I would like to find a recipe for homemade natural cleaning and patch lube.

If you want to clean and lube your smokepole with fixings from the pantry use liquid dish soap for cleaning and crisco or olive oil on your patches.

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Originally posted by nordrseta:
If you want to clean and lube your smokepole with fixings from the pantry use liquid dish soap for cleaning and crisco or olive oil on your patches.

Exactly right !!!! That combination has worked for BP shooters for many, many years.

That is what I have been doing for the last 20 years. I am just curious what others are doing. I don't mind finding a better way when I can. Thanks guys.

I have been using a hot bucket of water with a generous amount of liquid dish soap added then run patches in and out on a jag until all traces of black powder are gone. Follow that with some clean dry patches and then dry the barrel in a warm place. Lightly oil the barrel and reassemble. I have not had any rust and the gun shoots very well with no misfires. As far as lube, I think I will try the Crisco, it is cheaper than the stuff I buy now and we always have some around the kitchen.

Can you use Crisco to start and lube conical as well as round balls with patches?

Cheers and good shooting.

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Can you use Crisco to start and lube conical as well as round balls with patches?

Yes, this is one of the traditional lubes. Back in the 60's I'd suggest it was probably the ONLY lube used for minie balls.

When I have a long day of shooting I usually use windex between shots. As I start to clean I'll take a patch and put it in my mouth and just use it as a spit patch. At the end of the day I'll either use hot water with just a bit of dish soap or I will use a mixture of one part Murphy's Oil Soap, 2 parts of hydrogen peroxide and 3 parts alcohol. Pour down the barrel, wait about 60 seconds pour it out and start running patches down the bore until dry. Next I put a healthy amount of oil on a patch and work the barrel really well.

I cleam with dawn diswashing soap and hot water
the barrel and all parts on the lock and ventliner.I used black off in the field after firing a shot just to clean up fast until I get back to camp to finished cleaning. I can say if I shoot he flinter is get cleaned the same day.
My patch lube is a 60 /40 mix of pure beeswax and lard(no salt in the lard) and a tablespoon of olive oil.I pre-cut my patches and heat the lube ,then dip the patches remove excess oil from the patch and it ready to go.

I use windex with vinegar, no ammonia, works well for me in both muzzel loaders. I use lot of bore butter before I put them away. No hot water, no rust.

Here's a recipe that I've worked up over the years and use in competition. It's the best I've ever tried & I've tried about everything in 40+ years of muzzleloading. BTW, as an old corrosion chemist, I'd never ever put hydrogen peroxide in a barrel. It's a strong oxidizer similar to chlorine. Anyway here's "mule milk"

"Mule Milk"
I think I've finally found something that works better than any lube(s) I've ever tried.
Lubricating ingredients: I believe that you can't have a lube that is too slick. If the patch/ball is right for the barrel, it should be the most effective lubricant for the purpose you can have. It should minimize wear and promote consistency from shot to shot. It should also prevent/minimize corrosion & fouling. After trial error & research, I settled on 2 oils. The first is palm oil. Made from seeds of a specific palm tree. It is a very stable semi-solid at room temp that has great pressure & heat resistance and is very tenacious. The second is Jojoba oil, made from seeds of a shrub grown in the SW US & Mexico. This is a liquid wax ester mixture that is very similar in chemical composition to Sperm Whale Oil; Renowned for centuries for it's lubrication and preservation qualities. There is still no superior substance according to the chemists, gunsmiths. watchmakers etc., who study these things. These 2 also blend well together, forming a very stable lubricating mixture that is highly resistant to bacterial degradation and is soluble/miscible in alcohol. (Jojoba oil by itself is not). Both of these are very low ash producing & leave virtually no residue when burned. They will not contribute to bore fouling. The tests I've run show that burning the mixture leaves a slightly oily feeling to the metal.
For target lube this mixture is cut 60% with 99.9%, reagent grade, isopropyl alcohol. I've cut it as much as 75%. Water is a an arch enemy of black powder in any form; humidity, fog, or solvent/lube. Even minute amounts, in the touch hole or nipple area, can slow or stop ignition. I hate to put water in my barrel while (or before) I'm shooting. Water also requires surfactants (detergents) to be used to keep any lube oils in solution, which breaks them down and renders them little more effective, as lubricants, than the water itself (which is a poor lube). Alcohol, on the other hand, is a moisture remover. It absorbs water in any form and flashes it off. Alcohol is also flamable itself. In this mixture, alcohol is the carrier of the lubricants as well as a solvent to remove excess fowling from the previous shot and replace it with a lubricant/preservative in the bore. Sort of like the gasoline/oil mixture in a 2 cycle engine, the lube is not broken down by detergents.
"Mule Butter"
For Hunting lube, I am adding 20% beeswax to the Palm/Jojoba oil to raise the melting point from @ 90 deg F. to @ 120 deg F. which is, I feel, about right for the south. It also makes a great lip balm )

Windex with vinegar, then oil the barrel and you are done. I also store mine with a patch of bore butter run down the barrel.