy Boy]

The commercial stuff is good for making your pockets lighter. Water, Dawn, windex, 409, or any concoction that is wet will work just as well.

Windshield wiper fluid is as good as anything and you get a lifetime supply for $3…

 

[TreeMan]

Windshield wiper fluid is as good as anything and you get a lifetime supply for $3…

That’s all I use. I use the -0° windshield wiper fluid with a little Dawn dish liquid in it. I keep it in a squirt bottle as patch lube for match shooting and for cleaning afterwards. The winter blend is almost all alcohol so it evaporates quickly. I do not have to clean between shots using this. I used to just use spit patch’s but the WWF works just as well as lube and im not gagging on nasty tasting patches. For hunting I use lubed mink oil patches.

 

[APG]

At the range I will use the Thompson #13 bore cleaner but at home it's hot water and a dash of Dawn.

 

[doubleset]

I've also become a big fan of the orange "citrus" cleaner/degreaser -- although for some time I was very skeptical of it as maybe being some kind of "woke" or "green" substitute for real cleaning products. But it's VERY effective and extremely safe and unoffensive compared to what resides in my barn in gallon cans with difficult to pronounce descriptions on them (which I now use only as the "nuclear option").

The orange stuff was my final solution to removing all the icky brown gunk from the barrel of the Lyman GPR I inherited from my son who had been using Bore Butter in it. Not to start a Bore Butter fight -- I don't know how well he'd been cleaning it. But I'm also highly confident that just water/soap/detergent cleaning won't work with Bore Butter. The only way I got to the point of getting cleaning patches to come out of that barrel in a reasonably clean state was after I used the orange solvent/degreaser.

I don't know what the effect of the orange stuff is on bluing, so I'm real careful with it currently. It's citric acid based, and so I suspect its effect will be like that of vinegar. Not taking a chance.

 

[jackpine54]

I generally remove the lock. Install a toothpick in the touch hole. Fill the bore with cold water. Well type or creek type water. Let that sit while I clean up the lock with ballistol/water mix. Then pour out the barrel and run patches until they come out clean. Finish up with a wet ballistol patch followed by a dry patch. Clean outside of barrel and ballistol. Reinstall lock. Takes 10 minutes or so. I usually shoot often, but before a longer storage I'll run some mink oil or lard inside barrel and on outside of gun.

 

[reloader4410]

little red steam cleaner

 

[Trooper]

Many of us now have things in our houses called "faucets" which you can turn "on" or "off". Also in many cases, one of these faucets is connected to a supply of hot water.

Wow! That thars is a miracle! What will they think of next. I recon some day the outhouse will be an inhouse. “What a fascinating modern age we live in”- Lucky Jack Aubrey, captain, HMS Surprize.

 

[Daryl Crawford]

So, what if we change the question slightly? What if we take the focus off cleaning, which water does just fine, and place it on the neutralization of the acids and salts that burnt black powder residue had that causes rust and corrosion?
What can one use as a quick swab or two, maybe a quick rinse and dump, that will neutralize these acids and salts?

I use a mix of water and ballistol for this. I keep a spray bottle and put a squirt or 2 on the barrel, dump, run a patch, squirt, dump, dry patches, then set to reload. It is handy at the range. If it is really nasty, I'll spray some straight ballistol down the barrel, after the process mentioned above, then run some clean patches.
I don't think it is the right way, but it is an acceptable way. If I'm running out of time, I'll do the above at the range and finish with a wet patch of olive oil and finish cleaning later that night or the next day.

 

[Ben Meyer]

22oz of water
1oz of Ballistol
1oz of PineSol

Mix well. All you need. That said, after a day's shooting, I use Dawn and hot water with a little device that clamps over the flash hole, and using a pumping action with my range rod, works very well. I use the homemade mix for swabbing between shots and general clean up on the range.

 

[barracudadave67]

Soap makes water weter.

 

[Hawken]

So, what if we change the question slightly? What if we take the focus off cleaning, which water does just fine

Hold on to that thought for a second

... and place it on the neutralization of the acids and salts that burnt black powder residue had that causes rust and corrosion? What can one use as a quick swab or two, maybe a quick rinse and dump, that will neutralize these acids and salts?
We will go back and clean the crud later, for now we just want to eliminate the damage that crud can do.

NowThis IS the problem, people have to get it in their head, that black powder is different than smokeless powder. A lot different.

Corrosive salt residues can not be "neutralized" nor dissolved by oil or grease! It might take longer, but I'd be willing to bet running an oily patch down the bore will still rust or frost up. Those residues are gonna lurk in the nooks and crannies, that's why water w/ a small amount of detergent will dissolve, and carry it away. It isn't water is "just fine" for cleaning, it's the the fact that water or water based is only thing that does the job. Sure, Vinegar, or Windex, or Rubbing Alcohol does a great job too - guess what they are mostly made of? Yup - Water.

The only thing that dissolves a salt is water, this is Chemistry 101. If you run an oil patch down a dirty bore, now you've got more work ahead of you than is necessary. I don't see any way around this. A 50/50 Water/Ballistol mix might be the best solution, it was developed specifically for cleaning corrosive powder residues.

When I first got into the BP weapons they always talked about soapy water, but they didn't explain why. It ain't because they were all too cheap to buy Hoppes.

Another thing too, I always saw my buddies with hangfires and failure to fires because they insisted on using oil as if it were magic and "protect" the bore. It doesn't work that way.

 

[PatriotKnight]

You might go all real high tech and heat your water

If you want to feel really special, put your heated water and your Dawn dish soap in a spray bottle!

 

[tenngun]

Spray bottle!!!!!!
Civilized societies used to burn heretics at the stake

 

[Buckskinquin]

That residue is no joke! Years ago after cleaning I stood up my beloved Flinter on the butt the few drops that were left in the breach dripped out of the touch hole burned an ugly scar of oil finish off of my stock I had to redo the entire thing

Always store cleaned BP guns muzzle down, thats solves residual issue. I also check the gun a day or 2 after cleaning for anything I might have missed.

 

[N.Y. Yankee]

Do any of the supposed bore cleaners on the market do anything more or better than hot water or hot soap and water? Curious because T/C has their #13 bore cleaner and Butchs has a black powder bore cleaner. I haven’t searched a bunch so I’ll bet there are others. Seems at this point they would have faded away.

These products probably work just fine but they are marketed mostly for guys getting in to BP and believe they need to buy everything from a store to maintain their new gun. Anything that is mostly water will clean BP fouling if you want to use it out of a bottle. I have used windshield washer fluid, windex, and moose milk. Mostly, I just put warm water in a small plastic bucket, put the barrel in breech end down and start swabbing. It only takes 3-4 wet patches and a couple dry ones.

 

[Ben Meyer]

Once my bore is clean and dry, I wet a patch with Barricade, which is a rust inhibitor, and run it down and back up. Then I wait 5 minutes and do it again. It dries and forms an invisible film that you don't need to wipe out before shooting again. I take those still wet patches and wipe the outside of the barrel and all metal parts. Ive never had a rust issue. Barricade us GREAT stuff!