plugged breech

[alan delimont]

:surrender: HELP. Many years ago, I purchased a t/c hawken. It has been a favorite of mine. I have since progressed to a flintlock, but still use the hawken for fun. Several shoots ago, a friend suggested that I use some of his cleaner. I was impressed and have used it since. It is windex. And now, to my dismay, the hawken has a plug in the breech. Cannot dig it out, shoot it out, and please do not waste your money on the t/c barrel cleaning foam. What I have been able to scrape looks like shiny lead particles. Any suggestions on what the plug is, and how to clean it out??? Thanx to you wonderful, knowledged people :bow:

 

[zrifleman]

Sounds like you seated a ball down to the breech without powder. Have you removed the nipple and filled the breech with fine BP to see if you can clear it that way?

 

[paulvallandigham]

Sounds like you joined the Honoable Society of Dry-Ballers. Welcome to the club. You need to use a ball puller jag, or get powder in behind the ball to try to shoot it out. With a flintlock, you often have to remove the liner to gain access to the back of the Lead ball. Then you can sometimes move it forward with a steel bar levering it forward.

If your gun is a Hawken by T/C, it has a patent style breech, powder chamber, and you should be able to put 4Fg powder in behind the ball in the flash channel, and the powder chamber, and shoot it out. If you have put a hole in the middle of the ball, all the way through it, using a ball pulling jag, you will have to screw in a larger wood screw JAG, to seal the hole before shooting it or out. The safer thing to do is to use that larger wood screw welded to a fitting for your Range Rod, to just pull the ball out.

 

[Otter]

CO2 discharger or ball puller, especially if you have dumped some wet stuff down the bore . . . sounds like the "shiny lead particles" are shiny lead particles scraped off a ball.

 

[fredrader]

I loaded a patched round ball without any powder once :redface: I just removed the nipple and trickled a little FFFG in the there and installed the nipple placed a cap on it and boom..No problem.. :thumbsup:

 

[alan delimont]

Many thanx to all, however, it is not a dry ball. I do not know what is down there in the breech. Caps and 4f do not fire through.I do however, suspect that it has something to do with the windex as a barrel cleaner. Any body have any experience with this??? Has anybody used a CO2 cartridge to clean barrells. I have heard this might help. Thanx to all.

 

[BEP]

Any young kids in the family? You'd be surprised what they'll ram down a barrel! :idunno: :idunno: :idunno:

 

[Dphar]

Many thanx to all, however, it is not a dry ball. I do not know what is down there in the breech. Caps and 4f do not fire through.I do however, suspect that it has something to do with the windex as a barrel cleaner. Any body have any experience with this??? Has anybody used a CO2 cartridge to clean barrells. I have heard this might help. Thanx to all.

If its got crud in it it was not cleaned completely. Windex has nothing that will cause this.
Putting petroleum oil on the fouling that is not removed and then shooting it later will form some pretty nasty near concrete like stuff from the petroleum "cooked" with the fouling in the firing cycle.
This will eventually increase till things are "plugged". Then its hell to get out. But it all starts with not getting all the fouling out at some point or chronically.
Water, soap and water, windex etc will all remove ALL the fouling it the cleaning is done right. But the bore needs to have enough water poured in or through that it dissolves the powder fouling. Just pushing a wet patch down will push fouling into places where it can then cause problems like plugged flash channels or touchholes.

Dan

 

[Zonie]

When you said, "...I do not know what is down there in the breech. Caps and 4f do not fire through...", that tells me that something was rammed down the barrel, most likely a lead ball.

Maybe you didn't dry ball your gun but someone very likely did.
If you left your gun unattended at a shooting range it would not be unexpected for someone to walk by your gun and drop a ball down the bore.

Like someone said, if you have kids, they could have easily rammed a ball down the bore.

Something is in there besides fouling and it doesn't have a thing to do with the Windex.

Actually, if you hadn't said something about lead fragments I would suspect a cleaning patch came off of the jag and remained down by the breech plug.

If you remove the nipple and pour some powder down into the flame channel hole, replace the nipple, cap the gun and fire it it definitely
should fire blowing whatever is in your barrel and a bit of smoke out of the muzzle.
As there is always a chance that there is a full load of powder under a ball in the barrel, if you do this point the gun at something that you don't mind destroying.

 

[Tom Compton]

Dry load.

Use ram rod to check distance from muzzle to obstruction.

TC

 

[Bearbait2]

"Maybe you didn't dry ball your gun but someone very likely did.
If you left your gun unattended at a shooting range it would not be unexpected for someone to walk by your gun and drop a ball down the bore."

This would not have occurred to me but then it has been 20 years since last visiting a public range. These days we simply shoot from the front porch.
Best Wishes

 

[Tom Compton]

Seems you have all the damned answers why the info we provided won't work but you asked for the help.

Pull the breech plug! Then let us know there was a lead ball in the barrel or a smaller lead ball in the breech plug chamber.

 

[ohio ramrod]

Too loosen fouling the old stand by one part murphys oil soap/one part alcohol/one part 3%hydrogen peroxide will "buble through" any fouling I have ever come across. Kroil by kanno labratories will loosen any rusted parts I have come accross. A few grains FFFF under a nipple will shoot out any dry ball I have come accross. I suggest you try one at a time untill you get it free. Pulling the breech plug is a last resort IMHO.

 

[wcassidy]

sounds like nothing's working for you and if you don't wanna pull the breech plug then it's time to get drastic, it'll make a mess but if you swap the nipple out with a grease fitting you can theoretically pump out whatever's in there.

 

[nkbj]

Get some particles and absolutely determine the substance before proceeding.

 

[MikeChapin]

I have seen something similar to this when Windex or the old TOW Bore Cleaner is used. If you don't mechanically clean the firing chamber these solvents will leave a hard gray crusty deposit and generally plug things up.

Cleaning it up is easy enough. Pull the nipple and place the breech of the barrel in hot water and let it soak for 5 or 10 minutes. I'm not a big fan of using hot water but you need it here to break up the crud. Use a .22 brush with a cleaning patch wrapped around it and reach down into the breach to clean the crud out.

Windex works fine for cleaning but you have to reach down into all areas when cleaning. If your rifle has a patent breech you need to reach down into the patent breech and clean it out. If you don't a lot of the barrel crud gets pushed down into the breech and can build up to block everything.

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

What is the current status...it's been a couple of days now.

Did you do anything: use the ram rod as a measure, pull a ball with a screw worm, try 4F under the nipple, try a C02 discharger, a grease-gun, etc? It's all been said!

Dave

 

[alan delimont]

Thank you. This actually sounds like what the problem is. I had to go out of town for a while, but will try this tonight. To everyone at this site, THANK YOU so much. It is the brotherhood of rendezvous that helps keep this sport alive. One can always expect the usual kidding and razzing from one's friends, but even when that is given, help is found in the same sentences. :bow: