I sometimes see a person new to muzzleloading asking about using petroleum oil to lubricate their patches or to protect their bores in their muzzleloaders
This invariably gets a big DON'T from us old timers which usually raises the question, "why not?".
It has long been believed that petroleum oils will cause black powder fouling to be much worse than the fouling that is created in a bore which was lubricated with a natural oil. I know, I've said this many times but it was always based on other peoples comments.
Because I had the time, I decided to test this myself but taking a picture down inside the bore of a rifle isn't easy so I chose to use a flat piece of galvanized steel.
As I wasn't looking to see what kind of rust would be created I figured the zinc coating wouldn't be a problem.
This first picture shows the test bed.
After marking the type of coating at each location, I used a clean paper towel coated with the material being tested to wipe a light coating on the metal.
The "oil" used was Castrol GTX 10-30. Mobil 1 10-30 synthetic oil was used in the second area, regular vegetable cooking oil was used in that area, pure caster oil, TC 1000 Bore Butter, Stumpys Moose Milk and "nothing" finish out the "coatings".
Each pile of powder is 24 grains of Schuetzen 3F.
These piles were burned by lighting the pile on one end. Its burn ignited all of the other piles in one big "whoosh".
I then poured another 24 grains in each burn location and lit it off from the other end.
This was repeated one more time resulting in 72 grains of powder being burned in each location.
This second picture shows the results from the three burns.
At each location outside the wiped area a light gray coating was deposited. A similar coating appeared at the TC 1000, Stumpys MM.
To try to approximate what would result from wiping the areas using just pure water, the right side of each "burn" was wiped with a pad made from a paper towel which was first dunked into the water and then lightly squeezed out to eliminate any of the drips. Each "burn" was wiped with one downstroke. Then the pad was turned over to prevent "recontamination" from the dirty pad surface and wiped with one upstroke.
This was intended to represent the results of "wiping between shots" with one wet patch.
The results are shown in this photo:
As you can see, several of the areas cleaned up nicely including the bare "spit patch" area but the ones which used the oils did not.
Finally I decided to "wipe" the area with some water/dish washing soap solution.
Using this solution and the same technique I wiped the left side area of each "burn".
From this experiment I think it is safe to say petroleum oil and synthetic oil creates the thick black fouling just like the old words of wisdom says it does. The Caster oil (which is a vegetable oil) area seemed to be about as bad with a plain water wipe but I think this was partly due to the thick nature of the stuff because it seemed to leave a thick gummy layer in the wiped area.
Now, what will I test next?
(EDITED TO REPLACE PHOTOBUCKETS PICTURES WITH ONES THAT WORK.)
This invariably gets a big DON'T from us old timers which usually raises the question, "why not?".
It has long been believed that petroleum oils will cause black powder fouling to be much worse than the fouling that is created in a bore which was lubricated with a natural oil. I know, I've said this many times but it was always based on other peoples comments.
Because I had the time, I decided to test this myself but taking a picture down inside the bore of a rifle isn't easy so I chose to use a flat piece of galvanized steel.
As I wasn't looking to see what kind of rust would be created I figured the zinc coating wouldn't be a problem.
This first picture shows the test bed.
After marking the type of coating at each location, I used a clean paper towel coated with the material being tested to wipe a light coating on the metal.
The "oil" used was Castrol GTX 10-30. Mobil 1 10-30 synthetic oil was used in the second area, regular vegetable cooking oil was used in that area, pure caster oil, TC 1000 Bore Butter, Stumpys Moose Milk and "nothing" finish out the "coatings".
Each pile of powder is 24 grains of Schuetzen 3F.
These piles were burned by lighting the pile on one end. Its burn ignited all of the other piles in one big "whoosh".
I then poured another 24 grains in each burn location and lit it off from the other end.
This was repeated one more time resulting in 72 grains of powder being burned in each location.
This second picture shows the results from the three burns.
At each location outside the wiped area a light gray coating was deposited. A similar coating appeared at the TC 1000, Stumpys MM.
To try to approximate what would result from wiping the areas using just pure water, the right side of each "burn" was wiped with a pad made from a paper towel which was first dunked into the water and then lightly squeezed out to eliminate any of the drips. Each "burn" was wiped with one downstroke. Then the pad was turned over to prevent "recontamination" from the dirty pad surface and wiped with one upstroke.
This was intended to represent the results of "wiping between shots" with one wet patch.
The results are shown in this photo:
As you can see, several of the areas cleaned up nicely including the bare "spit patch" area but the ones which used the oils did not.
Finally I decided to "wipe" the area with some water/dish washing soap solution.
Using this solution and the same technique I wiped the left side area of each "burn".
From this experiment I think it is safe to say petroleum oil and synthetic oil creates the thick black fouling just like the old words of wisdom says it does. The Caster oil (which is a vegetable oil) area seemed to be about as bad with a plain water wipe but I think this was partly due to the thick nature of the stuff because it seemed to leave a thick gummy layer in the wiped area.
Now, what will I test next?
(EDITED TO REPLACE PHOTOBUCKETS PICTURES WITH ONES THAT WORK.)
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