One thing that's always put me off about muzzleloading is the prospect of cleaning blackpowder guns. I've heard horror stories about barrels being so full of powder residue they were virtually uncleanable, and resolved a long time ago never to subject myself to that kind of shooting.
One day last week, I said something of that sort to Pete Henderson. Pete is the manager of John's Guns and Fly Fishing in Tallahassee, Florida, and has been shooting blackpowder guns since 1966. For the last 15 years, he has hunted everything from doves to deer with muzzleloaders, and shot them in competition. He's built quite a few muzzleloaders from kits, and recently built one from scratch. When I mentioned my reluctance to shoot blackpowder because of the cleaning problems, Pete frowned at me over his glasses.
"You have to remember," he said, "that these are low-tech firearms. Cleaning methods are going to be low-tech also." Using a couple of his long guns, Pete gave me a short course in cleaning muzzleloaders.
When you're working with muzzleloaders, he said, you're mainly cleaning out two things: powder fowling and the grease from the patch if you're shooting round balls.
"The first thing is," he said, "that it's a good idea to have a separate cleaning rod instead of using the ramrod to clean with. The ramrod is good for loading the gun and for field cleaning, and that's it."
Pete showed me what happens if you use the ramrod for cleaning. On most blackpowder guns, the barrel runs all the way back to the breech plug. The ramrod, on the other hand, is only long enough to reach the trigger guard. Once you get the ramrod fully into the barrel, you don't have enough of it sticking out of the end of the barrel to grab onto.
"In the early days, they used something call 'tow' to clean guns with," Pete went on. "It's flax, from linen production. It was wrapped around the end of the rod. It worked as a scrubber, a little like steel wool."
As Pete promised, he showed me that cleaning a muzzleloader is a simple matter. It doesn't require any fancy solvents; the most common cleaning solvent used is water. "Water is a good solvent for the salts that are left in the barrel," he said.
Early shooters dipped the tow in water and used it to scrub the bore. Today, that part of the operation is done with a brush. First insert a plug into the vent hole or the nipple of the gun. Though a lot of shooters use a toothpick for this, Pete doesn't recommend that because the wood tends to swell. He said he prefers a pipe cleaner. Then pour water down the bore, and scrub it with a brush. A modern brass brush is fine for cleaning a blackpowder gun, but Pete emphasized that it needs to be a brush designed specifically for muzzleloaders.
"On a muzzleloading brush, the closed loop is at the bottom and goes through the base, which screws into the ramrod," he said. "A modern brush has its closed loop at the top and is just crimped into the base. When you're cleaning from the muzzle, scrubbing the entire length of the bore, at the bottom the bristles have to turn over. When you pull up, the modern brush will pull off the base and you'll have it stuck down at the bottom of the bore."
Removing it can take hours. Once the barrel is washed, the next step is to dry it out. Using a jag designed for a muzzleloader, run regular gun cleaning patches through the barrel until the patches come out clean and dry. "The first time, ram the patch all the way down," Pete said. "That will blow the plug out and flush the threads at the same time, with whatever water is left. You can tell a guy who's been cleaning a muzzleloader, because his left leg is wet and dirty."
Next, apply a rust preventive. Pete has two he recommends, Break-Free, and RIG-2. "They're probably the best rust preventives around for muzzleloaders," he said.
If you're working with more modern blackpowder guns, there are some minor differences in how the barrel is cleaned. Many of these guns are of hook or patent breech design, and the barrel lifts off the stock.
"On a traditional rifle, the barrel is pinned into the wood; you could remove it, but you'd eventually damage the wood," Pete said. "With modern muzzleloaders, all that's necessary to remove is the barrel is to pull the ramrod, tap the wedge out, and lift the barrel off the stock."
You can clean these guns with boiling-hot water. Pete showed me how he puts the breech end of the barrel in a can of water and uses a cleaning rod with a jag and flannel patch to wash the barrel from the bore end. This pumps water through it, flushing the barrel thoroughly. The barrel will dry quickly because of the heat of the water.
"Use a pipe cleaner to clean the nipple," he said. "Then oil a patch with Break-Free and oil the bore. Take the same patch and wipe down the exterior of the gun."
Pete said all the oils must be removed from the barrel before you shoot it again. "Blackpowder fouling turns to something like asphalt when it's mixed with any petroleum distillate, so you have to get all the distillate out of your bore before you shoot. Clean the gun with a jag and a patch, using rubbing alcohol. Then flash one cap on it before you load it, or flash a pan if it's a flintlock. That will clean all the oil out of the barrel."
He said one new product has revolutionized blackpowder shooting in the past couple of years because it doesn't require an alcohol cleaning before you fire the gun. "It's Bore Butter, which is made by Thompson Center Arms," he said. "It doesn't cause the problems petroleum distillates do. You can grease a patch with it and coat the inside of the barrel. In tests, they fired guns more than a thousand times without having to clean the bore. That's amazing, because normally after two or three shots you've got to run a wet patch through the barrel."
I must confess that I found one aspect of blackpowder cleaning rather odd. Pete said that when he's shooting competition, he keeps a clean patch tucked in his mouth. "A patch damp, not wet, with saliva is an ideal way to field-clean the gun between shots," he said. "Davie Crockett used to do that with his squirrel rifle. The smaller the bore, the more fouling accumulates, and the more frequently you'll have to do that."
And if that's not the ultimate in low-tech cleaning, I don't know what is.
Contacts for products mentioned:
Break-Free Oil
Break-Free, Inc.
1035 South Linwood Avenue
Santa Ana, CA 92705
714-953-1900
RIG-2
RIG Products
87 Coney Island Drive
Sparks, NV 89431
713-350-9690
Bore Butter
Thompson/Center Arms
P. O. Box 5002
Rochester, NH 03867
Copyright (c) 1994 Carolee Boyles-Sprenkel. All rights reserved.
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