A good way to clean black powder guns.

[coloradoclyde]

I guess I look at it like this;

I'm cheap, and I don't like being saddled to the gun cleaning chemicals market....It just doesn't feel like REAL muzzleloading if I have to buy an expensive cleaner to clean my gun, not to mention the nearest store that carries it is many miles away...
My mountain man ancestors would turn over in their graves...
I spent a good part of my life learning how to take the hassle out of cleaning a muzzleloader...I'm not going to throw that away for some "miracle product".

Just my :2

 

[Black Hand]

I use water and it works well without having a fancy label and a $$$ pricetag...

 

[M. De Land]

This stuff will be great in the hunting camp with no chance to rust a bore from improper cleaning or getting a bore dried out.
I always hear this about our fore fathers turning over in there graves but it's just not true.
They were very practical and used ever trick in the book they could find to make life easier.
If they had Gunzilla available, every mothers son of them would have used it.

 

[Black Hand]

This stuff will be great in the hunting camp with no chance to rust a bore from improper cleaning or getting a bore dried out.

When cleaning with water in camp, if you are getting rust in the bore or not drying well enough, you're doing something wrong. No magical product will be of any great help...

 

[M. De Land]

Well, lets run a scenario, I've been hunting all day,have downed a deer and an dragging into camp wet tired and cold, but wait the rifle must be cleaned because it was fired.
Instead of heating water, getting out WD-40 and gun oil all I have to do is run a few patches of Gunzilla through the bore and I'm done. No swabbing, rinsing, dry patching, patching with WD-40 , then dry patching and finally an oiling patch.
If your going to reload after cleaning for the next day then your going to need some heat to make sure all moisture is out of the breech.
I will have to test this but I'm not even sure you have to completely removed all fouling for Gunzilla to kill the corrosive action.

 

[Black Hand]

Instead of heating water...

Cold water - Clean with a damp patch, dry with a couple of patches and oil. Takes all of maybe 5 minutes...

No magic elixir will cure a poor cleaning regimen.

 

[M. De Land]

I'd like to scope your bore down by the breech. Oil over a damp bore in the land corners equals rust pits and you can't get it all out with dry patching alone.
There was a reason bore freshing out was so common in the era of muzzle loading and most of it was made necessary by wood loading rods and incomplete cleaning.
The good ole days of how things were done is not always that good but nostalgia has a way of making it seem so.

 

[Black Hand]

You do remember that water evaporates?
A few dry patches will suck up residual moisture. Even if there were a small amount that remained in the breech, it wouldn't stick around for long...

 

[M. De Land]

Oil over water doen't that's the reason WD-40 is used to lift moisture out of bore scars, pits and groove corners. The moisture then can be removed by dry patching followed by an oil patch.
I've scoped a lot of bores that folks thought were pit and lead free. It usually makes them a little green around the gills to see what there bore interior really looks like.
A Hawkeye bore scope often makes a shiny bore look like the surface of the moon and shows how many places water can be trapped that a patch alone can't reach.
WD-40 is better than heat to remove moisture without corrosion but heat will do it as well leaving flash rust to one degree or another.

 

[Billnpatti]

..... WD-40 is used to lift moisture out of bore scars, pits and groove corners. The moisture then can be removed by dry patching followed by an oil patch.

That's been my method for several years. I highly recommend it. :thumbsup:

 

[azmntman]

cleaned two rifles last nite. warm soapy water, clean water, drying patches, WD-40, drying patches and then barricade. I just started adding barriade, WD-40 has been working well all by its lonesome for years but ya'all swear by it (barricade) so strongly I saw a can and picked it up and added it.

Oh, BTW gorrila grease on nipple threads and clean out screw threads.

 

[smo]

This stuff will be great in the hunting camp with no chance to rust a bore from improper cleaning or getting a bore dried out.
I always hear this about our fore fathers turning over in there graves but it's just not true.
They were very practical and used ever trick in the book they could find to make life easier.
If they had Gunzilla available, every mothers son of them would have used it.

Well stated MD.

Our Forefathers were very smart people.

I don’t think 20 % of the population now could survive under those conditions .

By the way , I’ve used water and I’m sure you have too.

And I never said it wouldn’t work. However..... :slap:

 

[Flint62Smoothie]

I gave up using ”˜warm to hot’ water years ago and the only I now don’t get is flash rusting ...

 

[Eric Krewson]

Well, I gave Gunzilla a try, I knew it wasn't going to work for me when it wouldn't dissolve the black gunk out of my pan. Water took the gunk out of my pan in one swipe.

My next test was the bore swabbed with 6 Gunzilla wetted patches and 6 dry patches. Lots of gunk seemed to come out and the patches were almost clean. I used a breechplug scraper with a patch on it with saturated with Gunzilla and got some gunk out.

My next step was to run a bore camera down my barrel, the results were disappointing, lots of black gunk on the breechplug and in the rifling at the breech end.

I use my normal water cleaning routine and got the gunk out in short order.

Gunzilla fell way short for me.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Thanks for being the test victim Eric....

I knew it wasn't going to work when they don't tell you what's in it...

 

[M. De Land]

I'm glad you tested it in a different climate and am really surprised by your results.
I'm still testing it for a no water cleaning method for hunting purposes.
So far no rust and clean barrel steel in both muzzle loader and Cartridge rifles checked with a Hawkeye bore scope.
I've not found anything that removes lead from a bore on a tight patch like it does.
I appreciate you taking the time and expense to test it against my experience with the product so we can get more than one perspective.

 

[M. De Land]

Eric, as long as you have some you might want to try leaving it in your bore over night and check the breech plug the next day to see what happens.
I to am having a hard time leaving water out of my cleaning regimen and have only done so with the bp cartridge rifles so far because I can clean and scope from both ends. Next will be the in line match muzzle loading pistols again because I can clean from both ends and physically inspect the breech plug.
I started with the cartridge rifles using the gunzilla treatment alone and have been using a combination with the muzzle loaders.
Typically with the muzzle loading rifles I use my standard warm water and soap, warm water rinse, dry patch, WD-40, dry patch and then Gunzilla patch.
The cartridge guns were always treated the same way but the test guns now are Gunzilla cleaned exclusively.
Next will be the in line muzzle loading pistols and will report and show some pictures of that testing process.

 

[M. De Land]

It's working well, so far for me Clyde. I still am in the testing phase for over all cleaning and preserving ability.
Sure hard for me to give up water though as I've used it in cleaning of BP for 50 years but I think it may be a better hunting camp method of cleaning and rust prevention.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Here is a picture example of what I found out about gunzilla;

16 shot cruddy pan soaking in Gunzilla;

After a few minutes soaking I gave the pan a good scrubbing with a clean patch and removed the Gunzilla and very little of the fowling, just the the chunky crud. This pan is polished like a mirror and ordinarily cleans up very easily.

I used Hoppe's #9 to clean the pan as another test. It got the pan clean but not as quickly as water.

Why does this stuff work so well for others and won't even take off the BP crud for me?

 

[Zonie]

Looks to me like your test is proving Gunzilla doesn't work well with black powder fouling so, I think the others are fooling themselves into thinking it works.

Notice, the smoothed black powder fouling that was left in the pan does reflect light so, looking down a still fouled but smoothed bore could look like it was "clean" when in fact, they are looking at smooth fouling.