Were mzldrs and revolvers cleaned back in the day, as we do today?

[Okie Hog]

Over the years i've owned a couple hundred original muzzleloaders. The bores of the vast majority were trashed. The locks and breeches of most were rusty.

The only reference to cleaning of weapons i have seen came from my great grand fathers civil war diary. Gramps was a sergeant in the 62nd VA Mounted Infantry (Confederate). He refers to a kettle filled with hot water and lye soap for cleaning rifles.

For many years i moonlighted as a mechanic for a trash service in southern MD and DC. One day a driver gave me three muzzleloaders found in a VA dumpster. Two were long flint lock rifles. The third was a Hacker Martin cap lock. The bores of all three rifles were filled with unsalted butter: Maybe for preservation.

 

[sethwyo]

I’m guessing a lot of things didn’t get written down in detail. I was a young kid on a farm in the 1950s. I’m not sure anyone wrote down how to adjust a two row row crop cultivator or a go-dig. Some folks called a go-dig a go-devil. Many other simple tasks are like that. Someone shows someone else how and it gets passed along.

A lot of little details never got recorded or passed on because they weren't necessary for the next generation.
But still fascinating and an interesting part of our heritage

 

[tenngun]

Notchy I am of a different opinion if the question is did they ever clean their guns then the answer most decidedly is yes.
but given the fact that powder and lead were a finite commodity and it was a year or maybe more to resupply. I don't believe that it was a regular occurrence especially if they were alone. hmmm fire off a rifle (waste a shot just to empty the gun) in hostile territory and then sit with a empty gun and clean it ? I don't think it was a regular day to day occurrence. just my opinion

When you bought a rifle you got a mould, worm, wiping stick and ballscrew with the purchase
You don’t have to fire the gun to clean it.
On a side when I hunt I have the gun loaded. If I don’t fire I leave it that way, however shot or not I run a damp patch down the bore, a dry patch or two and a patch with mink oil on it, also wipe down outside, and rub with a mink oil patch
Did they do a deep clean after every shot?
I bet some activity each night was cleaning the gun
I don’t think the absence of so many old guns today was not to miss use, ITHINK many died in the metal drives of the first and second war. Who wanted an old gun? Better give it to help the boys.

 

[tenngun]

Over the years i've owned a couple hundred original muzzleloaders. The bores of the vast majority were trashed. The locks and breeches of most were rusty.

The only reference to cleaning of weapons i have seen came from my great grand fathers civil war diary. Gramps was a sergeant in the 62nd VA Mounted Infantry (Confederate). He refers to a kettle filled with hot water and lye soap for cleaning rifles.

For many years i moonlighted as a mechanic for a trash service in southern MD and DC. One day a driver gave me three muzzleloaders found in a VA dumpster. Two were long flint lock rifles. The third was a Hacker Martin cap lock. The bores of all three rifles were filled with unsalted butter: Maybe for preservation.

I would hazard that that unfortunate case is from the end of their useful lives. Left for boys to shoot till they could buy a ‘real’ gun, poorly used in the last years and put up dirty, and stuck in the shed or barn.

 

[tenngun]

A longtime friend and a regular at Friendship once ran some test of balls that were damaged by a ball-puller. the results were that he couldn't tell any difference in accuracy or performance when shooting them. So if someone pulled a ball at night to clean the gun, he probably just re-used it the next day.

We often read of men being cut off from their party. They have a full horn but only a few shots in their bags. I bet they ran a few ball every night that shot.
Using an old style mould five ball and it gets too hot to load
Casting a pulled ball into a new one would only be a few minutes work