Cleaning a Black Powder rifle?

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I concur with what you have said about WD 40.  A good gun oil should be used on the bore after cleaning, especially if it is to be stored for longer than a week.  In some regions more than others, this is especially true.

[John C IND]

Thanks so much for the well described methods of cleaning a rifle.  I think I will try Taylor's method first.
I can turn a jag to get the proper fit on the patches. How about WD-40 followed by Sperm Oil? That stuff seems to repel water very well.  ...I don't think it will trap it.

[Jerry V Lape]

Where are you gettin sperm whale oil? 

[blaksmth]

 PHIL SHARPE wrote that at the turn of the century more fine rifles were ruined by smokeless powder and the primers used at that time , because the primers had some kind of salt in them that reacted with the moisture in the air, and the fancy bore cleaners on the market and the oils would not prevent it.

 He further went on to say if people would have used warm water like GRANDPA had it would have dissolved the salt!!!!!!SO much for MODERN cleaners.

 If I shoot any modern foreign ammo I always give the bore a cleaning with water

[Artificer]

Phil was correct.  Both the Mercury Fulminate used in percussion caps and early primers for black powder cartridges and potassium chlorate in primers when smokeless powder was introduced;  left damaging salts in the barrels if not dissolved and flushed out with water.  This is why WWI, WWII and Korean War GI’s were taught to wash out their rifle bores with water to get rid of the salts left by the potassium chlorate in the primers.  (Also why some GI’s were taught to take their rifles into the showers, though if they did not remove the wood stocks and hand guards, that fomented other problems.)
 
That was also the reason that Marines and some of the other services ordered everyone to clean their rifles, pistols and other firearms for three consecutive days after firing them – to ensure the corrosive salts were removed. 

Here is a good article on the subject:
http://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html

Because mercury fulminate in percussion caps leave behind corrosive salts that are hygroscopic (attract and hold water), if the salts are not cleaned thoroughly with water, it causes the heavy pitting and corrosion you see around the breech and cones of original percussion rifles that you rarely if ever see on original flintlock guns.  So caplock shooters must be even more careful of cleaning the barrel around the nipple, the hammer and the nipple itself (if it has iron or steel nipples) to ensure such pitting and corrosion don’t start. 

Gus

[Bob Roller]

When I was in high school,a friend showed up with a like new K98 Mauser
and a box of Czechoslovakian cartridges in the proper 8x57. I told him
they were corrosive and the date of 1939 was the proof I offered.He said they're "soft point"
hunting cartridges and after firing all of them,he said he'd clean the rifle whenever he could.
He found out about corrosive ammo a week later when he asked me if there was any way to
refinish the inside of the barrel.I told him he could scrub it as much as he wanted to even
with oversize bore brushes but the shiny interior of that barrel was gone for good.
Live and learn or to quote old Heinrich Schnibble,"Ve are too late schmart und too soon old".

Bob Roller

[Ranch13]

The salts left behind by blackpowder are hydroscopic and that's why water is as good as any to get them rinsed out. Notice most of the favored blackpowder cleaners have water as a base...flushing something wet thru the nipple/snail/drum is a pretty good way to make sure there's nothing hiding in there that will cause serious problems. But $#*! only having done this stuff for something close to a half century, I'm sure I don't know as much about it as internet experts with lots of posts tallied....
 I'm a bit concerned about the "advice" given on taking a gun completely down to clean it. That's ok for a hooked breech rifle with barrel wedges intended to be handled that way, but doing that with a pinned and solid breech gun is just going to ruin the stock if done very often, and doing that on an original rifle one time stands a better chance of wrecking that rifle than the boiling water.

[Candle Snuffer]

I think there are so many ways to clean a firearm that as long as they are cleaned, and cleaned good, no one should have any troubles.  I've flushed my cap locks out through the Nipple for years with a plastic tube over the Nipple to direct the cleaning solution away from the stock, regardless if they are pinned or wedged.  With my flintlocks I've plugged the vent and poured my cleaning solution down the bore and let it set for awhile, poured the solution back out the bore, turned the flintlock sideways, soaked some cleaning patches, pulled the toothpick and went to swabbing.  I've taken my locks out and scrubbed them with a tooth brush.  Wipe everything down when it's all good and dry, given everything a very lite coat of sheath oil, and to this day I can go down to any of my rifles / firearms, run a white patch in and out the bore, and they still come out white - even if I haven't shot some of those rifles for years.

Cleaning a firearm (any firearm) is not rocket science.  Clean it, and clean it good the first time after a shooting session and you're good to go for the next outing.

Toothbrush, Q-Tips, Cotton Balls, Paper Towels, Bore Brushes, Cleaning Patches and Jags, are great aids in your cleaning process, not to forget to mention a small portable air compressor.  And never oil any part until you're sure there is no moister trapped anywhere within that firearm.

[Ranch13]

No matter which cleaning method one chooses cleaning the inner workings of the lock, and scrubbing the barrel exposed in the lock mortice is pretty important. One does need to be mindful about lubricating the lock as you don't want to get the fine grit in the air attracted and gummed up in parts that don't react well to being gummed up.
 

[Candle Snuffer]

No matter which cleaning method one chooses cleaning the inner workings of the lock, and scrubbing the barrel exposed in the lock mortice is pretty important. One does need to be mindful about lubricating the lock as you don't want to get the fine grit in the air attracted and gummed up in parts that don't react well to being gummed up.
 

Exactly, a - very - very - very - lite coat.  A good example (and I should have been more specific) - put it on with one end of the Q-tip and wipe it off with the other.

[Artificer]

John C,

There are two EXTREMELY important things to do when disassembling and assembling your lock from the rifle for cleaning that many of us “old timers” sometimes forget to mention for new guys.

The first is to MAKE SURE you put the hammer on a cap lock or the cock/flint hammer on a flintlock, at Half Cock BEFORE you take it out or put it back in the stock.  You can’t get a cap lock out with the hammer down as it catches on the nipple, but one MIGHT try to do it with a flintlock.  The reason you DON’T want to tap the lock out with the hammer down is the mainspring MAY bust out wood from the stock because on some locks, the mainspring at rest sits lower than the outside edge of the lock plate.  Cocking the hammer to half cock ensures the spring is compressed enough it won’t do that.

The second thing is to NOT tighten down the lock screws when you replace the lock with a “Gorilla Grip” or excessive pressure.  “Snug” is all you want or need to tighten the lock screws.  Some folks make the mistake of believing if the lockplate screws are snug, then TIGHTER THAN ALL GET OUT, is just that much better.  Actually, it is just opposite of the fact.  When you over tighten the lockplate screws, you are compressing the wood that holds the lock in the correct position.  Over tightening the screws will eventually lead to that wood compressing too much and then lock parts will bind up in the stock and cause all kinds of functioning problems.  One of the biggest of these problems is the sear not being able to move freely because the sear tail drags on the wood inside the stock and then the sear nose hits the half cock notch (on a tumbler without a fly).and snaps/breaks the sear nose off because there is not enough room for the sear to clear the half cock notch. 

Now tightening to a “snug” fit can mean all sorts of things to different people.  The best way I ever heard to explain it was you only tighten the lockplate screws with as much force as a firm handshake or maybe just a tiny bit more.

Gus.   

[Artificer]

Should have added a "PS" to the last post.

To take the lock out, and AFTER putting the hammer on half cock, TAP the heads of the lockplate screws as you unscrew them with the back of your wood or plastic screwdriver to push the lock out from the stock.  Unscrew and alternately tap on them until the screws are loose and will push the lock far enough out you can hold onto it and pull it the rest of the way.

Gus

[John C IND]

Gus,
I agree wholeheartedly on the screw torque.  I have another original caplock suffering from just such abuse. I'll have to build up the lock mortise to realign the lock which is tipped toward the lock bolt.  It's about .36 caliber, unfortunately it also has a shim between the breechplug and the barrel breech.  The swamped barrel is stamped W Strain on this halfstock, but there is evidence of a number of dovetail plugs all along the bottom, even visible under the barrel rib.  I suspect the barrel was 're-purposed' from an earlier fullstocked rifle.

On the Indiana rifle I asked about cleaning, the back action lock has to be on full cock to remove it, as it has no half cock notch.
Thanks again to all who responded to my inquiry.
Regarding the SWO, I inherited a bottle of it from a friend.  It does no good sitting on a shelf, does it?

[Artificer]

Gus,
I agree wholeheartedly on the screw torque.  I have another original caplock suffering from just such abuse. I'll have to build up the lock mortise to realign the lock which is tipped toward the lock bolt.  It's about .36 caliber, unfortunately it also has a shim between the breechplug and the barrel breech.  The swamped barrel is stamped W Strain on this halfstock, but there is evidence of a number of dovetail plugs all along the bottom, even visible under the barrel rib.  I suspect the barrel was 're-purposed' from an earlier fullstocked rifle.

On the Indiana rifle I asked about cleaning, the back action lock has to be on full cock to remove it, as it has no half cock notch.
Thanks again to all who responded to my inquiry.
Regarding the SWO, I inherited a bottle of it from a friend.  It does no good sitting on a shelf, does it?

John,

The part of the sentence I emboldened and underlined concerns me a bit.  I wonder if the face of the breechplug still tightens up snugly against the inside shoulder of the barrel?  Some to many times, people who were not gunsmiths would use such a shim rather than forge/upset the metal of the tang forward to fit snugly against the barrel face when the breech plug fit snugly inside the barrel.  Not everything done “in the old days” was a good repair and especially by someone who did not really know what they were doing.

Yes, the presence of additional dovetail cuts on the bottom of the barrel that have no lugs in them, strongly suggests the barrel was reused. 

On the .36 cal. Squirrel rifle, was there never a half cock notch or does it look like it may have broken off and someone just filed the area smooth because they could not fix it?   I know some locks never had half cock notches, including a mass produced foreign rifle musket from the 1840’s and used in our Civil War that I can’t remember the name of now, but I don’t know how common it was not to have a half cock and I think it rather uncommon.

Gus

[John C IND]

Gus, the .28 caliber J.S.BURSON squirrel rifle has an N.ASHMORE back action lock. Looks like they might have been sold by the keg. When I acquired it, the shaft was broken off of the tumbler and  the hammer was missing.  I turned up a new tumbler out of O1 and patterned it to match the original, including no half cock notch.  It matches another version of the same maker's work that I know of, with the same lock which also has no half cock.

I will try to take the breechplug out of the shimmed barrel this weekend to see if the face is snug against the counterbore at the bottom of the threads. That gun has a drum on the breech.  If there is a big gap, I might have to single point thread a new plug to fit the barrel and have the old tang welded to it.  However, if when I get the plug out I find the bore rotten, then there's not much point is there?

[Artificer]

John,

Neat info!  Well, if the bore is rotten and you would like to save the barrel, perhaps a rebore to .30 or .32 caliber by Bobby Hoyt?  I think his contact info is:
Robert A. Hoyt @
Freischutz Shop
700 Fairfield Station Rd.
Fairfield, PA. 17320  #717-642-6696

Gus

[smokinbuck]

Guys,
I know that I can get windy during conversations but, with all due respect to all who have responded, 3 pages on how to clean your rifle?
Mark

[whitebear]

Guys,
I know that I can get windy during conversations but, with all due respect to all who have responded, 3 pages on how to clean your rifle?
Mark

Three pages might seem like a lot but I have been shooting black powder for almost 40 years and I learned something in this discussion.