Here's a question for anyone, perhaps current or former German army soldiers, about gun cleaning wicks. I recently learned of these and bought a big box of them to try. Having used cleaning patches all my life, it seems to me that the wicks might do a much better job of scrubbing fouling from the sides of the lands and the bottom of the grooves, especially since the number of strands can be increased or decreased to achieve a desired degree of tightness in the bore. I have not yet had a chance to try them on a dirty barrel. Any tips? Any thoughts? I want to try them on my sidelock muzzleloaders also, putting them on a wooden cleaning rod that I fashioned from a hardwood dowel. If they don't work very well I have a lifetime supply of tiny dust mops!

Online reviews give them good marks but if I understand correctly they are pulled through the bore (military cleaning kits usually do use pull throughs), and this is where it can all go wrong. Pull-throughs have a habit of breaking if not replaced when showing signs of wear or breakdown of the pull-through material e.g. from cleaning fluids or just age, as well as too larger pieces of cleaning cloth or wicks which jam in the bore.

Have had enough experience removing bore blockages from broken or jammed pull-throughs in respect of the SMLE 303 rifles that often came with the original military issue pull-through although after market ones also suffered from failure at times too.

Thanks for your experience and input. I'm going to try the cleaning rod that I made from a hickory dowel and hope it will work well. I drilled a series of holes toward the tip and then Dremeled about a 7/8" long slot from them to thread the wick strands through. I also made a very simple pull through from paracord and that has worked well on two handguns.

After shooting my caplock .50 I tried the mops. By trial and error, I found that 12 strands of the wick pieces, threaded through the slot in a rod that I made from a hickory dowel, and then doubled, worked very well. Those 24 strands absorbed much more cleaning solvent than a large patch ever could, and they fit the bore snugly. I removed the barrel from the stock then the nipple and laid the tang end of the barrel in a plastic cup. The hydraulic action from the pumping of the rod squirted tons of gunk out. After the first wick I used a nylon bore brush then wick #2. I dried with another wick then inspected and oiled. Next day inspection usually turns up some stains, but the mop that I used then came out totally clean. This was just the first trial, but it was easy and thorough.