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Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

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LeeRoy87

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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.
 
Sorry. Saw a couple of entries back awhile touting various Magical Mystery Tour cleaning methods -- and obviously got the wrong impression. My sincere apologies; that crow is pretty chewy (but tasty if marinated for a couple of days in the right kind of moonshine). :)

In fact I'm liking this site more every time I read it...

(What brought to mind all the bad barrels I've seen was posting on that .62 round-ball thread, talking about a ruined .54 T/C barrel I got in a trade and had Ed Rayl bore out to 20-gauge.)
 
Another of my trade secrets is to save my old, past-darning wool sox and cut them up into cleaning patches.

For muzzle loaders -- especially rifles but smoothbores too -- these are many times more effective than cotton patches, even the fairly coarse GI patches available from SARCO and other surplus outlets. Don't know, but I suspect the roughness of the fabric is what makes them so perfect for the job. (I've often wondered if I've merely rediscovered something that was common knowledge in the Old Days.)

Best of all -- that is, when you use the hot soapy water method -- these patches are self-cleaning, and you can literally re-use them until they fall apart. They gotta be real wool though, at least 75 percent.
 
Try "tow" some time, it's great for "scrub'n" bores, and it's historicaly correct!! :thumbsup:

YMHS
rollingb
 
Hay Stumpy! Ye har that? Ye can use em old socks ye been a savin, fer dryin yer barrel! Corse, ye gots ta wash um first. :: :: Iffen ye don't, ye won't be abil ta cut um up, let alone ta get um down the bore! :crackup: :crackup:

"...these patches are self-cleaning, and you can literally re-use them until they fall apart."
Stumpy: Ah thin that meens ye can use yers once or twice afore ye thro um away. :)

I use really hot water for the soaping, but not hot enough to burn my hand. After I dry the bore, I hold the breech plug area over a gas stove just until the water in the threads boils out. Then I oil the bore and threads.
It's worked for me for over 30 years.
 
I once read a re-print of CW era manual for cleaning muskets. It goes like this, plug the nipple, (TH) fill barrel with cold water, insert fitted wooden tampion into muzzle and drive in securely.

Turn the gun upside down and let it set for a couple hours. Remove the tampion and dump out the water, use several tight fitting wet patches and scrub bore vigorously. When patches run clean, wipe bore using dry patches, then run a lubed patch through the bore a few times.

Simple, and best of all it does just fine. I would also think those lads during the late unpleasantries between the states knew a thing or to about what it took to keep them in working order
 
I just spent the last hour writing a reply, quoting from a British musketry manual, and my server (or more probably this site) malfunctioned and ate it -- destroying all my work.

Basically, what I said was that leaving non-stainless steel or iron in contact with water for two hours will invariably rust the steel. Try it with a nail and see.

The British -- here is the worst part of what was lost to the e-malfunction, because I quoted at length from an 1859 service manual (a long difficult typing job I am not going to repeat) -- recommended "woollen" patches, water compressed forcefully enough down the barrel to clear the nipple, followed by prompt and careful drying and oiling.

Hasty cold-water cleaning probably explains the wretched bores of so many surviving CW line infantry arms. More thorough hot water cleaning probably explains why so many civilian and military scout arms from the period (like the Enfield Musketoons so favored by the Confederate Cavalry) are in such better shape.

Cold water will do the job -- sort of. Hot water is better. Hot soapy water is best of all because the soap helps break up the powder fouling, cuts through the patch grease or Minie lubricant and neutralizes the fulminate of mercury residue from the caps used on percussion firearms. But removing fouling and grease are cleaning problems with rifled guns of all ignition types, especially those deeply rifled like round-ball rifles, which is why (or so I read too many years ago to remember the source) in camps of the Over-Mountain Men of the Revolution and the later Mountain Men of the 1800s, there was typically a boiling kettle of hot soapy water for gun cleaning. Again, the superb condition of so many of the relevant surviving firearms surely tends to confirm this.
 
I've got a question. It is obvious that the guns you are cleaning are percussion because you referenced "nipples" quite a few times.

Is the same method used for "nipple-guns" good for flintlocks? Of coarse it is. But do you recommend that the barrel be removed from the stock at all times? By removing pins constantly, could that cause the stock to weaken in the forend?

I agree with you as to the validity of hot soapy water as a cleaning agent, but all I own are flintlocks and I am wondering if the consistant barrel removal may cause other problems.

I also think that running an oily patch down the barrel once a month is a good idea.
 
Much agree on the monthly oiled patch and your other points are good too.

Everything but my Enfield (a Parker-Hale Musketoon from the early 1970s) has a patent breech and barrel wedges, so barrel removal for cleaning is easy and was clearly intended so by the designers and gunsmiths. This was also true of my original Hutchinson flintlock pistol, one of several guns stolen from me 41 years ago.

When I clean the Enfield I do it much the same way I cleaned my Lacey trade gun: I wrap a rag around the barrel beneath the muzzle to catch any spillage (the Lacey was stocked to the muzzle, so I also dribbled candle wax on the junction of wood and metal and sealed out spillage that way). Then I tip the gun so water running out of the nipple won't get onto the stock, funnel some hot soapy water into the bore and force it out with a patch, repeating this until the water comes out clean. Just to be sure, I scrub the bore with a brush, then go to patches again. After brush scrubbing, a clean patch equals a clean gun. With the smoothbore Lacey, I could have the gun clean in maybe ten minutes. The Enfield takes a lot longer -- typically about an hour -- because of the rifling.

I've since bought a gadget from Dixy Gun Works that makes cleaning the Enfield a lot easier, a false nipple attached to a length of neoprine hose. Screw in the false nipple, stick the open end of the hose in a pan of hot soapy water, prime the resultant "pump" with a little hot soapy water down the bore, and assuming a tight fitting wool patch of the sort I use, you'll be able to pump water up and down through the bore. This cuts the cleaning time down to about half an hour.

Don't know how I would do this with a pinned barrel flintlock. (Never had one.) But there's probably people on this site who could tell us both how to do it.
 
After brush scrubbing, a clean patch equals a clean gun.

That's my regimen with TC Hawkens...patches first, then always a vigorous scrubbing with a good bronze bore brush, then patches again...repeat cycle until patches are snow white clean. IMO, patches alone cannot be trusted to get a bore 100% clean.

I also use patches and a smaller 25-30cal brush down in the patent breech to clean it good, then again later to help dry and then lube that area.
 
...a false nipple attached to a length of neoprine hose...Don't know how I would do this with a pinned barrel flintlock. (Never had one.)

The same device is available for flintlocks, if your gun has a screw-in vent liner. As with a percussion gun, you just need to get one with the correct thread size. I use one to flush the bore of my flinter, so I don't have to remove the pinned barrel. Dixie sells them, and I think Ox-Yoke also has them. It isn't perfect. It does leak a tiny bit, so instead of standing the rifle vertically, I lay it down across two chairs with the lock removed, on it's right side, so the tube is pointing straight down into the bucket of water. If any leaks out, it will just run down the tube instead of getting into the stock. It's not a huge leak, just a little bit, and this solves the problem. It's still a lot easier than removing the pinned barrel every time I clean it.

You can also put a piece of tape at a certain point on the rod to warn you when the patch/jag is getting near the muzzle (but I've learned to know just by 'feel'), and I keep my thumb over the muzzle to make sure I stop it before it pops out. I've never had a spill doing it this way.

Dixie has another device for barrels that don't have a vent liner. It's a clamp that goes around the breech and squeezes an O-ring against the side of the barrel, around the touch hole, and also has a hose attached. I don't know how well it works, I've never tried it.
 
Sorry. Saw a couple of entries back awhile touting various Magical Mystery Tour cleaning methods . . .

There are occasions I do clean without hot water (rare, but they do happen), and in that case I use moose milk and a bunch of patching, followed by an alcohol soaking inside and finally a layer of wax lube for protection. I trest the gun the same way.

I also always run a solvent soaked patch down when I'm through shooting to pre-clean the gun before I head for home. Kill as much fouling as possible before it gets a chance to "set up" in the bore.

I use bore mops to get the water circulating. My percussion rifles and shotgun all have hooked breeches and barrel keys, so they're easy. The flintlocks are tougher. I lay them on towels with the muzzle on a downward angle and the vent pointing down over a scrap towel and swish the bore mop in the hot, soapy water between wipes. I support the gun with a gloved left hand (the barrel still gets HOT) and a folded patch held over the vent with one finger to stop most of the water from dripping out that way. I then switch to clean, boiling water and repeat many times.

Best place I've found to do this is the gun on the porch, my butt on the first step, and the water in coffee cans on the second step (one soapy, one clean water).

Zonie, I ain't about to use up my only pair of Sunday-go-to-meeting socks, the good pair with bottoms in 'em, to clean a gun!
 
Zonie, I ain't about to use up my only pair of Sunday-go-to-meeting socks, the good pair with bottoms in 'em, to clean a gun!

I agree, it's easier just to leave your fouled shooting irons by the sink.

Women are so much better at scrubbing and cleaning :thumbsup:
 
plug vent hole on flintlock.use a hose small enough diam. to fit into bore with a little extra room between bore and hose.fit connections on hose to fit a spigot.push small end of hose up barrel.tilt barrel down so water runs out muzzle into bucket.turn hot water on at spigot,just a little bit and hold hose so it doesnt slip out of barrel.let run until water comes out clear,use hot water until barrel is very hot,pull out hose let barrel drain a few min.then swab dry and oil.no wet wood no mess. :m2c:BARRY
 
I always follow the very boiling hot soapy water/patches and brushing with boiling water pump flush and then with dry patches and then lastly with an isopropyl alcohol patch to evaporate any moisture while the barrel is still hot.

Then lube with non-pc synthetic lubes like Clenzoil and Otis Ultra-Bore. :thumbsup:

Frankly, even the worst methods of cleaning are still better than neglecting a gun. So when I see someone with the commercial cleaners in action, I don't give them any grief.
At least they are making an effort to take care of their equipment.

I'll usually just mention something like "You know, a tablespoon of liquid laundry or dish soap and a gallon of boiling water into a bucket will clean much better and is less expensive too".
:winking:
:imo:
 
I also always run a solvent soaked patch down when I'm through shooting to pre-clean the gun before I head for home. Kill as much fouling as possible before it gets a chance to "set up" in the bore.

I do likewise. Also will confess to using solvent (Hoppes #9 Plus) for between-round swab-outs: wet patch followed by two dry patches, all wool.

And BP fouling does indeed "set up": be soft and greasy when you leave the range or the woods, rock hard a few hours later. Obviously some kind of ongoing chemical reaction, probably related to why BP residue gouges rust pits so fast. (Took a .54 T/C Renegade backpacking into serious hunting/fishing country many many times when I was younger, and learned the hard way, when the fouling from merely firing once to discharge the load turned rock hard during the five-hour drive home.)
 
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