Touch hole insert

[Oldbear63]

I recently purchased my first flintlock rifle. This one was very lightly used and is in decent condition.

I am trying to get used to the fine art of cleaning it out, I am used to my cap lock with its hook breach. after my first range test it took a lot of patches to get this flinter to come clean.

Before this rifle ages more I wonder, should I remove and clean out the touch hole liner? This would permit better cleaning of the breach and when I reinstall it I can grease the threads for future removal.

The slot requires a very thin bladed driver, but that can be easily created.

 

[French Colonial]

Others will say different..........

But there is absolutely no need to remove the touch hole liner for cleaning, ever.

 

[PathfinderNC]

Don’t remove it.

 

[Grenadier1758]

@Oldbear63,

Much better than removing the touch hole liner is to use a flush tube. Perhaps the best I have seen and used is the magnetic flush tube offered by Dave Criselli of The Lucky Bag". You have all the benefits of removing a hooked breech barrel for flushing the bore and breech without the hassle of having to remove the touch hole. You do have to be sure that the magnet and gasket cover the touch hole liner and the installation slot. I also use a rare earth magnet with a small strip of electrical tape as a gasket to block the touch hole when I pour a barrel full of cleaning solution to soften fouling prior to flushing the barrel with the magnetic flush tube.

 

[rafterob]

A breech scraper is your friend for a traditional breech flintlock. When cleaning mine, I put a toothpick in the touch hole to seal it and pour some ware soapy water in the barrel. Let it set for half a minute and dump it out. Then give it a good brush and rinse it out. Then the breech scraper and rinse again. Follow with dry patches.

 

[Eric Krewson]

I would remove the liner once, put a little high temp anti-seize lube on the threads, reinstall it and never take it out again unless the hole wears to an unacceptably larger size and the liner needs to be replaced. This stuff comes in a small tube as well.

 

[Larry (Omaha)]

I recently purchased my first flintlock rifle. This one was very lightly used and is in decent condition.

I am trying to get used to the fine art of cleaning it out, I am used to my cap lock with its hook breach. after my first range test it took a lot of patches to get this flinter to come clean.

Before this rifle ages more I wonder, should I remove and clean out the touch hole liner? This would permit better cleaning of the breach and when I reinstall it I can grease the threads for future removal.

The slot requires a very thin bladed driver, but that can be easily created.

You do not need to be surgery germ free here. Hot soapy water, swab bore and scrape the breech plug. Dry and fully rust treat the bore, and TH with your favorite lube/anti rust. Removing the plug is a waste of time with the risk of damage to the screw slot as well as the threads.
Larry

 

[longcruise]

I also use a rare earth magnet with a small strip of electrical tape as a gasket to block the touch hole when I pour a barrel full of cleaning solution to soften fouling prior to flushing the barrel with the magnetic flush tube

An innovative solution

 

[bpd303]

I'm with the others about not removing the flash hole liner and using anti-seize after removable for the first time. I made a pressure washer out of a hand pump garden sprayer that I use for deep cleaning. It cleans the bore and breech using room temp water. With the rifle in the rack, water & fouling pour out of the flash hole or cone into a tray and muzzle onto the ground. Dry the bore with patches, coat it with Barricade and good to go.

Here are a couple pictures showing how clean it gets the most fouled barrel. This after cleaning using wet patches and breech scraper. Fouling left at the breech plug.

This was after using just the sprayer, clean as a whistle after another shooting session.

 

[TDM]

@Oldbear63, glad you got your flintlock. Great advice from all the above. And I agree, no need to remove. Personally, I plug the vent with a toothpick, fill the barrel with water, and flush the barrel several times. Then continue with your normal cleaning routine of whatever technique you prefer.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Re-read previous responses, all very good.

 

[Sidney Smith]

There is absolutely no need to remove the liner. There will be those who say yes, do it, but don't listen to them. Their guns will have the threads in the barrel wear out and have to be retapped, not yours.

 

[kyron4]

There is absolutely no need to remove the liner. There will be those who say yes, do it, but don't listen to them. Their guns will have the threads in the barrel wear out and have to be retapped, not yours.

I would have to respectably disagree. Unless your barrel in made of pot metal or you're torqueing the liner to 200 ftlbs. you are never going to wear out your threads. If you know anyone who wore out their threads to the point they had to retap the threads they have done something terrible wrong on their end.

If you choose to leave the liner in place that's fine or remove it that's fine too, but there is no need to spread incorrect information to validate your method of cleaning.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Just from experience; I had a friend now deceased on who out of habit always removed the drum on his cap gun every time he cleaned it, he was in a club/group that shot a lot. It was a Bogle rifle made by the current Joe Bogle, Joe told him removing the drum during cleaning was not a good thing to do but he continued this practice. Within a few years he complained to Joe that his drum had a little wiggle to it. Joe picked up the gun, tapped the hole to a larger thread size and installed a new drum. Ronnie, still stuck in his old ways, didn't learn and continued to remove the drum for cleaning. Again, within a few more years he gave Joe another call, the drum was loose again. I don't know if Joe fixed the gun again, Ronnie's cancer had just about gotten the best of him by this time.

This was a GM barrel, pretty tough stuff, I didn't know how hard Ronnie tightened the drum down but do know when Joe made a rifle, he timed the drum perfectly without using a lot of torque.

Joe made me a rifle that I pulled the breech plug on to remove a blockage one time. I checked the fit and found the best fitted breech plug I had ever seen; it went from finger tight to fully tight in one flat with a perfect breech face seal. I removed the drum from the gun Joe gave me because my Teslong showed it protruded just a touch too much into the breech and I needed to give it a trim, it tightened easily, no excess torque involved.

Not spreading false info as suggested above, I have seen the same wear with a TC breech plug and Ronnie's percussion drum from removal every time the gun was cleaned, removing a touch hole liner for cleaning would have the same end result over time. Of course, how much the gun was shot and cleaned would determine if removing the liner for cleaning would have a negative effect over time, this would not be a problem for a safe queen that is only shot occasionally.

I have an ironclad rule on the boards, if I don't have first-hand experience with a topic I don't say a word. If I offer a suggestion, I state that I don't have hands on knowledge of the topic in question and am only making a suggestion/guess that may or not be correct.

 

[Oldbear63]

Thanks for all the advice and good experience.
I will probably eventually remove the liner once, just as a matter of practice and to apply an anti-seize lubricant and to get a better seal, toothpicks after that.
The cleaning jig with a tube down the barrel to flush out the fouling is a good idea. I also need to figure out what the breech looks like to make a decent scraper. This is a Dixie, hopefully it has a simple breech. Nice lock; haven't had a misfire yet.

 

[Clark Badgett]

Why do so many think its so hard and involved to clean any muzzleloader? Plug the vent hole with a toothpick or seal the nipple with a scrap of leather. Pour some plain tap water in the barrel to about half full then plug the muzzle with your finger and slosh away. Do this until the water comes out clean. Then run some patches down the bore and ignore the gray stuff, that’s graphite from the powder. Oil the barrel, Balistol works great for this as it emulsifies the water.

 

[Oldbear63]

When I cleaned out my flintlock after my first use I went through about 25 patches before anything came out clean. This was more than I experience with my cap lock where I can remove the nipple and pour copious amounts of warm and soapy water through. It is a different experience.

 

[Johnny Too-Tall]

HMMM so u shouldn't remove a liner on a flintlock because it can wear the threads out that are course cut into a hardened steel barrel by removing the liner that is installed into the side of a barrel.
But its ok to remove the nipple on a percussion gun every time when cleaning it, that has much small typically 1/4 x 28 threads where the hammer is consistently smacking/hammering down on the nipple adding pressure to the threads. Sounds kind of like odd information to me. I'd love to hear the justification here.
Now i don't remove the liners of my flintlocks, just like I don't remove the drum on my percussion- but do the nipple.

 

[Grenadier1758]

I remove the nipple of my percussion arms because the flash hole in a nipple is about 0.030" diameter or less and the touch hole in my flintlock arms run at 0.062" in diameter. The nipples are only tightened to snug, so there is little stress on the threads and with the hole, sealing due to thread engagement is not a consideration. The rifles with the hooked breech will have the nipples removed so the breech can be flushed in cleaning solution. The hooked breeches do benefit from a more forceful flush through the powder chambers and the paths from the powder chamber to the nipple seat. My magnetic flushing tube covers the touch hole of the flintlocks and I get a good flush through the breech.

Also, if removing the touch hole for maintenance is such a good idea, why are the Chambers White Lightning touch hole liners designed to remove the insertion boss after installation?

 

[Clark Badgett]

HMMM so u shouldn't remove a liner on a flintlock because it can wear the threads out that are course cut into a hardened steel barrel by removing the liner that is installed into the side of a barrel.
But its ok to remove the nipple on a percussion gun every time when cleaning it, that has much small typically 1/4 x 28 threads where the hammer is consistently smacking/hammering down on the nipple adding pressure to the threads. Sounds kind of like odd information to me. I'd love to hear the justification here.
Now i don't remove the liners of my flintlocks, just like I don't remove the drum on my percussion- but do the nipple.

Hardened steel barrel? Barrels are not hardened.