How did they clean their guns.....

[William Joy]

Here the senario: You are alone in the wilderness, around 1780 and just fired a round from your flint lock rifle. You reload. How do you keep your bore/rifle from rusting....
I can't see that you pull the load and be defenseless.

 

[longcruise]

...You are alone in the wilderness...I can't see that you pull the load and be defenseless

Well, heck, if your all alone what's to defend against? :haha:

Sorry, just kidding. I don't know of any documentation of how they cleaned their guns back then or how important they thought it to be. Wonder if there is any primary documentation on it?

 

[jtmattison]

I doubt they did much more than run a worm with tow down the bore just to clean it a bit if needed and then let the bear grease on the patch protect the bore.
I wish I could hop in the Delorian and go back in time to see.

HD

 

[Charles D. Prokopp]

I suspect that the procedure was what Shakespear described in "Merry Wives of Windsor". If that second load wasn't used, the piece was fired when the shooter got home, then cleaned. Of course, Shakespeare being a comic, he had his city-dwelling hunters talk about discharging their weapons up the chimney. Makes kinda loopy sense...

 

[brubincam]

-----weren't the barrels made of iron which doesn't rust very fast-----didn't lube soak into the pores of the iron barrels helping to prevent rust-----

 

[rice1817]

I very much doubt if they were too concerned about getting the barrel down to bare metal like so many are today. I believe that cleaning a firearm like we do today with the intent of getting it mirror bright is a product of 20th Century military training, not necessity and is not historically how it was done.

Boone would not have carried a large sack of cleaning patches around on his 6 month hunting trips. Maybe a wad of tow, a worm, and a tin of grease. He bet his life on his rifle and this was all he needed to maintain it in operative condition.


A common cleaning method was to stick a peg in the touchhole and pour a "gil" of water into the barrel, wish it around with your thumb on the muzzle, then dump it out. Most of the corrosive stuff is water soluable and is eliminated in this fashion. Repeat the process, and any remaining black that you would see on a patch is mostly harmless carbon. Dry the barrel with a bunch of tow, then grease the bore with an animal fat, and you were done. Takes only a couple of minutes. No need for boiling water, soap, or super solvents.

 

[renovato]

I think they were more into barrel seasoning back then. It works on iron but not too well on steel. Perhaps their guns didn't rust up as easily as ours do today. A little grease was all that was needed. Also, if he wasn't in a hurry to reload, he may have taken time to clean the bore before reloading.

 

[Zonie]

Having no documentation, this is a guess but I don't think they really did much beyond running some wet tow down the bore followed by some dry tow.
Most likely ran some oiled tow down to finish up.

This could be one of the reasons why they wore out their barrels so quickly.
It was very common to have the barrel "freshed" by recutting the rifling or just drilling it out and leaving it a smooth bore.

Iron is quite soft (as compared with steel) but if they were shooting patched roundballs like everyone says they were I find it hard to imagine the great number of barrels that were so worn from just shooting patched roundballs.

One could say, "Well, they used their guns every day back then.", but because lead and powder were often hard to come by I doubt that they took a shot at game every day and they wouldn't have wasted their powder just shooting a stump for the hell of it.

Any way, I think their poor cleaning (which might have included shooting the gun, reloading it in the field and then bringing it back home to hang above the doorway for a few days) was a major factor in their bores "wearing out".

 

[romeoh]

I agree to you Zonie.
I got a german book from around 1870 written by an obviously skilled man about hunting firearms.
Unfortunatly I can´t take a look in it right now - I borrowed it to a gunmaker hundret miles away, and this by saying I´m not in a hurry to get it back.
Well, though it was a while ago that I read the book myself I think I remember a few things about cleaning mentioned in it.
As far as I remember the author recommends what we would call "normal ML cleaning" for about once or twice a year - pretty similar to what many nowadays consider as adequat for modern hunting guns.
What I remember really well about cleaning is a certain sentence: He considers it a bad and sensless habit to pee into the barrel for cleaning.. :shocked2: :haha:
Obviously this was done, otherwise he wouldn´t have had the reason to write about it.

I´ll report more exact when I got the book back on my shelf. :hatsoff:

 

[barebackjack]

He considers it a bad and sensless habit to pee into the barrel for cleaning.. :shocked2: :haha:
Obviously this was done, otherwise he wouldn´t have had the reason to write about it.

My grandpa brings this up repeatedly. "Didnt the mountain men just pee in em to clean em"? (That and he continually seems to think the figure in maple was always burnt on).

I would think urine would be a bad choice. Urine is high in salts, salts equals rust.

 

[Grizzled Roberts]

From what I have read ( a long time ago ) it was hot water ( campfire coffee pot ) and tow. Tallow was also common and makes a fine patch lube and rust preventitive. I use tallow as both during hunting season so my firelock will not smell like
the middle east. :v

 

[Zonie]

romeoh: Thanks for the information.
Contact the gunsmith and ask for your book back as soon as possible.
Tell him that it has information that is needed for a study on historical matters. He doesn't need to know what.

I say this because over the years I've loaned several books to people and they immediately forgot who owned them or even that the books were only loaned and not "given" to them.

Hopefully he hasn't loaned your book to someone else. :rotf:

 

ive heard of seasoning fry pans, but BArrels?? can someone offer a better perspective on this? is it possible to 'season' a barrel?

 

[paulvallandigham]

YOu season cast iron, and possibly iron barrels made before 1850, but you DON'T " season " steel barrels. It really cannot be done.

 

[longcruise]

ive heard of seasoning fry pans, but BArrels?? can someone offer a better perspective on this? is it possible to 'season' a barrel?

Others may be able to provide more info on this, but I'll say that I never heard of "seasoning" a bore until the advent of the 1000+ lube from TC. I think the idea of seasoning was hatched by their advertising department to promote the lube. Not knocking the 1000+ lube, mind you. I used it exclusively for many years and it is a good patch lube. Never saw any sign that it was seasoning the bore though.

When you season cast iron pots, pans and dutch ovens, you are actually cooking a protective surface onto the metal which also, to a degree, permeates the pores in the metal. It's done by thoroughly cleaning the metal, coating it with vegetable oil or hydrogenated oil like crisco and then putting it in your oven for an hour or so at anywhere from 375 to 425 degrees.

None of my barrels ever had a coating on them!

BTW, none of our modern "cast iron" cooking pots, pans, etc are truly iron. They are steel. It is very hard to obtain real iron today although it can be gotten from some specialty suppliers. Some who are very picky about their aqua fortis recipe seek out true iron for the HC aspect of it.

 

[paulvallandigham]

If you find a pot advertised as " Cast iron " that isn't, contact a lawyer, or at very least the Attorney General of your state. You have one helluva lawsuit for Consumer fraud there.

Cast Iron skillets are still available, and they are made of cast iron. Google "Cast iron". YOu may be thinking of wrought iron, which is not available anymore except in recycling yards.

 

[anika]

Well that clinches it for me. If they ****** down their barrels there is no way I believe they blew down them after firing them. odis

 

[romeoh]

:haha: Well odis, you cold be right... :grin: :thumbsup:
But I doubt that this way of cleaning was the only one which was done.
Just like today: Different people sometimes do the same things different. Some better some worse.
But as I already said: The author must have had a reason to mention it..
And: We´re talking about a period of time where making water warm (we all know that cleaning works better when it´s warm) was still some work. So, what if you´re a little lazy and got some (body)warm liquid to give away..? :wink:
Or what if you´re not sure about when you can get the next fresh sweetwater and don´t want to waste that little bit you got in your bottle..?


And these are very wise words, Zonie. :thumbsup: :

romeoh: Thanks for the information.
Contact the gunsmith and ask for your book back as soon as possible.
Tell him that it has information that is needed for a study on historical matters. He doesn't need to know what.

I say this because over the years I've loaned several books to people and they immediately forgot who owned them or even that the books were only loaned and not "given" to them.

Hopefully he hasn't loaned your book to someone else. :rotf:

Actually the gunsmith is already the second one in the row. :shocked2: :grin:
Originally I used to give to a relative of mine who is a hunter and he told his gunsmith about the book and me (I bet because he ordered some reloading stuff from the gunsmith and he isn´t a reloader. I promised to do this in the future for him.. :stir: ).
Well, they were at least so kind to ask me before the gunsmith got it and I think in this case my chances aren´t that bad to get the book back in the end.
I´ll email my relative to bring it next time he shows up here to visit his parents and all the rest. Could take some weeks though..

 

[SAJones]

Well, once again too many books & too little memory about which one I read. One reference I recall mentions pulling the load & cleaning the rifle. Seems to me it had something to do with a pending armed conflict; they wanted to make sure all the rifles were shootable. Also, there are a couple references to Western fur trapping brigades having rifle inspections, and one chronicaler relates cleaning the rifle of another trapper to receive some reward at the miscreant's expense. Sure wish I could recall which journal that was.

I have had satisfactory results with a piece of tow wrapped around a worm, even w/ my steel barrels.

There is a separate string that mentioned re-enactor's lack of cleaning. As a "retired" re-enactor I agree that a lot of these folks have no knowledge of gun care, and I have cleared the barrels of several that were rendered unusable due to powder residue buildup. So I don't think the guys back when would neglect something that could cost them their lives, like a fouled firearm that won't fire when that grizzly is breathing in their face.

 

[horsesoldier03]

I am sure they kept a clean gun, however, I doubt they fired the round off when they got home. I would imagine that the ball was pulled and then saved to be melted and recast. The powder would be returned to the horn or possibly a powder keg.