I used to shoot my 54 cal TC renegade at least monthly but got tired of the cleaning ritual every night and have not shot it or any other muzzleloaders for about 15 years. I have recently aquired a 62 cal Zephyr and a 32 cal traditions and was wondering if anyone had any way of cleaning that was easier than hot water on the bathtub.

What is the easiest way to get one clean? I was told long ago to never use solvents on a muzzleloader and rather than ask why as a kid i just said ok and have used nothing but hot water.

Thanks for the help.



Matthew

Matthew

I am not expert but this is what i have been doing since i started shooting blkpder about 8 months ago, In between every few shots i run a ballistol damp patch followed by a dry one. I found the butch's patches hold up the best and work the best.

After my range session i take ballistol pour a small amount down the barrel and run a patch up and down while my finger is over the nipple(creating a vacum effect. pack up and when i get home. I bore brush the barrel and the rear chameber mine has a smaller chamber which is 38 cal. Run a patch and using an air compressor blow air into the nipple holding the rod it just helps remove any loose particles.

Patch out the bore with ballitol and i am done. I was never a fan of the hot water method so this is what works for me. But I use the triple seven powder and find the real stuff requires a bit more work. Also another great oil for the the final patch is eezox and does not effect blackpowder. Hope this helps

Matt

Water is the only approved Army solvent for black powder; one gill, warm if available. I do not use boiling water or soap; it is not necessary; that is too drastic and will take all the oil from the pores of your barrel steel; sort of like never wash an iron frying pan. And it is cheap. You don't need to submerge it; just use water dampened patches in the bore and on the outside where bp fouling has gotten; then oil. You don't use solvents because most of them will not dissolve bp fouling, being petroleum based.

I personally have found that Hodgton Triple 7 Products will clean better than any powder I ever used, a wet patch will clean a barrel faster than I ever experienced with all the other powders I have tested and a 20% less by volume to boot !

I do a quick preliminary cleaning at the range.
I shoot mostly flint so I plug the flash hole w/ a piece of tooth pick and pour a bit of water down the bore.
I bring a bottle full that I've added a couple drops of dishwashing soap to. Makes it 'wet' a little better than plain stuff.

Slosh that back and forth a few times and pour it out. Dump in a bit more water and this time with a patch slightly wet also run it down the bore.
You won't get too far as the compression holds you back.
Unplug the toothpick and push the ramrod and patch down to the breech with a steady motion. That'll push the water/fouling soln out the flash hole. Same thing will happen on a percussion.

A couple more wet patches,,couple dry ones and wipe down the outside metal with a damp & dry and home I go.

At home another wet patch down the bore followed by a couple dry ones. Then one w/ WD-40. Wipe the outside down again and then with a patch w/ WD-40.
The WD-40 to displace any remaining water.

I take the lock out to clean it while still assembled right under hot soapy water. Dry, oil and set aside.
Next day, re-check bore with clean patch and this time oil with the good stuff. Same with the outside metal.
Lightly oil lock and re-install.

The barrel never comes out of the stock at all. I may take the gun down/ barrel out perhaps once every 15months just to check the stock and fitting etc.

Check everything again in a day or two just because.

There really isn't a quick way about it using real BP.
But I do believe it' possible to over do it and still not get it any cleaner.
As stated, leave the petro oils out of the picture till the fouling is cleaned up and gone. They do not mix.

I use some American Pioneer in cartridge guns and once in a while in a Musket and that is a quick wet patch down the bore , dry it and oil. Nothing more than that. The original 73 and the replica Zouave still have pristine bores because of it's use and inspite of what some have claimed would happen.

777 and other replica powders don't work in flintlocks, which is all I shoot. And all I use is water followed by clp for cleaning, and I never have any rust. If you are using a cap gun, some caps are corrosive, which is far worse than bp for promoting rust.

Thanks for the help. I think I have been overcleaning.

Matthew

For a barrel that's dis-mountable from the stock, I just take it into the shower with me. Clean it at the same time I clean myself. All of crud goes right down the drain. Dry, oil, put back into stock.

For my sidelock, I take the barrel out of the stock. Have a tub of hot soapy water near. Wet a patch in the water and push it down the barrel. I put the end of the barrel with the nipple under water and pull the ram rod up and down flushing the entire system out. It will spray water out of the nipple clear when its clean. Run some dry patches down the barrel, and wipt the outside off. Let it dry and then oil it up...Works pretty good for me and doesnt take too ong. The barrel will heat up from the hot water and it drys pretty quick..

I shoot only Blackhorn 209 in my ProHunter so all I clean with is Hoppes #9.

For cleaning my Lyman GPR 54 Flintlock I've changed the order that I clean the parts because I was usually burned out by the time I finished just the barrel. Now I start cleaning the stock particularly around the lock area. I wipe the wood with Butch's black powder bore shine then wax the stock with Birchwood Casey stock wax. Then the lock is cleaned with a tooth brush under the running water. The barrel is cleaned last outside and then inside.
I do it at the laundry tub under running cool water from the hose aimed down the side of the cleaning rod. With the vent liner out that 6mm hole in the side of the barrel allows all the crud to be flushed out of the bore while I short stroke the cleaning brush as I go deeper and deeper down the bore.
Then finish with a 36 cal brush down in the patent breach area.

Dry all the parts out and inside with paper towel (Bounty) because is so absorbent and strong when damp, then oil with Eezox inside and out then assemble the parts.

I clean mine like HogSniper.

I pretty much do it the same way my Dad taught me, just use a tight fitting patch and hot soapy water.

I have modified it a bit, I have a dedicated fiberglass rod that I have a mop attached, and I no longer use -boiling- water, just hot water from the tap, and I put about a gallon of it in a 5 gal plastic bucket with a squirt of soap.

Stick the barrel in the bucket, get the mop wet and put it in the bore and work it up and down. Take the barrel out, wipe it down and put it muzzle down somewhere for a while, then run a lightly oiled patch in the bore, wipe down the outside with an oily rag. Wipe down the stock with the same oily rag and reassemble.

Windex with Vinegar !

I use hot soapy water. Fill the barrel, scrub it with a bore mop, dump out the water then run alternating wet and dry patches down it until the dry one comes out clean. Following that, I run a lightly oiled patch down the bore to keep it from rusting. It usually takes me no more than 10 minutes to clean.

quote:

Windex with Vinegar !

Works for me. Before leaving the range the bore is swabbed using a patch wet with Windex with vinegar. It softens up the BP, Pyrodex,777 and APP crud making the gun easy to clean at home.

It takes two minutes with an old toothbrush and a spray bottle filled with Windex with vinegar to make the breechplug squeaky clean.

Soap and water, I use a laundry tub -- NOT hooked up to a drain so if a part goes down the drain, it's under the tub.

Proper cleaning requires complete dis-assembly and thorough cleaning of each and every part. I put small parts in Mason jars with the lid secured. I use a kitchen flour sifter/strainer as an organizer for washing up small parts. I use old toothbrushes to get at the threads, triggers, sears, springs. Each part needs to be manually scrubbed and cleaned.

I spread the washed up parts out on a clean towel before assembly. You need to own a decent set of hollow ground screwdrivers. They sell these in sets -- at hardware/tool shops.

100% vegetable shortening is a good lubricant, rust preventative.

One reason the "gun slingers" were so skilled is because they took their black powder guns apart, cleaned them and tuned them up after every use.

Thorough cleaning, w/ soap and water is part of the ritual of BP shooting. If you can't get behind it, don't enjoy the cleaning ritual, then probably BP is not for you.

I learned a great deal about gun building, gun smithing from cleaning, building, repairing BP and military corrosive primed hardware.

quote:

wipe down the outside with an oily rag. Wipe down the stock with the same oily rag and reassemble.

Following that, I run a lightly oiled patch down the bore to keep it from rusting. It usually takes me no more than 10 minutes to clean.

Oil forms nasty deposits combined with BP soot. You need to use VEGETABLE base lubricants. Cheapest is vegetable shortening.

quote:

then wax the stock with Birchwood Casey stock wax.

Go to your local flooring, Home Depot and purchase Minwax Carnuba Floor Wax. It's better quality wax, more Carnuba, more paste, less liquid -- and a quart can costs about 1/2 what a 3 oz. bottle of Birchwood Casey runs. It's excellent for ALL oil finished wood work.

I use a pot of boiling water, sometimes soapy detergent. put the muzzle in the pot of water push a tight patch down the tube and pull the water up then down into the pot, until clean..The very hot water dries almost instantly, then oil profusely or grease with RIG. Ive never had a problem and my 54 GPR is 35 to 40 years old or there abouts, spent most of its hunting days in a foot or two of snow on the Yellowstone border.

My flintlock has a hooked breech so I remove the barrel, take out the touch hole liner, and stand it breech down in a bucket of water with a drop of Dawn in it. I push a patch down the bore then withdraw it, and that draws water into the bore. I run it up and down a few times then repeat with a new patch. Then I take the barrel out and turn it muzzle down to drain.
I finish up with Ballistol.

We have a saying where I come from: "Lazyness is next to Godliness", and I do my best to live up to this credo. I shoot cap and ball rifles in .36 and .50 calibers, patched round ball and minnie balls, using Goex FFFg. Here's how I do it.

First, go to Home Depot or it's equivalent and get a piece of PVC water pipe, large enough for the barrel to fit inside and maybe 4 inches longer than the barrel. Glue a cap on one end, and fill it with enough mineral spirits paint thinner to submerge the barrel. Use either a screw on cap or a rubber cap with a hose clamp to close the other end. I prefer the rubber with hose clamp type which I will explain later on.

Take your gun out shooting, and get it good and dirty.

Remove the barrel and dunk it in the tube full of thinner- muzzle down. It's useful to drill a small hole through the breech plug tang to thread a wire through so that you have something to grab when pulling the barrel out of the tube later. Put the lid on it, stand it up in the corner , and forget about it until you're ready to go shooting next time. Give the lock a quick wipe down and oiling.

The paint thinner will loosen the fouling, which if the barrel is stored muzzle down will settle to the bottom of the PVC tube, leaving everything-including the breech plug, bolster, and nipple squeeky clean. As long as the barrel is submerged in the thinner, oxygen and moisture can't get to it, so it won't rust. One caution here- I once made the mistake of using a screw-in plug, where the plug screwed into the INSIDE of the end fitting, and stored the tube in a shed with a leaky roof in a very rainy climate. The plug was screwed in only finger tight, which allowed rain water to collect on top and make it's way past the threads and collect at the bottom of the tube. When I checked it, there were 4 inches of water in the tube and I had a barrel with 4 inches of bad rust and pitting at the muzzle end. This is the only problem I've ever had doing it this way- store it out of the rain, and you will have no problem. A cap that screws "around" the tube, rather than "into" the tube would have prevented this. Live and learn.

When you're ready to go shooting again, turn the barrel around so that the breech is at the bottom and run a cleaning rod with a loose patch through the bore a couple of strokes. This will pump the thinner through the bolster and nipple so that anything that might remain in there is flushed out, and not be simply pushed into the breech plug like normal cleaning would do. This cuts misfires to practically zero.

The final step is to wait for the thinner to evaporate- usually a matter of seconds- wipe the outside with an oily rag and run an oiled patch through the bore, and you're good to go. Kerosene works well in place of paint thinner, but doesn't flash off quickly when you're ready to go shooting again.

I've been using this method for more than 30 years with complete success and satisfaction... except for the time the tube filled up with rain water, which was my fault.

Porosonik.