arcticap
54 Cal.
About 10 years ago, I became aquainted with someone who owned a muzzle loader but had never fired a shot with it. So we made arrangements to go to my ML club to do some shooting. He had a Spanish made Kentucky replica and after an afternoon of shooting, I offered to take his rifle home to clean it for him because he didn't have any cleaning equipment or experience.
I used a wood handled, brass bristled brush to clean the lock plate area of his rifle, just like I usually did to clean stubborn deposits off the case colored lockplate on my rifle. But I soon discovered that I had accidently removed the case coloring from 1/2 of his lockplate! I probably should have realized by the subdued tones of his case coloring that it wasn't authentic case coloring to begin with, but rather only an applied or "fake" case coloring effect. My rifle had never been affected in this way, and I felt really bad about having to tell him about how I botched his cleaning. :redface:
He was very understanding about it all, and told me not to worry about it since he had bought the rifle at a dept. store closout, and that it was a really inexpensive gun.
Thankfully, sometime later, he told me how he had located a kit that he could use to restore the case coloring if he wanted to, but that he just might apply bluing to the lockplate instead.
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, and I learned that I should have used a nylon bristled brush instead of a brass one if anything really needed brushing.
It was a lesson learned that I decide to pass on here. I don't recall seeing another gun with "fake" case coloring, but if the lesson helps to prevent someone else from making a similiar mistake, then it's been worth letting y'all know about it. :winking:
I used a wood handled, brass bristled brush to clean the lock plate area of his rifle, just like I usually did to clean stubborn deposits off the case colored lockplate on my rifle. But I soon discovered that I had accidently removed the case coloring from 1/2 of his lockplate! I probably should have realized by the subdued tones of his case coloring that it wasn't authentic case coloring to begin with, but rather only an applied or "fake" case coloring effect. My rifle had never been affected in this way, and I felt really bad about having to tell him about how I botched his cleaning. :redface:
He was very understanding about it all, and told me not to worry about it since he had bought the rifle at a dept. store closout, and that it was a really inexpensive gun.
Thankfully, sometime later, he told me how he had located a kit that he could use to restore the case coloring if he wanted to, but that he just might apply bluing to the lockplate instead.
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, and I learned that I should have used a nylon bristled brush instead of a brass one if anything really needed brushing.
It was a lesson learned that I decide to pass on here. I don't recall seeing another gun with "fake" case coloring, but if the lesson helps to prevent someone else from making a similiar mistake, then it's been worth letting y'all know about it. :winking:
