Loaded for 18 days and it fired!

maypo59 said:

I loaded my GPR for early ML season, in mid October. Took it out Tuesday, fired fine, big fat doe in freezer.. :grin:

shockey's gold, bore butter lubed PRB.

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LOL.. had to quote my own post.. mine was loaded in a clean barrel, and not stored on the porch. It was in a very nice climate controlled "storage box".. and after firing, cleaned it up, bore/chamber looks like new still..

I bought a TC New Englander from a guy several years back. It was .50, and the bore appeared spotless. I needed all but the barrel since I had purchased a NIB 12ga barrel.

Earlier this week I pulled the .50 barrel out with the intention of taking it to the range. I removed the nipple to replace it with a Hotshot AND examine the flash channel. I was surprised to see some grey, granular stuff in there(not BP). :shocked2: Looking down the bore I could see a reflection from something shiny, and I'm thinking powerbelt....rather than pull it, I tried to shoot it at the range. 3 consecutive misfires on a clean clear nipple....pulled the nipple, added a few grains of ffffg and it fired. After cleaning, I detect no roughness and couldn't see any corrosion through the flash channel.

My T/c Hawken was loaded Nov 15th with Goex 3F BP and I fired it Dec 17th without any delay. :thumbsup:

I think most muzzle loading barrels would shock their owners if they got a gander down them with a bore scope.
Most all I have examined have some pitting going on even when immaculately cared for. Very often it is not pitting from corrosion as much as it is pores in the barrel steel that are uncovered from the machining process by repeated shooting pressure that caves them in and cleaning that removes the extruded steel. The saving grace with many of them is that a patched round ball will shoot just as well out of a pitted bore as it will out of a new one as long as the patch does not tear.
This is another very good reason to use water displacing oil before gun oiling after water cleaning, to get all moisture out of pores. Mike D.

I use a alcohol soaked patch after cleaning with hot water

Rifleman1776 said:

Leaving a fired ml for 18 days, loaded or unloaded, without cleaning is not a good practice. :shake: Would not surprise me if you had some beginning corrosion at the chamber end.

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I agree. It's not worth the risk of a mis-fire or more importantly, rust and corrosion. Just my .02 worth.

I got one of them little lights you can drop down a .50 or bigger.

I have several rifles from a Dixie Tenn Mt to some .58s I have fired quite a bit for years.

I don't see any pitting or damage in them.

I use bore butter more than not.

I have actually let a couple sit a few days uncleaned with no damage.

I have let one sit a year loaded which is not smart simply for accident potential.

Oh, the pits are there alright, you just can't see them without a bore scope.
Pitting though is not really a bad thing as long as it does not tear patches or cause leading.
I have noticed it in very smooth barrels after they have been shot and cleaned for thousands of rounds. I believe though it is not corrosion but steel porosity and in some cases inclusions that have been uncovered from the machining process by shooting pressure and cleaning. They will grow though if cleaning moisture is not removed.
A slightly pitted bore does not necessarily mean an inaccurate bore and can make a gun shoot better.
Actually some of the old slug gun shooters purposely pitted up their bores a bit to break up glaze that formed over time from patch bullet shooting, that was said to deteriorate accuracy.
They used urine and vinegar reportedly to break up the glaze. Mike D.

The muzzleloader season in northern Minnesota can be anything from cold, wet conditions to dry and subzero temperatures, all in the same week. I learned the hard way, if its cold and damp that day, even if it don't rain, fire it and clean it. The day after such a day it dropped from above 32f to -10, out walks a deer saying kill me and laughs at me as I fire off three caps trying to get that gun to go off. I used to store my gun in the garage loaded all season with the cap off, now I let the weather determine if its okay to do so. I have no problem leaving a load in my muzzleloader for short periods and I'm a corrosion freak, check the damn thing weekly now, even in storage, found some rust in my sons cabelas hawken once after 6 weeks of storage, I had cleaned it, not him. Its okay to leave a load in there for short periods but moisture in any form will create a problem, use discretion. Oh yeah, the gun did fire when I got home, with a long sizzle and a kaboom just like my season. I like my venison frying in a pan, not running around my back yard eating my wife's shrubs all winter.

Shine said:

I remotely fired a rifle that had been loaded at least 20 years.

:shocked2: it came from an estate I laid it across a tire and with a long string. Boom it fired.

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That's smart practice, always making the assumption that it is loaded.

I have a buddy that buys rifles from estate sales and the use of a fibre optic camera down the barrel has come up with some surprising results.

Glad to see somebody here from The County. My great-grandmother was from Oxbow.