Mountain men and patches

[mdbrown]

I have been shooting my new 54 rocky mtn hawken getting ready to hunt deer with it here in idaho. it got me thinking. i have this vision of a mountain mans pack train. one mule carring his misc. camling and trapping supplies and 12 mules carring all his cleaning patches ,Ha, Ha . how did they carry enough patches? i seem to go through allot of them keeping the 54 clean.

 

[necchi]

Unfortunatly I don't have a link to documentation of historic a cleaning process, but they used natural stuff like Flax tow for cleaning. They are many natural grasses and plants that can be dried and used for scrubbing/cleaning,,
A simple attatchment for a rod like this "Worm" was used to hold material to the rod for cleaning. http://www.trackofthewolf.com/Cate...d=14&subId=163&styleId=1017&partNum=WORM-PR-L

Copper wire is/was one of the early-early trade items, used for snare and other,,

 

[Robby]

That's a good question, and have often wondered about it myself. Not just for the mountain men, but for the early long hunter or frontiersman. I'm sure necchi has got something there, but I also they could and would have used brain tanned hides like buck skin for a variety of purposes including ball patches and cleaning patches. It was readily available, and is an amazing fabric, including very pliable and washable. :idunno:
Robby

 

[jethro224]

Much of the fouling can be washed out with just water sloshed around in the barrel. A hank of tow can be used to scrub the rest out. Then the tow can be washed out and dried to be re-used again and again.
I would think that was probably what was done back in the day. Waste not - want not...
This is just a guess on my part and I do not claim to know for sure. :idunno:

 

[ebiggs1]

It's kinda been a thought of mine that they didn't clean their guns as much as we do today. I am sure they did what they needed to do to keep them working but not like we do. I believe that and the hard life they lived is why we don't see more surviving examples.

 

[Bill Hall]

I agree. Horses and guns were used hard, and used up fast. I always figured Mountain Men used a cloth patch, if they had it, over and over again. Maybe just giving the bore a quick swab, then maybe a little oil of some kind. Or natural fibers when the patch wore out. Like already mentioned, I don't think they got as meticulous as we do when cleaning. Life was alot shorter back then, why waste time cleaning your gun when you might be dead tomorrow? :grin: Bill

 

[Bill Hall]

I just remembered something else. On the Lewis and Clark expedition, there are many references to the men breaking out all the weapons to clean and oil. There seemed to be more emphasis put on the oiling of the weapons, rather than the cleaning. I always assumed it was done with cloth patches, at least for the bores, and also assumed they used the same patches over and over, probably rinsing them out after each use.

If you think about it, if you can't get a gun very clean, keeping it well oiled is the next best thing. Bill

 

[Many Klatch]

A friend of mine tested that very theory. He had a gun we called "Old Rustaway". He never ever cleaned it unless it was so fouled that he couldn't get a ball down the barrel. He always used precut patches so every time he would open another pack of 100 he would save the paper label and throw it in a drawer. Eventually the gun started throwing about every 4th or 5th shot and he determined that the bore was shot out. He counted up all the labels and determined that there had been about 50,000 rounds fired in a period of 10 years. One year he shot up 50 pounds of powder so I figure that the numbers are correct.

The lockbolt rusted through once and the lock fell off. He tied the lock on with Sinew. The gun was a terrible looking mess but he kept winning matches with it. Proving that the most important accessory in shooting is the nut behind the buttplate

So the moral of the story is that scrupulous cleaning of your muzzleloader is certainly encouraged but back in the day I don't think people had to be nor were they quite so diligent in getting out every trace of black. I personally don't clean at the range I wait until I get back home and can heat up the hot water. When at a rendezvous I clean at the end of the day reasonably well and then I do a good job when I get back home in a week or so.

Many Klatch

 

[Bill Hall]

Good post Klatch. I doubt if any frontiersman ever shot 50,000 rounds out of one rifle, and I also doubt they ever kept a single rifle for ten years. It's very do-able to use a seldom cleaned rifle for, say, five years in the boonies, and have it work perfectly until it breaks, gets stolen, or gets traded.

I think the attitude back then was "Shoot it like it's a rental". :haha: Bill

 

[BrownBear]

I just remembered something else. On the Lewis and Clark expedition, there are many references to the men breaking out all the weapons to clean and oil. There seemed to be more emphasis put on the oiling of the weapons, rather than the cleaning. I always assumed it was done with cloth patches, at least for the bores, and also assumed they used the same patches over and over, probably rinsing them out after each use.

If you think about it, if you can't get a gun very clean, keeping it well oiled is the next best thing. Bill

I'm with you on that Snowdragon. I'll go one step further and point to the supply manifests for the L&C expedition. Sure a lot of cloth in there, and some of it identified as "tick." And I don't recall seeing so much as a handful of tow on the manifests. Could be wrong, but I think it would have registered.

I'm not sure about the mountain men of lore, and I doubt anyone else is. I haven't checked the supply manifests for the goods being hauled to the handful of real rendezvous, but it would be easy enough for scholars to look for tow and fabric in the lists.

In a recent post by Spense10 called Cedar Flavored Squirrel, he showed the excellent results of using shredded cedar bark for wadding, and my immediate reaction was "Why in the heck would anyone lug around tow?" If cedar bark works so well, I have to believe there are lots of other materials that would too. If in the forests moss from trees comes right to mind. On the plains I'd be really tempted to use gramma grass, its so fine but curly and stiff. I bet everyone on this board in every part of the world could come up with some other local substitute for tow, whether for cleaning or for wadding.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Yes, interesting thread.
Ye said:

I also doubt they ever kept a single rifle for ten years.

That is another interesting issue. No doubt the frontiersman didn't have nearby Bass Pro Shops to trade in his rifle every couple years. How long did they keep their guns? :idunno: Methinks, just an opinion, they kept them a very long time. Goods were not easy come by. Items like fabric and cooking utensils probably had priority with the household budget. Jes thinkin' :hmm:

 

[reddog]

I just remembered something else. On the Lewis and Clark expedition, there are many references to the men breaking out all the weapons to clean and oil. There seemed to be more emphasis put on the oiling of the weapons, rather than the cleaning. I always assumed it was done with cloth patches, at least for the bores, and also assumed they used the same patches over and over, probably rinsing them out after each use.



If you think about it, if you can't get a gun very clean, keeping it well oiled is the next best thing. Bill

I'm with you on that Snowdragon. I'll go one step further and point to the supply manifests for the L&C expedition. Sure a lot of cloth in there, and some of it identified as "tick." And I don't recall seeing so much as a handful of tow on the manifests. Could be wrong, but I think it would have registered.

I'm not sure about the mountain men of lore, and I doubt anyone else is. I haven't checked the supply manifests for the goods being hauled to the handful of real rendezvous, but it would be easy enough for scholars to look for tow and fabric in the lists.

In a recent post by Spense10 called Cedar Flavored Squirrel, he showed the excellent results of using shredded cedar bark for wadding, and my immediate reaction was "Why in the heck would anyone lug around tow?" If cedar bark works so well, I have to believe there are lots of other materials that would too. If in the forests moss from trees comes right to mind. On the plains I'd be really tempted to use gramma grass, its so fine but curly and stiff. I bet everyone on this board in every part of the world could come up with some other local substitute for tow, whether for cleaning or for wadding.

This is purely conjecture on my part, but a few yards of fabric doesn't take up a lot of room, or weigh very much. Maybe those boys folded it in a saddle blanket or something like that.
I also doubt that they were truckin' around the mountains bangin' away like they were on a trail walk! When I clean with water I usually only use one patch for cleaning and about five or so for drying and they can easily be dried out and used again. A square yard of cotton flannel goes a long way. If it was me, I would probably use the same material for shooting and swabbing if I was cruisin' around the mountains looking for beaver.
I don't think it was too much of a logistics problem for those boys to keep their weapons maintained.

 

[ebiggs1]

The Mountain Man era didn't last all that long. I can't imagine wearing one out in the "short" term it was thrown into. Referring only to length of time not neglect of cleaning, that is.

 

[Macon Due]

Reddog
How in the world do you clean with ONE wet patch and five or so for drying??? I have a Rice round bottom groove barrel [supposed to be super easy to clean] When I get home I can plug the vent hole,pour barely warm water into the barrel [have tried everything from half full to completely full] let it set for a few minutes.Pour some out then plug muzzle with my thumb and tip barrel up and down several times then dump it out.Then wet a patch and run it down the bore on a tight fitting jag,it looks like I ran it down a sewer pipe when I pull it out. The last time out I used 3 wet ones then about 5-6 dry ones and it looked pretty clean so I wet another patch and it was right back to pulling fouling out of the barrel. It makes me wonder how many one patch cleaners are really getting all the fouling out of thier barrels? Years ago when I was first into muzzle loaders the only way I found to really get a barrel clean was to use Black Solve and syphon it into and out of the barrel thru a tube.Then my barrel was actually clean.I might have to go back to that?
Macon

 

[CoyoteJoe]

The I get the issue about cleaning patches but what about shooting patches? There are a lot of make due options but I think we can all agree that accurate rifle shooting requires consistency in patching. Maybe that's why Ruxton wrote that most of the mountainmen he encountered were not very good shots. :haha:

 

[BrownBear]

The I get the issue about cleaning patches but what about shooting patches? There are a lot of make due options but I think we can all agree that accurate rifle shooting requires consistency in patching. Maybe that's why Ruxton wrote that most of the mountainmen he encountered were not very good shots. :haha:

I have seen nothing in print to back this or refute it, but I've always wondered about using greased "buckskin" or deer leather, particularly brain tanned, for patches. The stuff compresses well and from my limited experiments (not much brain tan on hand), it sure seems to work well. Thickness varies too, depending on where it is on the hide, so it would be pretty straight forward to pick the right spot for your bore and ball.

Leather was about as common as dirt then, and a guy could come up with it almost anywhere. I'm real surprised I don't see more guys dinking around with it today, just to learn its potential strengths and weaknesses for patching.

 

[Supercracker]

I've read about oiled leather being used as a tight patch in Jaeger rifles.

 

[Robby]

Brown bear, I experimented with Commercial tanned buckskin, and chamois a few years ago. Being commercially processed they are pretty consistent in thickness. I used a tallow beeswax mix for lube. I don't remember all the details, but if my poor memory serves me correctly, accuracy was not as consistent as a tightly woven fabric of a similar thickness. I believe my thinking at the time was that it did not compress around the ball equally. Groups were not as tight but were acceptable in a pinch. I did think that real quality brain tanned buckskin as processed by native American's, chewed to suppleness, and probably scraped to a more uniform thickness would have been far superior to what I was testing out, but I had no way to prove it. :idunno:
Robby

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

A rinse with water and dry it with tow and you are done. Oil of any kind can cause trouble (aside from expense and availability) so it was used sparingly. We need also to keep in mind that the old soft iron barrels did not rust as rapidly and modern steel barrels do.

 

[reddog]

Reddog
How in the world do you clean with ONE wet patch and five or so for drying??? I have a Rice round bottom groove barrel [supposed to be super easy to clean] When I get home I can plug the vent hole,pour barely warm water into the barrel [have tried everything from half full to completely full] let it set for a few minutes.Pour some out then plug muzzle with my thumb and tip barrel up and down several times then dump it out.Then wet a patch and run it down the bore on a tight fitting jag,it looks like I ran it down a sewer pipe when I pull it out. The last time out I used 3 wet ones then about 5-6 dry ones and it looked pretty clean so I wet another patch and it was right back to pulling fouling out of the barrel. It makes me wonder how many one patch cleaners are really getting all the fouling out of thier barrels? Years ago when I was first into muzzle loaders the only way I found to really get a barrel clean was to use Black Solve and syphon it into and out of the barrel thru a tube.Then my barrel was actually clean.I might have to go back to that?
Macon

Well,,,I have a little plastic bucket that I fill about 3/4 full of warm water and a few drops of dawn or simple green, then I put the breech end down in the bucket, take a wet patch and pump it up and dowm 5-6 times. Then I turn the patch over after rinsing and squeezin' it and pump a little more, then I take out the nipple and pump some more, pour some clean water down the bore to rinse it and clean the nipple with nipple brush (they sell them at the drugstore).Then I just dry and oil every thing up. I do use grease on the nipple threads and wd40 on the second dry patch and I do check the bore a day later,,,so far so good