Brown Bess cleaning nightmare - Newbie

[Flint62Smoothie]

All I do is take a spent cartridge case like a spent .223 and cover the butt end with some foil, shiny side to the outside, then drop it mouth first down the muzzle, so it acts like a mirror, and use an LED flashlight to illuminate the interior.

I've done that with a washer a good 1/16" smaller in OD than the bore! Like you said - simple and works SLICK!

Not that it needs to be said, but I try not to press "in" on the ID of the washer, thus to avoid making a rounded dimple.

 

[rickystl]

If any of you guys have O'Reilly's Auto Parts in your area, they carry a really neat pen flashlight called "Super Ray". It's on a rack near the counter. It's super small but with a really bright white LED that lights both vertical and horizonal. It so thin it will fit about any bore except a .22.
The neat thing is there is a hole in the end that will allow you to twist some thin wire and lower the whole light up and down the barrel. Super handy. Think it's about $10.00. Another Forum member let me know about this. Anyway, JFYI. Rick. :hatsoff:

 

[rickystl]

Hey Dave. Thanks for the tip. :hatsoff:

 

[MacRob46]

Two parts peroxide, two parts Murphy's Oil Soap and two parts alcohol. Put it down the bore with the touch hole plugged, leaving enough room to slosh it around while it is in the bore (plugging the bore with a cork, or your thumb if it is big enough)for a couple of minutes and pour it out. The solution will come out filthy. Put some more down after that and nine times out of ten when you pour that treatment out it will come out clean. If not, do it again. Then DRY AND THOROUGHLY OIL THE BORE, and that should take care of it. If there is fouling build up on the face of the breech then use a fouling scraper or a bore brush - one with the bristles on the end, not the side of the brush - to dislodge the fouling. I am very slow at cleaning all my muzzle loaders and I can still do my Bess in under 30 minutes, using this method. The lock and exterior of the barrel are an easily cleaning job. It should not take you two hours to do a thorough cleaning and I am a bit mystified as to why you are having this problem. Given the apparently build up on your breech it seems that a previous owner may not have followed a thorough cleaning procedure. You should be spending a lot more time shooting and a lot less time cleaning. I do tend to disagree about the fun of shooting a Bess. I have always had a good time shooting mine.

 

[ord sgt]

You say that your Bess is no fun to shoot. You say that you have developed a flinch. This makes me wonder about the amount of powder that you are pouring down the barrel.
If you are shooting at paper targets, 60 grains of FFg should do fine. Recoil will be minimal. Do not over fill the pan when priming. Less flash will help reduce the flinching also.

All the cleaning hints should help in getting your firearm back into shooting order.

Very much good advice can be found here. Stick around and keep us up to date on your progress.

 

[butler1850]

I'll add my agreement to those that say that less priming powder is better.

The pan has a small indentation at the bottom under the flat portion where the frizzen mates to the pan. This should not be completely full of powder. Experiment and try to figure out how little powder you can put into the pan and still get reliable ignitions. Though it seems counter-intuitive, the more powder you have in the pan the slower the ignition of the main charge will be. The size of the pan-flash will also be bigger using more powder, which leads to more flinching.

Keep your flint sharp, and enjoy the toy! I love bringing mine to the range. It always gets a bit more attention than other guns, but be sure to stand on the downwind end of the line!

 

[CommodoreHull]

Just by way of following up...

I did end up sending it to Dixie's armorer for cleaning. I was about to leave on a 4month business trip and needed to have the peace of mind knowing that it was cleaned up and wouldn't be deteriorating while I was away.

Wow did it come back nice! There apparently was a good bit of fouling in the base of the barrel. Everything's nice and shiny now...brass is clean again, even.

So...I dare not shoot it now. I'd like to find a cheaper Kentucky rifle that I could shoot without worrying so much about ruining an expensive gift. If anyone has any pointers, I'm all ears.

I did get a bunch of stuff from Track of the Wolf: bore scraper, solvent...all sorts of fun stuff.

 

[Len Graves]

While I understand your hesitancy to shoot your now clean Bess, I feel you may be depriving yourself of a great deal of fun. The mere fact that you can shoot a gun that played so great a part in the formation of our country is part of the fun. Shooting this fire arm will not hurt it. If Dixie's smith can bring it back to new so can you. With all the good advice you received here on cleaning ,take her out and enjoy her she deserves it. So do you.

 

[Grumpa]

Guns are made to shoot! Shoot it often. Lots of great advice has been given you here, especially by ord sgt, re shooting. Clean it afterwards, and when the time comes that someone gets it as an heirloom, it will have a lovely patina to it, that will reflect its history with you, and all the enjoyment you had with it. That will be far more meaningful to whoever gets it, than some pristine piece that saw little or no use.

I would shoot an original; I sure wouldn't worry about shooting a reproduction.

 

[pargent]

1. ******
2. Tosser
3. Womble
5. All of the above

(?)

 

[Joel/Calgary]

There is something I have not noticed mentioned yet in this thread that can be related to a gunk build-up in the breech. If any oil pools in the breech, it may not be cleaned out by your pre-firing procedure, and this can combine with powder fouling to produce some non-water-soluble crud. Swabbing with and/or sloshing some alcohol (any sort - methanol, denatured, isopropyl, etc.) helps clean out the oil before firing, especially in a chambered breech (which your Bess does NOT have). One way to avoid this pooling is to store your firelock muzzle-down, at least for the first several hours after cleaning.

Regards,
Joel

 

[buzz]

Gosh reading this thread i just add howi clean mine doesnt take long
First 50/50 mix of hydropyoxide and murry's oil soap then run a 12ga bore brush i use nylon one over a copper one but both are good flush few times then run few patches down then run a 12ga bore mop down with coconut oil then a patch
Pull the lock clean with old tooth brush any crud and dip in coconut oil and wipe clean the put in rack with muzzle pointining downward a tad
Then later usualy later that evening give it a rub down with beezwax and lemon oil
Never any any trouble clean and armory bright ready for the next outing
As i side note i shoot more shot then rb in my bess

 

[spudnut]

Its a Bess you'd have to try to hurt it enjoy it I have for more than 25 years ask away we'll keep ya goin :thumbsup:

 

[spudnut]

I'd like to find a cheaper Kentucky rifle that I could shoot without worrying so much about ruining an expensive gift.

You think a smoothbore is hard to clean. op:

 

[CommodoreHull]

There is something I have not noticed mentioned yet in this thread that can be related to a gunk build-up in the breech. If any oil pools in the breech, it may not be cleaned out by your pre-firing procedure, and this can combine with powder fouling to produce some non-water-soluble crud. Swabbing with and/or sloshing some alcohol (any sort - methanol, denatured, isopropyl, etc.) helps clean out the oil before firing, especially in a chambered breech (which your Bess does NOT have). One way to avoid this pooling is to store your firelock muzzle-down, at least for the first several hours after cleaning.

Regards,
Joel

Very very helpful. That sounds like exactly what is going on. I now keep it on a wall rack with the muzzle pointed down, so some of that should be eliminated, but thanks for the pointers.

spudnut: Good point. Hadn't thought of all that rifling.


Sounds like I need to get out and shoot it some more. I'll probably do that. After all, like someone mentioned further up, it can obviously be cleaned so I must not be permanently ruining anything.

 

[CommodoreHull]

Proof I actually do shoot it... :grin:

 

[spudnut]

ahh that's a fine picture :thumbsup: after you clean it a couple times it becomes a labor of love

 

[Wes/Tex]

Love the stop-action pics taken at dusk or after dark. You can never see the real excitement at full speed when you're shooting. Also the reason you have to stress to new flintlock shooters to concentrate on the sight picture and forget the explosion just ahead of your nose! :wink: :thumbsup:

 

[Britsmoothy]

Excellent photo :hatsoff:

B.