Warm water and dish soap?

[Osseon]

Steel on steel and steel on wood sliding over each other - Wear will occur. I call BS on that one.
Without a layer of lubricant between them (think motor oil in engines, grease in wheel bearings, and so on) Even WITH lubricant - the parts still wear - just at a slower rate.
Yes - wear will occur - I have several older guns with pinned barrels - 2 of which required a pin size increase and a re-drill to tighten them back up.

How often do you remove the pinned barrel of your gun?

See this post, guy says after 50 barrel removals he's never had an issue or loosening. I'm into computers and everyone says that the new Solid State Drives for storage have a limited "read/write" function and that you should be careful because you can damage your drive by using it too much, I've never heard of one actually failing, its just a theoretical limit.
It seems like the same exact unfounded fear. Theoretically it could loosen the pins, but the reality is unless the pins are sharp and not rounded, or you are using an oversized punch, you'll never actually have an issue within the use life of your rifle.

Not trying to discredit your personal experience. I think it just seems like a non issue compared to the ease of cleaning the barrel and preserving the wood around the barrel/lock where water usually seeps when cleaning.

 

[French Colonial]

If you want to remove the pins of a flintlock every time you clean that's fine, it's your gun have fun.

But....why?
If you take off the lock and clean it and the side of the barrel and the bore, did you not just clean everything that needed cleaning?

Some people insist on complicating the most simple of things

 

[Osseon]

If you want to remove the pins of a flintlock every time you clean that's fine, it's your gun have fun.

But....why?
If you take off the lock and clean it and the side of the barrel and the bore, did you not just clean everything that needed cleaning?

Some people insist on complicating the most simple of things

Personally shoving a wet patch down a barrel cleans the barrel up to the breech, then just packs muddy fouling at the breech which seems to take some effort to remove 100%. Doesn't really clean it as nicely as I want. I use a water pumping method until the water shooting out of the vent hole is clean. Also its awkward ramming a 5 foot+ rifle, and a 44 inch barrel is much more manageable.

The biggest reason is when cleaning around the vent hole, the brushes often push water in between the barrel and stock, and the fouling from the pan gets all in the cracks around the barrel and stock. Removing all metal from wood and just going ham on wiping down with soapy water around the outside is whole heck of a lot easier to me then poking nooks.

 

[French Colonial]

Personally shoving a wet patch down a barrel cleans the barrel up to the breech, then just packs muddy fouling at the breech which seems to take some effort to remove 100%.
That's a nice theory, but you can't prove "water pumping" does any better. But then again I don't have any patent breech rifles so I can't speak to them.

Also its awkward ramming a 5 foot+ rifle, and a 44 inch barrel is much more manageable.
I don't have a problem with my 62" long Chambers Virginia rifle.

The biggest reason is when cleaning around the vent hole, the brushes often push water in between the barrel and stock, and the fouling from the pan gets all in the cracks around the barrel and stock.
I plug my vent with bamboo toothpicks while cleaning and I am careful and don't get sloppy with the water when cleaning around the vent.

To each his own, I am glad you are your happy with your method and the reasons for it. After playing with these rifles since the 70's with no damage to any of my rifles from cleaning I don't think I am going to change anything

 

[Osseon]

Actually I don't know if the Kibler has patent breech anyways. Its just more pushing versus rinsing.
Not trying to convince anyone here of anything other than stating what I like to do. Its probably not the best. Pin removal isn't as dangerous as people make it out to be IMO.

 

[Ponderosaman]

I can remember when I was a child when grandmother ran short on commercial soap she sent us out to pull leaves out of the yucca plants - pull them out so we got the white tender stuff from the bottom -
She would use those pulverized mixed with ashes from the fireplace and drippings from the bacon grease to make what she called Indian Soap.
It did just fine until the next monthly trip into town for supplies. I actually liked that better than the store bought stuff.
I wish I had paid more attention to how she did it.

Found your post intriguing. Here’s a link to a soapmaker that talks about how to make soap with plants. 9 Natural soap plants for making lye-free soap - Lovely Greens

 

[Ponderosaman]

Pores! Never heard of steel having pores! Cast irons and cast steels can have porosity. Steels can have inclusions but I've never heard of the surface of steel as having pores.
Are you sure steel has pores??

 

[Black Powder Guy]

I use water and a little bit of Dawn detergent in warm water. The rifles are not the pin type but if they were then about one in five times of cleanings they would have the pins taken out when i cleaned them. That way the parts of the barrel and stock that are not cleaned the other times are cleaned.

 

[M. De Land]

Personally shoving a wet patch down a barrel cleans the barrel up to the breech, then just packs muddy fouling at the breech which seems to take some effort to remove 100%. Doesn't really clean it as nicely as I want. I use a water pumping method until the water shooting out of the vent hole is clean. Also its awkward ramming a 5 foot+ rifle, and a 44 inch barrel is much more manageable.

The biggest reason is when cleaning around the vent hole, the brushes often push water in between the barrel and stock, and the fouling from the pan gets all in the cracks around the barrel and stock. Removing all metal from wood and just going ham on wiping down with soapy water around the outside is whole heck of a lot easier to me then poking nooks.

I've found that I need to go through and additional step of cleaning out the ring of fouling left around the perimeter of the breech plug and barrel shoulder compression fit with a scraper to get out all the fouling. I use a full caliber brass scraping jag with a patch attached after the normal cleaning and sure enough out comes a black ring of perimeter fouling the regular cleaning patch never completely removed.
I found that it was not corroded under this deposit most likely because all the corrosive salt had been desolved/removed from the regular cleaning and rinsing but the carbon fouling ring was still present and the patch covered scraper remove it.

 

[M. De Land]

Absorbing is not displacing.
Case hardening takes longer than micro seconds.
But hey, if it makes you happy then we both are.

It takes between 1.5 to 3 hours to case harden for color in a mixture of wood and bone charcoal with an aerated water quench. You start to loose case color at temperature above 1425 or so. If you want a quite deep case of about .012 then you need to go to about 1575 or so with and oil quench but will have no color. I read that about .030 is about as deep a carbon infusion case as one can make.
Case hardened steel for High Intensity cartridge use is in this .012 maximum depth area I have read.

 

[M. De Land]

I use water and a little bit of Dawn detergent in warm water. The rifles are not the pin type but if they were then about one in five times of cleanings they would have the pins taken out when i cleaned them. That way the parts of the barrel and stock that are not cleaned the other times are cleaned.

I have rifles with both pins , escutcheon-ed wedges and no escutcheon wedge anchors. The pins do loosen a bit in the holes over repeated removals but I cannot detect any stock movement against the barrel from repeated cleaning removal. It is imported that the pin heads be rounded so as not to chisel out any more hole wood.
I can't tell any difference in the wedge anchored guns with or without escutceons .
Seems to me that the repeated removal of a well fitted lock plate for cleaning ,which I consider a necessity, is far more likely to cause wood to metal loosing than pins or wedges.

 

[M. De Land]

View attachment 99697

Thank you, it is amazing how much of this kind of thing one can see even at 24-X from a bore scope. Single point cut rlfling without an accompanying lap job is particularly ragged looking in a new bore. Fouling from the hot gas and pressure of BP combustion gets in these not just on them and needs to be desolved out for proper cleaning in my opinion. Heat wlll expand them or open them and cold will contract them. Soap, making water more penetrating (wetter) can better desolve these deposits than water alone .

 

[Griz44Mag]

Found your post intriguing. Here’s a link to a soapmaker that talks about how to make soap with plants. 9 Natural soap plants for making lye-free soap - Lovely Greens

Soapweed Yucca - that's the one grandma used. What a wonderful article. Thank you!

 

[Steel Guitar]

Water to clean, ok sarcasm here but the truth too. Water and the fouling make a foul smell, like someone farted. My wife would come into the kitchen and say, "no more pinto beans for you, and don't "!!

 

[Steel Guitar]

don't light a match!! Yes it will work but I like to use windex and not get the bad smells but hey use what you want, you may like the smells you get! But for me, I want to keep cleaning my guns in the kitchen, if yall catch my drift.