Curious, How do you clean your Pinned barrel Rifle or Smooth bore?

[Frontstuffer070]

I'm interested to know if you guys remove the barrel from your Pinned barreled rifle or smooth bore every time you clean it. With guns that have a wedge set up to hold the barrel in its simple to remove the barrel for cleaning which I prefer to do but with a pinned barrel its not so simple. With my Kentucky rifle I don't remove the barrel every time and I just swab it out until its clean. Granted its much more time consuming than pumping soapy water through it with the barrel removed. Driving the pins out of the stock makes me think I'm going to wear the pin holes out in the stock eventually. I'm asking this because in the near future I'm going to get a Kibler rifle. Thoughts?

 

[waksupi]

Don't remove the barrel. Stick a round toothpick in the bore, put in water, slosh it back and forth a few times, dump, repeat. Swab every couple times, doesn't take long.

 

[rusticbob]

I almost never take the barrel off for cleaning. I toothpick in the touch hole, and in my percussion with pinned barrelsI remove nipple and plug wit approximately sized hex head bolt. Pour hot water down the barrel a couple of times, turn the gun upside down a let dry. Make sure you follow with dry patches, then oiled patches. I spray a little Balistol in the nipple hole or touch hole and I am good to go.
Many videos and information available to do it other ways, this works for me.

 

[SciAggie]

I remove the lock, then instead of sealing the touch hole with a toothpick I seal the touch hole using a rare earth magnet. I use a small scrap of leather as a gasket over the touch hole and seal it using a strong rare earth magnet. I sometimes "sprung a leak" with toothpicks, but I don't using a magnet. Other than that much the same as posted above. I rarely remove the barrel.

 

[Jaeger]

I agree with Rustic. ROUND toothpicks are your friends, and if you stick them firmily in the touch hole, you can partially fill the bore with water, slosh it around, and dump it. That, combined with a couple of water-soaked patch swabblings and then several dry patches, should clean the gun pretty well. You will have to remove the lock and wipe it down, as well as the area around where the lock and the touch hole interface. Do not remove barrel pins repeatedly!

 

[TDM]

Pretty much same as all above mentioned. I do not remove, I remove the lock, round toothpick in touch hole, spray some moosemilk down the bore and let it sit a while, wrap a towel around the muzzle and pour warm/hot water to fill up the bore, empty and repeat several times, then swab dry and oil.

 

[Frontstuffer070]

Thanks for all the replies. That will be the new pinned barrel cleaning method.

 

[Larry (Omaha)]

I'm interested to know if you guys remove the barrel from your Pinned barreled rifle or smooth bore every time you clean it. With guns that have a wedge set up to hold the barrel in its simple to remove the barrel for cleaning which I prefer to do but with a pinned barrel its not so simple. With my Kentucky rifle I don't remove the barrel every time and I just swab it out until its clean. Granted its much more time consuming than pumping soapy water through it with the barrel removed. Driving the pins out of the stock makes me think I'm going to wear the pin holes out in the stock eventually. I'm asking this because in the near future I'm going to get a Kibler rifle. Thoughts?

All my non hooked breech guns get cleanned with the barrel on the stock. (Pinned or wedged) The hooked breech guns get removed. Pins are not to be removed unless there is a repair issue. When pins are repeadly removed one can't help but bugger up the holes and or stock. JMO
Larry

 

[TDM]

Thanks for all the replies. That will be the new pinned barrel cleaning method.

One more recommendation, I secure the Terry cloth hand towel to the muzzle with a wide rubber band and I use the same plastic container each time to pour in the water, it doesn't take long to learn how much water to put in the container so that you don't over fill the barrel. It doesn't take much water.

 

[Brokennock]

I'm interested to know if you guys remove the barrel from your Pinned barreled rifle or smooth bore every time you clean it. With guns that have a wedge set up to hold the barrel in its simple to remove the barrel for cleaning which I prefer to do but with a pinned barrel its not so simple. With my Kentucky rifle I don't remove the barrel every time and I just swab it out until its clean. Granted its much more time consuming than pumping soapy water through it with the barrel removed. Driving the pins out of the stock makes me think I'm going to wear the pin holes out in the stock eventually. I'm asking this because in the near future I'm going to get a Kibler rifle. Thoughts?

As others have said, remove lock, plug touchhole, add water (maybe with a little dishsoap but that's another topic), maybe slosh it back and forth a bit with a cork in the muzzle, dump and repeat, swab a bit of really dirty, repeat process with clean water,,,, swab dry, add bore protectant of your choice (again, a whole other, and often contentious, topic).
Sometimes one encounters a touchhole that just won't seal.
In that case,
https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/finally-a-flintlock-flush-kit-that-really-works.162338/

 

[Rob M.]

I cut 15-20 2" patches , T-shirt material ....dip them in water , cold is fine , and push them down the bore until they start getting less chewy , then clean ... When the come out decent , I use dry patches to dry out the bore ....then shove down an oil patch and leave it ....I tooth brush the pan and area with water , dry with a patch or cloth , then I pull the oil patched ramrod out ....take the oil patch and wipe the pan and area , and length of barrel down .....and anything else , trigger guard , side plate screws whatever . After reading some of the wild and long drawn out techniques on here i timed myself the last two times , 8 min. and 12 min. and its not like I'm hurrying to try . Hot water doesn't hurt and if you want to plug thevT.H. and put water in the tube and swish it around a bit , it cuts down on a few patches but ....it can be a pain and certainly ain't necessary . Some folks like to plug the T.H. so black ghew doesn't streak down the stock , I used to put a patch in the pan and close it , but if the gun is horizontal it doesn't do that so much , plus i dont mind if it runs black down the stock . The suction cleans out the touch hole and the black ghew just wipes off , no biggy .

 

[deerstalkert]

i use 2 swabs saturated with windex to start. this liquefies the fouling. i then use water wet swabs or fireup my little steam cleaner.
i usually tooth pic the vent but have a magnetic flushing kit ordered.
removing pins isn't the hardest thing in the world to do, but putting them back is where the danger lays. i didn't spend 6 months building my rifles and taking all the care i could to not bugger them up, to just bugger them up cleaning!

 

[tenngun]

Middlesex village arms has a fusil tgat they have copied. This isn’t an endorsement of Middlesex as I’ve never done business with them, and have heard many complaints.
However, the owner does write some good things about ml in general.
And his guns that he has used as patterns are real nice.
He looked at the fusil with a brown barrel. Mostly the worse for ware. When they pulled the barrel it was blue and clean in the channel. It may have never been out of the stock since final assembly

 

[B P Maniac Shooter]

I do this in usually 5-7 minutes:

 

[Timber Wolf]

Come home from range, remove lock, insert toothpick, fill bore with soapy water (use small handy funnel and towel) and stand gun up on floor but clamped vertically in cabinet makers bench vise so I don’t knock it over. Get stuff out of car, go rest or something. When I feel like it go out and dump nasty water in yard and refill bore and let sit while I clean and lube the lock. Dump barrel and run moose milk soaked patches until satisfied followed by dry patches and finally Rem Oil or something on a patch. Take patch from barrel and wipe down exterior metal parts of gun including under the lock and reassemble. Done.

 

[Bushfire]

There may be a little rust under my pinned barrels but I don't remove it to clean ever, just focus on the bore, lock and exposed barrel.

It's like my dad said when my sisters were old enough to date, "If I don't know about it, it aint happening!".

 

[Mulemauler]

As others have said, I plug the touch hole after removing the lock (I like to clean it well of powder residue) and then use a turkey baster to put the hot, soapy water into the bore. When clean I use some ATF (Automatic Transmission Fluid) on a patch to treat the bore.

 

[Togo]

I bought one of those brass clamps that have a hose attachment, after removing the lock I put it over the touch hole, then take a coffee can with water and a few drops of dawn soap , put the hose end in it, wet a patch then ram it back and forth in bore until its clean. I always wrap a towel around the muzzle because water will come out of the muzzle.

 

[Dave Marsh]

I use this which is available here and works great. THE LUCKY BAG

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Pinned and glass bedded in, never coming out.
T/C No13 cleaner on patches until clean. A brush over the first patches.
Rinse and lube.