Mad Monk, is your extensive work on fouling still on the web? I printed it down years ago and wanted to show it to some new shooters. Couldn't find it, gone along with my memory.
Peter.
Not that I am aware of. Several years ago I cleaned all of that stuff out here at home. Have some of it stuck in my memory but that is about it.
I took a bit of abuse out of the arm chair experts on the work so I just set it aside. Figured if I wanted that kind of abuse I'd get a leather whip to go with the wife's leather Indian dress!!!
Mad Monk
This i would love to see. (NO not the dress/whip! 
)
Maybe someone has a digital copy archived somewhere? There are some folks I give extremely high marks to for ACTUAL working knowledge/science/experience regarding what they yak about in this www. MM, you are one. And thank you for sharing so much of said knowledge.
As far as I know there are no digital copies of the total work. A good bit of it was posted on one or two BP cartridge shooting message boards. Of course some of it did not go over that well since all of my work was in ML rifles.
While the work was extensive it followed a few basic facts.
The only bonus out of it was that I could then explain why you would go out with the same can of powder on different days and get widely varying results in what you saw in bore fouling. Amount and the form it was in.
For instance. Bore fouling. You often read where black powder residue is hygroscopic and corrosive. The claim is often made that the sulfur residue in the fouling makes it corrosive because the residue is acidic from the sulfur. Not true. The major portion of the solid particulate matter in the bore residue is potassium carbonate. Also known as potash. A medium caustic. So any acid formed by traces of sulfur bearing gases are quickly "killed" by the vastly larger amount of caustic material. The corrosiveness is a function of the potassium carbonate itself.
If the RH is below 30% the bore fouling is essentially non-hygroscopic. Without moisture there will be no corrosion/rusting of the bore nor any attack on any brass on the gun. Then between 30% RH and about 80 to 85% RH the residue is hygroscopic and pick up moisture in relation to the level of humidity. When you get up around 90% RH the residue becomes deliquescent. That is to say it pulls enough moisture from the air to almost completely dissolve itself. If there are no chlorides present in the residue the rusting/corrosion is simply a surface attack. Almost uniform in effect over the surface covered by the residue. But if there even small amounts of a chloride in the residue you will see pit corrosion on the surface as the chloride salt crystals for ideal electrolytic cell sites.
Amount of solid particulate matter left in the bore versus the amount eject in the spent propelling gases. My work showed that this is tied to the temperature of the air when you shoot. If you shoot with the temp down into the 40s you get far less bore residue that if you are shooting at 80 to 90 degrees air temp. The "texture" of the bore residue also changes with the temperature of the gun barrel during shooting. As the ambient temperature goes up there will be agglomeration and heat fusion of the particles produced by powder combustion. As the particles grow in size less are carried out of the bore in the spent propelling gases. The larger fused particles are also more difficult to remove from the bore with a damp or wet cleaning patch. There is no difference in the solubility of the residue. Just that larger particles take longer to dissolve into the damp/wet cleaning patch. Takes a little longer and more strokes with the cleaning rod.
Mad Monk
