OK, at the risk of folks thinking I am trolling (I'm not) I am really curious. With a cap lock shooting real black powder and a patched round ball all you have to do it either remove the barrel (for a hooked breach) or put this on your rifle and then clean with water. When you are done run some dry patches down the barrel and then oil with a non petroleum product. Clean the nipple and hammer on the percussion rifle and you are done. On a flint lock you should remove the lock and clean & oil it each time so that will add a few minutes. But really all you need is water, patches, and then your protective oil. What is so hard about that?

editted because of fat fingers

Once the in-lines came out with removeable breech plugs, cleaning became a simpler chore for sure. Remove the breech plug (new Triumph doesn't ever require tools), run a few wet patches(#13 Bore Cleaner) through barrel until clean, run a few dry patches through till dry, clean breech plug with a bit of #13, put small amount of grease on breech plug and screw back in with fingers. Done!

Nothing really hard about either but I suspect you can do an in-line with removeable breach plug in about 1/2 the time. I wouldn't say either is an overly large task though. Just part of the enjoyment of owning a muzzleloader.

Maybe I really never learned to clean my percussion rifle properly, but I know my in-line takes at least half the time my old percussion rifle takes to clean.

A THOROUGH cleaning of most inlines takes considerably longer than the same for most sidelocks. And, if you are shooting a very corrosive powder such as Pyrodex or true black (Triple 7 is fairly corrosive as well), you had best be doing a thorough cleaning regardless of rifle type.

TJ, you are cleaning ONLY the barrel and breech plug?

People often neglect the firing pin assembly on their Encores and Omegas... and they shouldn't.
Cleaning the internals of an Encore action is not a quick job, but I would truly hate to be hunting at 11,000 feet with a faulty firing pin. Truth is, no better than I can breath nowadays, I would hate to be at 11,000 feet.

Overall, I would say the sidelocks have a definite advantage regarding cleaning time, but there was always the lingering worry that fouling was accumulating in the nooks and crannies of the breech plug and drum areas.

I'd rather clean my inlines any day over a percussion. Much easier IMO. Although, I do own one of the first inlines that has no removable breech plug and it's just as much a pain if not more than a percussion.

Reloader

I have a traditional Lyman GPR 54 and Knight/TC Inline they both seem to take about the same amount of time. I give each a through cleaning at the end of the shooting session. The only difference I can find is my In-line is stainless and the Lyman GPR isn't they both will rust if left un-cleaned after shooting but the stainless has it in the rain for not rusting over my blue steel Lyman GPR. IMHO

Inlines are much faster and easier to clean.

Guess I'm just slow.. but I don't agree.

used to take hours to clean up.now it only takes twenty minutes and I can see it is all clean.

jb,
Could you explain how your cleaned you traditional muzzleloaders? I'm just curious what took hours to do. I have a T/C Renegade with a hooked breech (common traditional muzzleloader for hunting) that I just pull the barrel, pull the nipple, put the breech end in a bucket of soapy hot water, "pump" it out with a cleaning rod and patch. When the water starts coming out clean"ish" I'll switch to another bucket with just hot water and do the same thing. After that I dry the best I can, oil the barrel inside and out with Ballistol and put it aside. I take a toothbrush (dunked in Ballistol)to the hammer face and lock and then oil them, dunk the nipple in the soapy water, clean it with a pipe cleaner and toothbrush, dunk it in the clean water, dry it as well as I can and then oil it. That's it. The neat thing about real black powder and patched balls is you don't need to "scrub" your bore with brushes, there is no "leading" to get out. The fouling comes out with water alone. I could save a step by skipping the soapy water I guess but I still use it out of habit.

editted because I have fat fingers

I've shot Goex while hunting and for matches over a couple decades. I currently shoot blackpowder through a .54 T/C Renegade, an old Montana barrel .36 poor boy cap lock squirrel rifle, a .62 smoothbore English Fowler, a .54 Caywood flint lock, a .45 York rifle, a T/C .50 Encore, a couple of Ruger Old Army revolvers, and over a half dozen centerfire rifles and handguns for which I handload blackpowder cartridges.

Every last one of them are no different. You need to scrape the breech at some point to remove excess hard deposit build up, all need to be flushed with a solvent that neutralizes the corrosive by-products of BP combustion, and all need to be lubricated and coated to keep the working parts rust free and operating. Stainless steel has more resistance to corrosion than carbon steel, and synthetics are less prone to warpage than wood.

The only maintenance difference is that the modern inline can be easily broken down where you can have direct access to what you are scraping, cleaning, oiling, and coating. In addition, the modern inlines have a closed breech where all the corrosive by-products of BP combusion stay inside the barrel. Shooting BP in my old flint locks result in powder deposits both inside, outside and all over. Having pins and tennons holding everything together can make for tedious work to maintain.

Anyone who would complain that the T/C Encore is difficult to maintain is lost, IMO. Unless you have shot the breech plug beyond its useable life, you will not get any BP by-product into the firing pin or trigger components. Those parts are easily reached and cleaned requiring no more maintainance than any modern trigger or firing pin. I have a first year Encore that I've drug through the mountains to take many deer and several bear on backpack trips using Goex and have never had a single issue. Of all I've cleaned, it is by far the easiest to break down, clean, and keep going. Some modern inlines may be a bit more difficult such as the older Knights w/ the double safety, but not the Encore as it is engineered simple and bombproof.

GaryVA

quote:

Originally posted by sharps54:
jb,
Could you explain how your cleaned you traditional muzzleloaders? I'm just curious what took hours to do. I have a T/C Renegade with a hooked breech (common traditional muzzleloader for hunting) that I just pull the barrel, pull the nipple, put the breech end in a bucket of soapy hot water, "pump" it out with a cleaning rod and patch. When the water starts coming out clean"ish" I'll switch to another bucket with just hot water and do the same thing. After that I dry the best I can, oil the barrel inside and out with Ballistol and put it aside. I take a toothbrush (dunked in Ballistol)to the hammer face and lock and then oil them, dunk the nipple in the soapy water, clean it with a pipe cleaner and toothbrush, dunk it in the clean water, dry it as well as I can and then oil it. That's it. The neat thing about real black powder and patched balls is you don't need to "scrub" your bore with brushes, there is no "leading" to get out. The fouling comes out with water alone. I could save a step by skipping the soapy water I guess but I still use it out of habit.

editted because I have fat fingers

I used to own 4 t/c sidelocks,so i am familiar with cleaning them.
I now have a cva break open inline,much easier to clean.break open ,remove breech plug and soak in solvent.run a shotgun rod with brush through the bore a few time to get the majority of the fouling followed by patch with solvent.One or two patches and barrel is clean(just look through it,its clean.)scrub up the breech plug,(the fouling has softened nicely) lube it, screw it back in and oil.done.

Sharps 54

Only someone who has cleaned a traditional gun would think an inline was easy to clean. I can finish my traditional caplock in the time it takes to disassemble my inline and then there are all of thos parts to keep up with while cleaning an inline.

Just an opinion of course

I want to thank everyone that responded. Obviously this is a "tomato" / "tomoto" issue as everyone does things a bit differently.

Because I shoot smokeless powder in my savage.

quote:

Because I shoot smokeless powder in my savage.

Amen brother!

I can hunt with my smokeless Savage for years w.o. cleaning it if I wanted to, it's just as easy to maintain as a CF rifle.

Many here look down on using smokeless, I don't look down on what anybody uses. To me, it doesn't matter what weapon or what projectile I'm using, I just like persuing the game and getting lucky enough to take one from time to time. I hunt with whatever weapon is legal at the time. Way more interested in the hunt than the weapon in hand. If a particular weapon makes it easier to take said animal, I'm all for it. I guess if I hunted areas where it was just plain easy to harvest game, I'd probably use more challenging weapons. Here, it's a pain just to have an encounter with a quality animal and at the moment of truth I want the absoulte best equipment I could possibly have to get the job done. That said, I'll take my Mathews in archery season, my Savage ML10 in MLer season, and my tweaked CF rifles in rifle season and be darn proud of any animals taken.

Ya'll have a good one,

Reloader

I can clean a traditional muzzleloader a lot faster than any of my in-lines. With the Savage I don't clean it at all until I want to change vent liners.