Breech Plug On a New Gun

[user 34300]

When building kits and parts sets, I remove and inspect. Sometimes the person who installed it does a poor job. There could be a gap between the plug face and the barrel seat. The threads could be galled. IT could be too tight or too loose. IF I am to spend 100+ hours on a gun I want the most basic things to be correct before I start. I use heavy moly grease on the threads.

I have professional equipment for working on barrels. That includes real wrenches, v-blocks, and a hydraulic barrel vice. IF you don't have those things removing breech plugs often results in serious damage. If a person is not so equipped, leave it alone. If you are working on a modern factory made gun, leave it alone.

I see many plugs as the photo above. The liner notches the plug face. I think that is a poor practice. It destroys the fit of the plug face to the barrel seat. fouling will leak into the threads. If a guy want the liner that far back I think it is better to use a longer thread plug and run the liner in to the side of the plug and make a seal, like CVA. Better yet, put the liner ahead of the plug in the modern fashion.

 

[LME]

I have a cheap borescope, nice to have to check the breech. On one occasion I found I wasn't getting my breech face as clean as I should have and bought breech plug scraper to assist in my cleaning procedure. I also found out the liner is threaded into the breech plug, it is a good thing I didn't try to pull the plug first without looking. As it turns out the builder(early 70s) used finishing nails for barrel pins and left the heads on, no way to remove them without tearing a chunk out of the stock at each one. I found out the hard way and only removed one pin, I patched the hole, it doesn't show. The barrel will always have to stay in place.

Before and after;

View attachment 89687


View attachment 89686

Another time I looked down the bore of a new gun and noticed the drum was installed a little too far into the barrel. I pulled the breechplug, it had the most perfect plug to breech fit I have ever seen. I trimmed the drum a little, reinstalled the breech plug and went out shooting.

Sometimes you have to pull a breechplug if something crops up but rarely.

There are a few people that visit this forum that are capable of removing a breech plug and reinstalling it properly. There are many more that are not!There is a reason a breech plug is hard to remove and that is liability of the company that manufactured the rifle and the fact that it is rarely ever needed to be removed. When you look down the sights of a rifle the last thing you want to happen is quarter size chunk of steel come back into your face. The rifle companies don't want you to remove the plug.

 

[Bergmann]

There is absolutely no reason to ever remove the breech plug unless you need to access the barrel from the breech end.

And usually that's something best left to a gunsmith with the tools to do the job!

 

[hanshi]

I've been shooting muzzleloaders for over 55 years and have only pulled one (1) breech plug. Unless damage has occurred there is no reason to remove one. Welcome and enjoy that rifle.

 

[Eric Krewson]

It is my understanding that builders from the 18th and 19th centaury were not as concerned about breech plug fit as we are today. I think it was Jim Chambers who said that he had pulled the breechplugs on a lot of originals, the fit was sloppy but none of the breech plugs was in danger of blowing out even after 200 years.

There are a lot of notched breechplugs out there where the builder missed when drilling the touch hole and got into to plug a little. I did the same on my first gun when I was a complete rookie. Not only does the plug face form a seal but every thread does as well, I am not worried about any problem with my plug leaking down the road. My threads are coated with so much high temp anti seize that the possibility of any corrosion is "0".

Like I said, built most of my guns so the pulling the breechplug is no big deal if necessary. I can see why someone with no experience in this area would see it as daunting task. Fitting my first breechplug probably took me 2 full days to get a good seal, it WAS a daunting task at the time.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Just for educational purposes here. There are ways to remove one of those type of garbage brushes from your gun without removing the breech plug. When that unfortunate event happens. Stop. Go to the local plumbing supplier and get a piece of PVC, CPVC, or PEX that is just small enough OD to fit inside your bore. Get a long enough piece to fit all the way down with some to spare. Insert the pipe into your barrel and the ID of the pipe will go down over the stuck brush freeing it from the bore. Been there, done that.

Now I know. Roundball tipped me off to the copper tube trick in the 1990's. But this occurred in 1979 or 1980 when there was no Internet and no local help at all for muzzleloaders. Nada.

"Buy the vice block (T/C Part No xxxx) and it's simple." Said the equally young clerk at the one ****'s Sporting Goods Store at the time.


Not.

 

[Grenadier1758]

Of course removing a breech plug is simple when one knows how the breech plug is installed in the barrel, knows the procedure to remove the breech plug, has the correct tools to remove it, has the big vise with the barrel jaws mounted on the sturdy work bench and has the proper fitting breech plug wrench and the muscle to remove it. Having patience to let the penetrating oils do their work helps too.

 

[Eric Krewson]

You are so right, guys like me who have done shop work all their lives even if we didn't have a shop as such take it for granted that everyone can turn a wrench or two. I had a work bench in a 5X7 off set corner of my garage by the water heater that I worked off of long before I built a shop. I made at least 50 bows on that old workbench.

True story; Willie was my neighbor, nice guy, good father and family man. Willie was a security officer at the plant I worked at.

One day Willie asked me if I could help him with his garage door opener, the door would go closed and open again and wouldn't stay shut. I had done a couple of complete garage door opener installations so I walked down to help him out.

One look and I knew his limit switches were out of adjustment and asked him for a screwdriver to adjust them.

He said " Hoss, if you keep stuff like that around the house people expect you to know how to use it so I don't have one". Willie didn't even know how to use a screwdriver.

Later I was at another friends house just around the corner helping him with a project, turns out I could have put his entire tool collection in a very small Kiddie tool box, he didn't even have a socket set. Both guys mentioned were in their 50s

My guess is that for every one of us who can handle about anything that comes up there are 100 or so who never learned or was exposed to any Mr. Fix-It stuff growing up and just can't do it.

My old workbench gathering dust and canning jars in my basement and the new one I built when I was finally able to build a shop after I retired.

 

[FishDFly]

Yep, those types are out there. Some of them you pay to do your taxes because you can not do them yourself.

 

[Okie Hog]

45 years ago i worked for an Army sergeant major who was a member of Mensa working on his PHD in in computer science. He was an outstanding boss and soldier

One weekend morning i got a call that one of the rear brakes on the bosses VW was locked up. Went his home with a screwdriver and a short handled two pound hammer. Removed the hubcap and hit the nut on the brake drum. Sproing - the brake released. Told my boss not to set the brake until i had a chance to fix the problem.

My boss thought that was an act of pure genius.

Recently re-built a 4-53 Detroit diesel engine that a "diesel mechanic" messed up by his failure to read the technical manual.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Disclaimer; I can't nail two boards together square if my life depended on it, I am measure once and cut twice person. The drawers in my new work bench came as prefab units from Lowe's, I built the bench and frame to perfectly house them and slid them into place. we all have our limitations, precise carpentry is my downfall.

I can carve a duck decoy that looks like it can fly away, build bows that win national championships and make passible flintlock rifles but carpentry work just isn't my thing.

 

[Philip Lebow]

Gents, my son is mechanically declined.
40 years old, and can’t maintain a bicycle, but a rock star ER nurse. A reaction to the fact that I am a born gear head, was a mechanical engineer before taking up gunsmithing 33 years ago. If I was in the ER everything would get fixed with paper towels and black electrical tape. Breech plugs come out as necessary. If we don’t have correct tools, we just build them. P