Question about fouling a barrel on a muzzleloader. I have a Thompson Omega, and clean barrel thoroughly at the end of every shooting session. Do any of you shoot one or two to foul barrel and store it this way for better accuracy? I do this with my centerfile rifles for best accuracy, but was concerned about pitting and corrosion in barrel on muzzleloader. I am shooting with Triple 7 pellets by the way

No Never Absolutely not Dont do it If you were going to do that why bother to clean it in the first place?

Clean and lube the bore for storage.

Run a dry patch through the bore before you load it to shoot. This will remove any oil and prevent it from causing problems.

I find that I get the best accuracy when I clean between shots. The exception is if the bore is oversized, then I find that I get the best results on the second and third shots.

Hope this was of some help.

Don't clean it and it will take a few hours to get the rust out a year later not to mention accuracy won't be wort mentioning , I have worked on many from lazy ass h---s that don't clean their rifles , then have the nerve to bitch about the price,for trying to repair their abused barrels .

quote:

No Never Absolutely not Dont do it If you were going to do that why bother to clean it in the first place?

WHAT SNYPER SAID!! IF it turns out that your rifle shoots better with a fouled bore, fire a fouling shot from it then reload it afterward, at the beginning of the day you use it for either target or hunting, then clean it well that evening after you get it home.

IF you store it fouled, you will soon need a new barrel! Rust will devour it. BP and BP substitutes are NOT LIKE smokeless powder!

I've been thinking on this a bit as I work to crack the code on my Encore 209x50. Seems to me since inline users hunt with a cold clean barrel we maybe ought to practice that way too and clean completely between shots and zero for the cold shot.

I have to foul my flintlocks - a .62 smoothbore and a .54 rifle - with a small charge to make sure the touch hole is clear, but they shoot pretty much the same all day long if I swab the bore every third shot or so.

MB:"

I shoot a cheap CVA .54 and jsut use bore butter. In a match, I'll swab with it, between shots when I can.

Also clean with it, when I get home run the hot water thru it and butter it up while hot til it's clean. Do it again the next day to get the last of it out when it's not going to be fired for awhile.

Seems to work ok and don't rust.

George

mhabby,

since I'm only into target shooting, I can't comment on propper gun preparation for hunting. However, I have made the following experiences with my two target rifles, a Bristlen Morges and a Tryon rifle (both Pedersoli). I shoot both with maxi ball lubed with Lube 103. The Tryon takes Swiss No.2 black powder and the Bristlen needs some slow and soft burning powder (don't know the US equivalent). I don't need to clean between shots, the fouling stays allways perfectly soft due to the lube. Nevertheless, keep in mind that one round in target shooting in Germany is 15 shots plus a few test shots in 60 minutes. So there is not much time for the lube to dry between shots. I allways fire a fouling shot since the first shot out of a clean barrel is way off target. Accuracy only sets in with the second and following shots, at least with my two rifles. Needless to say, immediate thorough cleaning of the barrel after shooting is essential if you want to keep your rifle longer than a few weeks, maybe month.

I can't tell how long the fouling will remains soft if keept in the barrel for any longer period of time. For hunting, it might be advisable to clean between shots. However, if you clean between shots you should do it allways or accuracy will suffer, at least it did so on my Tryon when I was shooting patched round ball with it.

I found muzzleloader shooting to be a trial and error exercise. Usualy what works on someone elses gun perfectly will not (neccessarily) work on yours. It all depends on the type of gun you have. My Tryon is very forgiving as long as it gets at least 45grn. of Swiss No.2 gun powder. The Bristlen, on the other hand, is a real pain since it is extremely fussy when it comes to powder quality and quantity or bullet size. Finding the right procedure and load for the Tryon took me one afternoon. Finding the right load and procedure for the Bristlen took me a few month.

So my advice would be to find out first what seem to work well on your rifle and take this as a starting point for further improvement. You may need to play around with diferent combinations of load size, bullet diameter, lube type. Just keep in mind that your fouling should either stay soft all the time between shots or you have to clean between shots. Shooting with hardened fouling in the barrel will increase lead dipositing in the barrel and your accuracy will be down the drains soon.

Good hunting

Daniel

Don't confuse fouling the barrel with snapping a cap before loading to make sure the flash hole is unobstructed.

quote:

Originally posted by Versifier:
Don't confuse fouling the barrel with snapping a cap before loading to make sure the flash hole is unobstructed.

If you are refering to my post, I'm quite aware of the difference between firing a cap and a fouling shot. In particular with my Bristlen, which has the inside of the barrel polished, the first shot out of a clean barrel is a wasted one since the clean barrel gives much less friction to the traveling bullet. Therefore, muzzle velocity of the first shot is way of scale. Only with the second and consecutive shots, when the inside of the barrel is covered with fouling, I get a consistent muzzle velocity. My sights are adjusted for exactly this muzzle velocity. Therefore, I need to foul the barrel first in order to get consistent friction for the traveling bullet which, in turn, results in a (mostly) uniform muzzle velocity which I need for the required accuracy of the rifle. I did speed test my bullets (don't know the exact englich term for that) and the results proove the theory right.

Daniel

Always store your gun in a clean, oiled condition. This preserves the barrel and ingition channel from corrosion. Wipe the bore with a dry patch, flint or percussion, or inline, and hear the air "swoosh" out the flash channel on the compression stroke. The flash channel is clear then. Depending on how your flinter is breeched, you may want to poke a pipecleaner into the flash hole before, during, or after, this process, if its design tends to hold oil. On caplock you should have a nipple with a tiny flash hole at the bottom. You can't poke a pipe cleaner through that, but you can swab the upper portion out. Sure the flash channel will be moist with oil, but if air gets out, fire will get in, provided you really got the bore dry. If the air hisses out, the flash channel on inlines is clear, and you should have no clogs from oil with a dry patched bore that has been properly cleaned. In reality as a shooter you should know where that first shot goes out of a clean barrrel, particularly if you hunt. Do you think the men who designed, built and shot these guns and whose very lives depended of the functioning and chacteristics of their individual weapons shot blanks first, put them away in a corrosion prone condition, or threw their first shot away? No, they did not, unless under great duress. Target shooting of course, IS different from hunting or battle and you can snap a cap most times to check the flash channel or shoot a load on a sighter, since the first shot in many guns is usually high. Want great inline accuracy? Throw your pellets away. Measure your charges of loose powder and work up a load. You wouldn't struggle loading IMR powder in your '06 by large increments would you? Worried about that damn hard second shot reloading? Work up a load with very lightly lubed sabots for every shot if you use them to hunt. Don't develop target tight loads for deer hunting and expect great loading in the woods. Why treat a muzzle loader barrel like a breech loading shotgun barrel with plastic shot cups and shoot a string with no lube in the bore? Bore lubrications the premise in the m/l game. How about changing saboted bullet diameter to make loading easier. 45 caliber jacketed bullets are all over the map for diameter for example. This is meant to get you thinking as there is much "legend" and BS in the m/l hobby and real information is not commonly available. Good shooting.

Always store the ML rifle pristine-clean. Dry swabbing DOES NOT remove gun oils prior to your first shot. Putting some rubbing alcohol on that dry patch does remove the gun oil/residue -- so does firing 3-5 strong 209 primers/#11 caps such as Federal 209As and RWS/Dynamit Nobel 1075s..

I have concluded that Birchwood-Casey Sheath storing oil properties dictate less first-shot deviation than several other oils I tried... ie... Rem-Oil, Breakfree CLP, Shooters, Knight, Ballistol, Outers & Hoppes.

It took me years to figure alot of this all-out.

i've found the fouling shot to be very necessary. my first shot on a clean barrel could be as much as 3" from POI. i've let it go overnight before with 777, but not much longer, without cleaning.

i received some great advice from randy wakeman on fouling shots - he recommended using 40 grains of 777 underneath an empty sabot to get sufficient fouling. i've tried this and it works, not to mention there's little to no recoil and much less noise, if you're fouling the barrel before daybreak.