Cleaning a pinned barrel rifle.

Well, it looks like I"m getting a 40cal Poorboy longrifle, worked a swap with a pard in Nashville and I'll pick it up tomorrow. It has a 40" barrel that's pinned to the stock in traditional style. It's been a while since I've had a pinned barrel longrifle, since my Austin n' Halleck flint Mt. rifle is a hooked breech and is easy to remove the barrel and just stick the breech into a bucket of boiling hot water to clean. I wonder how the best way to clean this new rifle would be. I noticed that DGW has a "C" clamp looking deal with a hose on one end that you put over the vent, then you just stick the hose into the water and clean as per normal. Or do some of ya'll just use wet patches to clean your barrel. I'm sure I'll figure it out but any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I use this method to clean all my flintlocks & percussions, longrifles and halfstocks.
I use a healthy squirt of dishwater liquid soap in a gallon of cold water for the flushing solution.
I put the rifle upside down in a cradle & this is important, as it keeps any spillage or leakage from getting under the barrel or breech area. Then I remove the lock & first thing I do is take a breech scraper & scrape the accumulated fouling off the breech face. It takes about 30 seconds & knocks all that thick crud out. Then invert the rifle muzzle down & bump the breech with your and & the fouling will fall out.
Now put the rifle back in the cradle upside down & connect the flush kit (be it a clamp type or screw in type) take a wet patch, put it on a jag & take it to the breech & then suck the barrel full of the solution & just leave the rod hanging out at the muzzle, barrel full of solution.

Then while the barrel is soaking I & clean the lock asm. under faucet with a toothbrush, blow dry with air & or dry with a paper towel & take a tiny screwdriver & work the towel into the cracks & etc., then spray the lock down entirely including the flint, with Ballistol & pat dry with a paper towel & set asside.
Back to the rifle in the cradle, I take a cleaning jag & a tight patch, & start swabbing back & forth in full strokes to flush the barrel real good for about 20 strokes. Change patches & do it again, change patches and do it again til I am sure it is clean.
Then I take the jag off & put on a breech scraper & check for any fouling. Scrape if necessary & if there is any fouling I put on a Breech Brush & brush the breech.

The back to the jag & wet patch & flush again. Then I swab with a dry patch a time or two. I wad up 2 patchs & put them in the bore & shove them to the breech with the jag & hold it there tight with the ramrod & then take a worm & pull it & check it for moisture & fouling. Then I do 2 more. And 2 more if necessary to be SURE the bore is dry.
When dry, I then squirt a lil Ballistol in the barrel from a pump spray bottle & wet a patch real wet with Ballistol & again swab & force some out the vent. When I am satisfied it is lubed real good, I install the lock & close the frizzen on a dry patch so any excess Ballistol will run out the vent & be absorbed in the patch at the frizzen. You can do all the same with BreakFree which I used before Ballistol & it works good also.

Some tell me I go to too much detail, but I know it works. I know I don't have any rust in the bores of my rifles & have done this for years, so it must work. Once ya get used to doing this, it takes about 20 min to completely chean the rifle good, bout the same as doing a modern rifle ....

Lots of dif. ways of doing it I am sure, this is just how I have always done it.

Yep, I LOVE that Ballistol. It's all that I've been using for everything for about 4 years now. I like that screw in hose deal ya' have there. I guess I'll need to pick up something like that for the full stock I"m getting. If it doesn't have a vent liner I'll have to drill and tap it for one, that way I can remove it and screw in the hose set-up. Anyway, thanks for the ideas of how I'm going to clean my new baby. :hatsoff:

I do then both ways, some with the screw-in type & some with the clamp. Most of the time with a clamp type. If I am going to put one away for storage I will take the vent out if it is removable & check under it, however, every time I have cleaned one with either type & took the vent out it was just a clean as could be, so not a whole lit of dif.

I've never removed the vent when cleaning my A&H flint Mt. Rifle. I just stick the breech into a bucket of boiling hot water and wet a patch and pump the water up and down the barrel until I see the water spray out clean. Then I run a couple dry patches down the bore then a couple with Ballistol and that's it, I'm done. The heat from the water drys the barrel inside and out pretty fast so there's never any problems with rust. I guess I need one of those clamp deals so I can do the same with the pinned barrel longrifle.

Stick a toothpick in the touch hole, fill the barrel full of tepid water, let it set a little and dump the fouling out. Patch the bore and repeat. It worked for at least 150 years before someone figured out that they could sell people stuff they don't need. Olive oil is about the only lube that's really needed. WD-40 is fine too if you must use a mineral based oil. Trust me hot water and chemicals are not good for you gun.

Ballistol is the ONLY cleaner/lube that I use any more. It's safe for muzzle loaders unlike petrol based stuff. I thought about getting a funnel and just pouring a little hot water down the barrel then doing the dump and repete deal but if I can attach a hose to the vent and stick it in a bucket it'll be a lot faster and less messy. Thanks for the tips anyway. Talk to ya'll later.

Please, for the safety of your fellow shooters, don't ever remove your touch hole liner.

Swampman said:

Stick a toothpick in the touch hole, fill the barrel full of tepid water, let it set a little and dump the fouling out. Patch the bore and repeat. It worked for at least 150 years before someone figured out that they could sell people stuff they don't need. Olive oil is about the only lube that's really needed. WD-40 is fine too if you must use a mineral based oil. Trust me hot water and chemicals are not good for you gun.

Click to expand...

There ya go, I agree 100%. :applause:

I do the same as Swampman... It's only worked for a couple hundred years now :winking: ! If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Something to think about in this somewhat esoteric discussion:I used to shoot an old SW Va.double grease hole mtn.rifle with a forged barrel.When I had the gun reconverted Southgate put in a nice big touchole so I could prime from the barrel in a pinch. I pulled the tang screw and two pins and the barrel was out.Then I cleaned the barrel with cold water. The breechplug came out with a plain pair of pliers and I held the barrel breech down with a wrapped towel and poured boiing water down and out the barrel.As the water went through it evaporated and I had a clean dry barrel.The plug went back a little more than finger tight and after cleaning the lock and replacing the pins and tang screw I was through except for one oily patch through the barrel. Funny thing though,that old forged barrel never rusted even if I let it go for 4-6 months between cleaning.I guess with all those super modern cleaning procedures and that super barrel steel we have really progessed. We have progressed,haven't we.
Tom Patton

Is removing the touch hole liner dangerous? You mean the screw in, replacable insert right? I was always under the impression that they were meant to be remove/replacable.

I don't agree with that. That is like saying never take a nipple out of a percuasion rifle, it is not safe......

Just like anything else with threads, it must be done correctly. If you put a lil antiseize on the threads of the vent liner & do not horse it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with removing a vent liner that is designed to be removed.

Now, is it necessary ? IMHO, no it is not necessary to remove one, but I do it sometimes. And I know some guys that do it every time they clean one. But a safety issue, no I don't think it is a problem if you do it correctly..... IMHO you can remove & clean one thousands of times with virtually no wear at all on them & they be completely safe. If this were not true ALL of the manufactured rifles would not make removable vent liners & removable nipples as it would be way too much liability.

In 30+ years of ML shooting I have yet to see a vent blow out. I hae seen several nipple blow out & that was caused because some hammerhead kept over tightening the nipple & stripped the treads from the drum, or the wrong nipple thread was used.

:hmm:

There's nothing wrong with Ballistol and I'd rather use it than WD-40 but I'm sure you'd find 100's on here that would say wd is Better.As for taking you vent-liner out,some say do and some say Don't.I have been taking Vents and Nipples for cleaning for close to 20 years,no probs either,Does that make me an expert?Nope,but with muzzleloading you'll find everyone has their "own thing" and you'll also find others that think anyone different from theirs has got to be WRONG. :thumbsup:

When I install one, I render it unremoveable. Sooner later if you keep fooling around with them, they'll blow out and put a hole through something, perhaps your neighbor's head. Like barrels, they shouldn't be removed except for major overhauls or replacement.

Is this something you've personally experienced, or is it speculation?

TN.Frank
I like the murphy oil soap 90 percent rubing alachol and peroxide mix for my colerain 50cal barrel but it don't work well for my 62 cal.fowler so I use that C clamp contraption with warm water and dish soap for that. :winking: Rocky

Waaay too much work!! I just scrape the breech face and start running soaked patches until they come out clean,then a couple of dry patches and then a lubed patch. The touch hole (what's a liner?) gets cleaned by the moisture and pressure caused while cleaning the barrel. I remove the lock and brush and wipe it clean with moose milk or water and touch lube the moving parts, then I wipe down the exterior of the barrel with a little lube. Doesn't take much longer to do than to tell about and I'll match the cleanliness of my rifles with anybody's.

I stopped using any kind of soap in the barrels of my rifles for the same reason I don't use it on my iron frying pans. I don't want to strip the season off of the inside of the barrel. I know we could open a big ol' can of worms with the "seasoned barrel" debate but that's the way I feel about it. Boiling hot water will flush out the fouling and heat the barrel so it'll dry fast so you won't get rust.
I think I'll do the ol' dump some hot water in the bore, slosh it around and pour it out a couple times them Ballistol patches and dry patches until it's clean. I can run a pipe cleaner thru the touch hole/vent liner and that'll take care of that. Brush up and spray the lock a bit with some Ballistol and I should be good to go.
Even if all of the fouling doesn't get cleaned off the water and Ballistol will kill the corrsive effects of black powder so it's no big deal.

Swampman said:

Stick a toothpick in the touch hole, fill the barrel full of tepid water, let it set a little and dump the fouling out. Patch the bore and repeat. It worked for at least 150 years before someone figured out that they could sell people stuff they don't need. Olive oil is about the only lube that's really needed.

Click to expand...

Yep...I also basically do what Swampman wrote. I use sharpened twig to plug the touch hole though.
Jack