I have had some great help on this forum so I wanted ask for some more help and suggestions on cleaning a muzzleloader. I have never shot a muzzleloader but just bought a 50 cal. Cva Wolf and put a Conquest scope on it.First off do I need to clean after evert shot while sighting it in,also I'm shooting sabots and have heard the leave plastic in the barrel.Can I get away with shooting 3 shots then cleaning or what is the best practice.Have heard of people spitting on a patch and running it threw it between shots???Thanks for any help and for your time.I know that you have to really clean it good and put light gun oil in barrel when it is not gonna be shot for a while. Thanks again for any suggestions.

I'm sure there are as many different opinions here as there are guns, but here are my thoughts-

For sighting in a gun for the first time, I suggest swabbing after every shot. Not a big deal, just run a patch down the bore and windex is as good as anything else for starters. Once you get it sighted in and grouping, then you can hold off for a few shots and see how many shots you can take before groups open up, or it gets hard to load.

For cleaning, the way I learned is still my tried and true method- remove the barrel, put the breech in a pot of hot soapy water and run a patch up and down several times, maybe for a minute. Wear a glove or hold the barrel with a washcloth as it will get uncomfortable. Pour the water out and fill with clean hot water, swab again, pour out and store barrel upside down for half an hour or so. Then run an oiled patch through the bore and you're done. While the barrel is off go over the stock with a wet towel to clean. Assemble and a final wipedown with an oily rag and put away until next time.

Don't forget to thoroughly clean the rifle before taking it out to shoot for the first time. Many of them come with a lot of excess grease that needs to be removed.

Swab any lube/preservative out of your bore with alcohol patches before ever popping a cap/primer.

Mark's method will work just fine and he's right about all the variations. I would suggest Butch's Black Powder Bore Shine - very good product.

For storage cleaning, thoroughly clean everything that doesn't run away.

My smoothbore fusil likes a lubed patch between shots in the field and insists on a wet patch every 3rd shot at the range. When shooting pellets and bore diameter conicals in my 209x50 Encore I run a wet patch between shots to keep the crud ring under control. I try not to use anything on the range I don't use in the woods, at least for the first and second shot. For cleaning at home I use hot soapy water to clean, hot water to rinse, and wonderlube to season and protect.

For side lock guns I like using 2 5 gal buckets, one with hot soapy water and one with hot clean water. You can draw the water up into the barrel by submerging the breech into the water and running a patch up and down. Keeps the mess running back into the bucket.

For removable breech guns like the encore I have found that TC T-17 cleaner is amazing
stuff. I can clean a breech plug with this stuff in a minute with a toothbrush to bright and shiny.

Is the new WipeOut product for cleaning balck powder weapons a good choice?

There are many here that are more knowledgeable than I. The advice I got when I first started shooting black powder was the hot soapy water and rinse. Later, when the synthetic stuff came out, I was told that a barrel was like a good cast iron skillet. It needed to be seasoned, and treated like a seasoned skillet. If you use soap and water, you should use a non synthetic lube, and if you use a snythetic cleaner, then a synthetic lube. I settled on a product called Turkey Tracks(only available locally, I beleive) and WonderLube for my patches and bore lubricating. I shoot flintlock and round ball rifles and caplock shotgun, mostly. I use windex for quick cleanup. I do run a brush with windex and a lubed patch about every three or five shots, depending on how hard seating gets. With the one inline that I shoot, I shoot triple 7 and only use water.
Others probably have better solutions, but that's what I do.
I used to spend a lot of time with hard core Rendezvous types in the early seventies. They were into peeing into the barrel and bear or mutton grease only on patches. To each his own!
Blfy

The number of rounds you can fire between swabbings will depend a lot on what projectiles you use, the powder, and the steel from which your barrel is made. In my experience, sabots require swabbing between shots to maintain accuracy. But there may be some sabots that aren't as demanding this way as the ones I tried.

Cleaning your gun after shooting is simplicity itself! If your rifle has a removeable breech plug, take it out and put it in a glass full of hot water with dishwashing detergent in it. Let it soak while you clean the bore.

To clean the bore, take a teapot, and heat up two quarts of plain water until it is boiling. Then, using a funnel, pour both quarts of boiling water through the bore. It is best to have an old towel to handle the barrel with while it is HOT!! Now swab the hot bore out with three or four clean, dry patches. The last one will come out dry.

Let the barrel cool while you thoroughly clean the chamber and threads of the breech plug. Take out the nipple too, and clean all powder fouling off and out of it.

Once all the steel parts are dry and cool enough to handle, swab them all off good with a patch soaked in Birshwood-Casey SHEATH (now called BARRIER). This includes the BORE!

Put everything back together. You will have NO rust or corrosion using SHEATH, AND it dries in place, leaving a dry, protected surface. You can load up and shoot next time with the SHEATH in it-you do not have to swab it out, and it does NOT build up in the bore!

The idea of "seasoning the bore like a cast iron skillet" might have worked OK back when rifle barrels were made from soft, porous iron (like 1820!!). But in my experience, it does not work with barrels made from modern steel. And I have given this method a thorough trial using Bore Butter. I have found out the hard way that Bore Butter may be a good shooting patch lube, but that's the extent of its' usefulness. Save the "seasoning" (which, BTW, requires BAKING the greased skillet in an oven) for cooking utensils.