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Blivetmaker

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Whatever can go wrong will..The date: Tuesday the 30th, Nov. 2005
I was just minding my own business and going about the perfectly normal routine of cleaning my Mortimer flinter after a completely satisfying shoot. While pump-flushing the barrel with soapy water I heard a click and felt a very unsettling vibration through the cleaning rod. Yep my barrel suddenly had a nice tight soaking wet cleaning patch/jag combo down all the way in a fouled barrel.
It was late. The chamber was full of water so no chance of shooting the jag out with a couple grains. As I live in a small town in Germany the neighbors would have had something to talk about and I'd have been out of the shooting business if I'd shot it out anyway. Luckily I had a jag that fit the rifle's wooden ramrod. I could at least rub out the water above the blockage. I poured oil
down the barrel and used a printer syringe to squirt oil into the area behind the vent liner which chose this evening to sieze up and resist all forms of removal. There was nothing for it but to wait until Frankonia opened the next day.
I went to sleep with visions of my poor barrel slowly rotting away. :shocked2: Their gunsmith and my oil unsiezed the recalcitrant vent liner. I bought and used a device that I'm not EVER going to be without again. A CO2 discharger. Worked like a charm but I'd advise caution. That jag blew out like a bat out of H@ll! :grin: The oil prevented almost all rusting; just a faint brown tinge to the cleaning patch. I got lucky this time. I'd have saved myself a lot of worrying if I'd just forked over the cash for the discharger BEFORE I needed it.
 
I've about given up on using jags and have begun to consider them an abomination in my sight. I now use a worm for almost all cleaning and it works fine and never jams. There is no problem with cleaning material of different diameters, etc, either falling off or being too tight when using a worm. I recommend it.
 
For 15+ years all I ever used to clean my primary shooter, a Bess, was tow & a worm.

I've made a couple rammers for my Lehigh, so that I now have a tapered plain wood rod with a spring style tow worm, as well as the button jag and a screw-on forged double helix tow worm. I like the looks of the plain wood rod, but there is the nagging concern that the spring worm might tug off, or even worse, I dry ball and have no way to pull the ball.

The helix worm adds the benefit of scraping the breech face when you twist it.

A CO2 discharger would ease my fears, but a second spring worm weighs nothing and can snag the stuck one, and maybe worrying about dry-balling will help prevent it occuring. :grin:

Life is just full of compromises.
 
Been there, done that... the only thing I use my lovely hickoryshaft jag for is, while I have the muzzle up and have poured hot water on top of a squirt of soap, I use the jag WITHOUT any patch to just aggitate the soap & hot water. I've found that this gets the barrel cleaner than without doing this. Then I too use tow & worm to clean.
This way you don't have to toss the jag, it's still a tool.
 
You folks worry too much about cleaning. They can set a day or two with no problem.
 
When the barrel is halfway through the cleaning cycle and a soaking wet patch is stuck down there, you're looking at a much higher potential for rusting than a "I'll just clean it tomorrow" situation.
 
rich pierce said:
I've about given up on using jags and have begun to consider them an abomination in my sight. I now use a worm for almost all cleaning and it works fine and never jams. There is no problem with cleaning material of different diameters, etc, either falling off or being too tight when using a worm. I recommend it.

Aren't worms and "patch-pullers" the same thing?Usually made of pointed steel? How do you keep the worm from scratching the bore?
 
A patch puller is thin wire. A worm is more like a wine cork puller (though it will also work as a patch-puller).

worm.x.jpg


The tow is wrapped around it so that the arms do not contact the bore.
 
The P. Mortimer has a clean out screw opposite the TH. I would have pulled said screw, filled the barrel with oil or squirted in lots of WD-40 and went to bed unworried.

I don't rush the cleaning process, but do so as per old military manual I once read. Plug the TH, fill the bbl with water, insert fitted wooden tompion into muzzle, seat to seal, invert the piece muzzle down & let it sit for couple of hours. All hard fouling is dissolved and bore then cleans up easily.
 
Stumpkiller said:
A patch puller is thin wire. A worm is more like a wine cork puller (though it will also work as a patch-puller).

worm.x.jpg


The tow is wrapped around it so that the arms do not contact the bore.

Thanks :thumbsup:
 
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