I had a number of original muzzle loaders in my teens and early 20s (the 1950s and early 1960s). While all these firearms had rust blemishes and dings aplenty on their exteriors, most had bright unpitted bores in excellent condition.
One such gun, with a genuinely perfect bore, was an obviously much-used percussion l4-gauge Lacey of London Northwest Trade Gun dating from the late 1840s or early 1850s, with which I frequently hunted during my teens. Another was a 1760s vintage .69 Hutchinson horse-pistol (Dublin Castle proofmarks), originally part of a pair and still very much a shooter...at least when I could find proper flints.
By contrast, EVERY used muzzle loader of modern manufacture I've looked at during the past 20 years was unserviceable due to improper cleaning: literally every one. Typically these modern guns had perfect or near-perfect exteriors, but bores so awful, even mediocre accuracy would have been impossible. In other words, caveat emptor -- buyer beware.
My own opinion is that this problem is due to a combination of laziness and reliance on new-fangled solvents and "recipes" that invariably fail because they don't remove all the residue. The problem is many times worsened by gullible belief in the false propaganda disseminated by the solvent-makers.
My method -- one that has NEVER failed (and when my original muzzle loaders were all stolen in 1964, their bores were in the same condition as when I got them years before) -- is hot soapy water.
Shave some laundry soap into a three-pound coffee can or a kettle, fill it about four inches deep with boiling water, raise the suds, submerge the breech of the barrel, and with a tight-fitting patch work the material up to the muzzle and souse it back through the nipple or touch-hole a dozen times or so.
Remove the nipple and do the same thing again.
Then switch to a brush and scrub vigorously. Check your work with a clean wet patch: as soon as the patch comes out clean, you're nearly finished.
Lastly, pour a whole teakettle full of boiling water down the bore. You'll need a funnel and some way to hold the barrel upright while protecting your hands -- depending on the design of the gun, you might be able thread the ramrod through the thimbles backwards and using the ramrod as a handle. Let the water drain out; let the barrel stand until it's cooled enough to hold bare-handed.
Then swab the bore until it's dry -- in truth there will be little or no moisture left due to the heat imparted by the boiling water -- and oil the barrel thoroughly inside and out. Do this while the metal is still warm: its open pores will absorb the oil and form a microscopic protective coating.
Finish cleaning the nipple with a pipe-cleaner, let the nipple sit on a hot stove just long enough to sizzle dry (no more or you'll de-temper the steel). Let the nipple cool enough to handle, oil the snail and nipple and and reassemble the gun.
It's infinitely more effort than these zippety-do-dah, promise-you-the-moon solvents, but if you do it right, it works perfectly 100 percent of the time. I think it is well worth the extra time in terms of certainty and bore preservation.
The selfsame method, by the way, was prescribed by the military establishments of every nation in the world for cleaning after black powder and/or corrosive-primed smokeless ammo had been fired. Again it works -- 100 percent of the time.
Remember too that black powder has been around the Occident at least since the 1200s -- there is even some evidence it was known to the Carthegenians and perhaps also to the Romans. That gives Westernesse a minimum of 800 years to have found the best way of cleaning -- and the unanimous decision of the ages was the hot soapy water method.
That is, until the snake-oil solvent peddlers came along.
The obvious result of which is just what I described: store after store filled with used muzzle-loaders that may appear brand new but are nevertheless rendered useless by severely pitted bores.
Others may continue to fatten the pocketbooks of the solvent-makers (and thereby fuel the demand for replacement barrels), but I'll stick with the traditional method, thank you, secure in the knowledge my bores will never be mistaken for sewer pipes.
One such gun, with a genuinely perfect bore, was an obviously much-used percussion l4-gauge Lacey of London Northwest Trade Gun dating from the late 1840s or early 1850s, with which I frequently hunted during my teens. Another was a 1760s vintage .69 Hutchinson horse-pistol (Dublin Castle proofmarks), originally part of a pair and still very much a shooter...at least when I could find proper flints.
By contrast, EVERY used muzzle loader of modern manufacture I've looked at during the past 20 years was unserviceable due to improper cleaning: literally every one. Typically these modern guns had perfect or near-perfect exteriors, but bores so awful, even mediocre accuracy would have been impossible. In other words, caveat emptor -- buyer beware.
My own opinion is that this problem is due to a combination of laziness and reliance on new-fangled solvents and "recipes" that invariably fail because they don't remove all the residue. The problem is many times worsened by gullible belief in the false propaganda disseminated by the solvent-makers.
My method -- one that has NEVER failed (and when my original muzzle loaders were all stolen in 1964, their bores were in the same condition as when I got them years before) -- is hot soapy water.
Shave some laundry soap into a three-pound coffee can or a kettle, fill it about four inches deep with boiling water, raise the suds, submerge the breech of the barrel, and with a tight-fitting patch work the material up to the muzzle and souse it back through the nipple or touch-hole a dozen times or so.
Remove the nipple and do the same thing again.
Then switch to a brush and scrub vigorously. Check your work with a clean wet patch: as soon as the patch comes out clean, you're nearly finished.
Lastly, pour a whole teakettle full of boiling water down the bore. You'll need a funnel and some way to hold the barrel upright while protecting your hands -- depending on the design of the gun, you might be able thread the ramrod through the thimbles backwards and using the ramrod as a handle. Let the water drain out; let the barrel stand until it's cooled enough to hold bare-handed.
Then swab the bore until it's dry -- in truth there will be little or no moisture left due to the heat imparted by the boiling water -- and oil the barrel thoroughly inside and out. Do this while the metal is still warm: its open pores will absorb the oil and form a microscopic protective coating.
Finish cleaning the nipple with a pipe-cleaner, let the nipple sit on a hot stove just long enough to sizzle dry (no more or you'll de-temper the steel). Let the nipple cool enough to handle, oil the snail and nipple and and reassemble the gun.
It's infinitely more effort than these zippety-do-dah, promise-you-the-moon solvents, but if you do it right, it works perfectly 100 percent of the time. I think it is well worth the extra time in terms of certainty and bore preservation.
The selfsame method, by the way, was prescribed by the military establishments of every nation in the world for cleaning after black powder and/or corrosive-primed smokeless ammo had been fired. Again it works -- 100 percent of the time.
Remember too that black powder has been around the Occident at least since the 1200s -- there is even some evidence it was known to the Carthegenians and perhaps also to the Romans. That gives Westernesse a minimum of 800 years to have found the best way of cleaning -- and the unanimous decision of the ages was the hot soapy water method.
That is, until the snake-oil solvent peddlers came along.
The obvious result of which is just what I described: store after store filled with used muzzle-loaders that may appear brand new but are nevertheless rendered useless by severely pitted bores.
Others may continue to fatten the pocketbooks of the solvent-makers (and thereby fuel the demand for replacement barrels), but I'll stick with the traditional method, thank you, secure in the knowledge my bores will never be mistaken for sewer pipes.
