Dish Detergent for Removal of BP Residue.

[GregLaROCHE]

All the muzzle loaders at my club use dish detergent to wash out the bore after shooting. I recently read, that some people prefer a non detergent soap like Ivory or Murphy’s Oil soap. Is there anything wrong with using dish detergent?

[Outpost75]

Nothing wrong with it that I can see. I use whatever is on sale.

[Buzzard II]

I use Ivory dish detergent. Just a few drops in a bucket of tepid tap water. I also use Ivory dish detergent to tumble wash brass with stainless steel pins.
Bob

[Tom W.]

I use shaved Ivory bar soap and gauze for cleaning. And hot water.

Something I read in the NMLRA magazines that I had....

[LAGS]

The main thing is whatever you use , make sure you are not using so much that the soap leaves a residue
Especially things like hand soap with lotions.
If you can wash your eye glasses and they don't have a film on them , you should be good to go.

[country gent]

On my bpcr rifles I use hot tap water and dawn dish soap to clean at home a small amount of soap in hot tap water removes fouling's and salts the salt quickly. After this a light pass of ballistol and water 20-1 then dry and oil. I like the dish soap since its also a degreaser and removes the layer of bullet lube also. I also use soap water to soak cases after firing.
Like the old corrosive ammo BP needs water to neutralize the salts in the fouling. A soap and water mix does this and flushes out the crud quickly.
On my percussion muzzle loaders I put a piece of snug fitting plastic tubing on the nipple and into a small bucket of soap water and a tight fitting patch jag combo and pump it up and down working the water in and thru. This cleans the bore and channel very quickly.

[725]

As long as it's water based, it will work. I've used Windex, dish soap/water mix, hot water, Simple Green, auto windshield washer fluid, Black Solve, Murphy's w/ peroxide ~ it all works.

[country gent]

I use windex with vinegar at the range to clean between stages and preclean before heading home

[Walks]

Everything mentioned, I've done and it ALL works.

Even boiling hot, hot water.

[tomme boy]

Boiling HOT water is a good way to form flash rust. Never use water over the temp you can keep your hand in. I used to believe the same thing. I always noticed rust on my patches after the barrel was dry and I ran a patch through it.

Now it is just warm water and no soap. Not needed. Flush the barrel and wipe it down with a damp cloth and use a military gun brush that looks like a tooth brush. Wipe it down with oil afterwords and have never seen rust again.

[rfd]

there is only one really good agent for cleaning up a gun used with black powder that trumps all others and has been in yeoman use for centuries, dihydrogen oxide. anything else is a waste of time and money and may actually harm the barrel metal. ymmv, as i see it does with some of you good folks - y'all ain't seen the light, yet. :)

[indian joe]

there is only one really good agent for cleaning up a gun used with black powder that trumps all others and has been in yeoman use for centuries, dihydrogen oxide. anything else is a waste of time and money and may actually harm the barrel metal. ymmv, as i see it does with some of you good folks - y'all ain't seen the light, yet. :)

Amen to that !!!
All that the soap does is wash out protective oils from the pores of the metal - dont do zip for the actual backpowder fouling .

Now I wonder where we can get some of that there dihydrogen whatsit stuff? :smile:

[jonp]

I've tried a couple of things and now just use Ballistol mixed with water.

We did use Ivory in a lab I worked at to clean the glassware as it left no residue. The PhD in charge was very specific on the Ivory

[jonp]

dihydrogen oxide. anything else is a waste of time and money and may actually harm the barrel metal.

NOOOOOOOOOO! Don't touch that stuff, it will kill you. :-P

[jdfoxinc]

SOAP NOT DETERGENT. detergent will remove your seasoning.

[MrWolf]

Hate to admit that I looked up dihydrogen oxide. Knew it sounded familiar. Water for those as dense as me.[smilie=b:

[waksupi]

SOAP NOT DETERGENT. detergent will remove your seasoning.

You cannot season modern steel. A notion sold by BoreButter.

[Maven]

Here's more information on why we don't season ML barrels: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/why-we-dont-season-barrels.61745/

[fatelk]

Danger! Dihydrogen oxide is statistically the most dangerous chemical on the planet! More people have been killed throughout the whole of human history by it (and in it) than any other chemical, and it's a proven fact that everyone who comes into contact with it eventually dies! :)

Thank you all, by the way. I don't shoot black powder much, and have always wondered about the best way to clean them. I've read the stories about civil war soldiers who ran out of water and used whatever liquid they had at their disposal to clean them, but I don't really want to try that.


We did use Ivory in a lab I worked at to clean the glassware as it left no residue. The PhD in charge was very specific on the Ivory

I had a previous job where we had to get some glassware extremely clean, and the only thing that really works to the level required is a solution of hydrofluoric acid. I wouldn't recommend HF ever outside of a tightly controlled lab/industrial setting though. It really is a dangerous chemical, no joke.

[Conditor22]

+1 -- 1 part Ballistol mixed with 10 parts water.

Leaves a thin coating of Ballistol after the water evaporates

[KCSO]

Dish stuff will take the oil out also. I've tried about everthing that came along and now I just stick with ballistol and water and oil.

[Walks]

Tomme boy,

I've only used boiling water to clean a Single Shot Rifle.
Worked well for me, but then I've always heavily oiled my barrel immediately afterward.
Never had a "flash rust" problem in 60yrs.

I actually prefer 1/3 Murphy's Oil Soap, 1/3 Hydrogen Peroxide, 1/3 91% Rubbing Alcohol.

Best thing I've found so far.

But then I'm obviously an

[wapiti22]

Couple drops of Tide Laundry detergent in a bucket of hot water. Let soak while I eat lunch, then brush the heck out of the barrel till the water stays clean. Let dry and oil. Good to go for the next range or hunting trip.

[megasupermagnum]

I've gone to a dirt simple approach like many others. Water. I don't heat it, I use it straight from the well. Once in a blue moon, and just before hunting season, I'll give the breech area a soak in a cup of window cleaner or other water based chemical. It will get another couple puffs of junk out, along with a pipe cleaner. Whether or not that actually helps reliability, I do not know, but it makes me feel good. I also use a bore brush on a fairly regular basis. "Not needed", I know, I know. You can pump water for 15 minutes, or run a bore brush for about one minute for the same result.

[waksupi]

I've gone to a dirt simple approach like many others. Water. I don't heat it, I use it straight from the well. Once in a blue moon, and just before hunting season, I'll give the breech area a soak in a cup of window cleaner or other water based chemical. It will get another couple puffs of junk out, along with a pipe cleaner. Whether or not that actually helps reliability, I do not know, but it makes me feel good. I also use a bore brush on a fairly regular basis. "Not needed", I know, I know. You can pump water for 15 minutes, or run a bore brush for about one minute for the same result.
It doesn't take 15 minutes of pumping water. I'm done, start to finish in 15 minutes.

[rfd]

if you care for a trad muzzy barrel properly, there is no need to ever use a brush. not ever. like ric sez, if yer spending more than 15 minutes from start to finish to clean up a trad muzzy gun after a shooting session, yer doing something way wrong.

[megasupermagnum]

if you care for a trad muzzy barrel properly, there is no need to ever use a brush. not ever. like ric sez, if yer spending more than 15 minutes from start to finish to clean up a trad muzzy gun after a shooting session, yer doing something way wrong.

It takes me 15 minutes to fill a bucket, and let the barrel soak while I find the rest of the stuff. I don't like to hurry.

I take a tight fitting patch, usually a T-shirt cut into a square, and use it on a proper cleaning jag. Pumping water for 5 minutes does not get the barrel completely clean. What could I possibly be doing wrong?

By completely clean, I mean it looks clean, but when I run a brush down I get more black out.

[rfd]

It takes me 15 minutes to fill a bucket, and let the barrel soak while I find the rest of the stuff. I don't like to hurry.

I take a tight fitting patch, usually a T-shirt cut into a square, and use it on a proper cleaning jag. Pumping water for 5 minutes does not get the barrel completely clean. What could I possibly be doing wrong?

By completely clean, I mean it looks clean, but when I run a brush down I get more black out.

stop using the damn brush! you will Never get a patch to come out perfectly clean and that's perfectly fine. make sure all patch material is cotton or linen, no synthetics. ready to clean? lemme do my colonial flinter for a standard after-shoot cleaning, so start the stopwatch ... pull off the lock and remove the flint and leather, put in a pail/bowl/whatever of tap water and let soak; plug the touch hole with a toothpick, pour in tap water, allow to sit; take out the lock, scrub a bit with a toothbrush, rinse, pat off the excess with paper towel or clean rag, spritz the entire lock with some kinda light oil (i use ballistol), pat off the excess; pull out the toothpick from the touch hole and let all the water pizz out, run in/out some water soaked patches (how many? depends on how well the gun's been maintained, typically 3 or 4 for me), a few dry patches, an oil soaked patch (i use breakfree CLP); screw back the lock, flint and leather back in the cock jaws, a spare rod with an oil soaked patch gets sent down the tube and left there. done. easy peasy. that was a tad over 12 minutes without rushing. :)

[big bore 99]

I've used it with good results. A heavy concentration of it and water in an old Elmer's glue squirt bottle on the range or in the field.

[megasupermagnum]

stop using the damn brush! you will Never get a patch to come out perfectly clean and that's perfectly fine. make sure all patch material is cotton or linen, no synthetics. ready to clean? lemme do my colonial flinter for a standard after-shoot cleaning, so start the stopwatch ... pull off the lock and remove the flint and leather, put in a pail/bowl/whatever of tap water and let soak; plug the touch hole with a toothpick, pour in tap water, allow to sit; take out the lock, scrub a bit with a toothbrush, rinse, pat off the excess with paper towel or clean rag, spritz the entire lock with some kinda light oil (i use ballistol), pat off the excess; pull out the toothpick from the touch hole and let all the water pizz out, run in/out some water soaked patches (how many? depends on how well the gun's been maintained, typically 3 or 4 for me), a few dry patches, an oil soaked patch (i use breakfree CLP); screw back the lock, flint and leather back in the cock jaws, a spare rod with an oil soaked patch gets sent down the tube and left there. done. easy peasy. that was a tad over 12 minutes without rushing. :)

That's a great way to do it for day-to-day shooting. That said, I guarantee I could take any one of your clean muzzleloaders, and get considerable junk out with just a dozen passes of a brush. Some of that carbon really bakes on there into the corners of rifling, and breech. I assume you could eventually get it with a patch and water, but not in 12 minutes. I only use cotton for patches. I don't even remove the lock most of the time. I only clean well enough to be 100% sure my gun will not rust, and a water pump only will not do that for me. YMMV.

[RU shooter]

RFD a question for you , you stated you don't swab the barrel so the patches come out perfectly clean . I'm sure you shoot your rifles more than I do is there any down side to not cleaning down to bare metal and having a clean patch at the end even if the gun will sit for say 3 months ? I've always try to get clean as I can with a patch but I have to use a lot o patches and time to get to that point . If your saying it's not needed I'll stop wasting time and patches . Bottom line how clean is clean enough?

[Petrol & Powder]

Hot water is key. I will admit to using a little Windex and I think the ammonia in it helps but I could live without it. Ballistol is handy stuff.

Hot water, as hot as you can stand to work with, will clean the BP residue and evaporate quickly. Follow that with some light oil to displace any remaining water and seal the surface to prevent rust. For long term storage the gun gets cleaned again the next day without water. That cleaning starts with Kroil and ends with RIG. Small parts get soaked in Clenzoil and reassembled. Big parts get a light coating of RIG.

NEVER had a problem with that method.

[indian joe]

stop using the damn brush! you will Never get a patch to come out perfectly clean and that's perfectly fine. make sure all patch material is cotton or linen, no synthetics. ready to clean? lemme do my colonial flinter for a standard after-shoot cleaning, so start the stopwatch ... pull off the lock and remove the flint and leather, put in a pail/bowl/whatever of tap water and let soak; plug the touch hole with a toothpick, pour in tap water, allow to sit; take out the lock, scrub a bit with a toothbrush, rinse, pat off the excess with paper towel or clean rag, spritz the entire lock with some kinda light oil (i use ballistol), pat off the excess; pull out the toothpick from the touch hole and let all the water pizz out, run in/out some water soaked patches (how many? depends on how well the gun's been maintained, typically 3 or 4 for me), a few dry patches, an oil soaked patch (i use breakfree CLP); screw back the lock, flint and leather back in the cock jaws, a spare rod with an oil soaked patch gets sent down the tube and left there. done. easy peasy. that was a tad over 12 minutes without rushing. :)

I'm with RFD here -- a lot of un necessary fuzzing around gets incorporated into the cleaning process - thats fine if its what ya enjoy but it takes time , costs money, and dont achieve anything useful. The same system (or similar)applied to a cartridge rifle will have it back in the rack in under five minutes easy.

[waksupi]

Hot water is key. I will admit to using a little Windex and I think the ammonia in it helps but I could live without it. Ballistol is handy stuff.

Hot water, as hot as you can stand to work with, will clean the BP residue and evaporate quickly. Follow that with some light oil to displace any remaining water and seal the surface to prevent rust. For long term storage the gun gets cleaned again the next day without water. That cleaning starts with Kroil and ends with RIG. Small parts get soaked in Clenzoil and reassembled. Big parts get a light coating of RIG.

NEVER had a problem with that method.

Hot water sets the fouling harder, and takes longer to fully clean a barrel, plus the problem of flash rust.

[megasupermagnum]

I'm with RFD here -- a lot of un necessary fuzzing around gets incorporated into the cleaning process - thats fine if its what ya enjoy but it takes time , costs money, and dont achieve anything useful. The same system (or similar)applied to a cartridge rifle will have it back in the rack in under five minutes easy.

I use a bore brush on cartridge rifles too.

I clean them all the same more or less, it just depends what powder I used whether I use well water or Hoppe's #9. I tried dish soap, it does nothing at all.

Hot water as hot as you can touch WILL cause flash rust. It happens as the barrel drys, it doesn't matter how soon you oil it. Cool water will not rust a barrel unless you leave it wet for hours. A few dry patches, and a wipe on the outside, and the barrel is dry in maybe 15 minutes. Less if you leave it in the sun or by the furnace.

While bore brushes do cost money, they cut cleaning time to about 1/3rd of what just a patch does. That is unless you are ok leaving a little crud, which I am not saying is always wrong. My method still doesn't get to bare metal. If you run a double layer dry patch which is a super tight fit, it will always have at least some black on it. The key is that it doesn't come back orange.

[Petrol & Powder]

Hot water sets the fouling harder, and takes longer to fully clean a barrel, plus the problem of flash rust.

Has not been my experience

[Good Cheer]

Don't forget that it's not unusual for salt to be added to products as a surfactant so be sure a rinse well. Yeah, everybody ought to rinse real good anyway but hadn't seen the salt mentioned yet.

[rfd]

my opinions only, that matter only to me - ymmv, and that's just fine ....

powders - black needs different thinking than white. this is true for the black used in both front and rear loading rifles. y'all know that back in the day these trad muzzy's were well cared for with nothing less than plain tepid water and tow (flax). getting a muzzy "perfectly" clean is a waste of time and energy, and guaranteed to create accuracy issues - yep, uh huh. as with those evil jkt'd projectiles used in "modern" guns, there's also a bbl equilibrium of sorts that's met with front loaders.

you may find, as i have over the last 5+ decades of messing with flintlocks, that once that "equilibrium" has been met, AND maintained, there is no harm to the metal or the gun's accuracy. it's the either side of that "equilibrium" that becomes a problem - either the tube is too dirty or too clean. you heard that right. the old folks knew this and that's why their guns worked all the time and lasted near forever. they had to - their lives depended on their firearms for food and protection.

plain water, cotton or linen patches along with a jag (one can get historical and use tow), maybe a scraper for flat faced breech plugs (though that will rarely get used IF proper maintenance is observed), some kinda goodly gun oil, that's it. i've got my loading, fouling control, and cleaning methods down pat, they're stupid simple methods and procedures, with minimalist gear, as long as i don't screw up and take care of bidness ASAP. never failed me, never will.

muzzy's with patent breech plugs (literally all the offshore guns) need to care for the constricted breech flue. doing fouling control and cleaning on those kinda guns will have some added steps to consider.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

What are opinions on the proper cleaning of black powder revolvers? Is it necessary to completely strip the parts out of the frame, i.e. hammer, trigger, etc., and clean the inside of the frame? Every time? Once in a while? Do you remove the nipples from the cylinder and clean the holes the nipples screw into and the nipple's threads? I almost always do so, use warm soapy water and a toothbrush on the internal parts. Pipe cleaners come in handy for some recesses as do Q-tips. I never discriminated among the various soaps, just whatever was on the kitchen sink. I get all the parts as clean as I can, dry them as best I can, and then spray them with WD-40 to displace any moisture that might have remained unnoticed or in a cranny where I can't get at it. Then after about half an hour I wipe off the excess WD-40, and that's that if I'm going to shoot it the next day; otherwise I use a regular gun oil before storing. What system do you use, and to what extent do you clean your BP handguns? It's kind of a hassle, I know, and probably not too many clean to the extent I do. I'll bet the hassle is why there aren't too many original BP revolvers from the 18th Century that survived in nice condition (or survived at all!).

The last time I attended a black powder shoot it seemed like everyone was hosing down their firearms with Windex Vinegar, and some said that they were done cleaning when they left the range, having already followed the Windex with a couple of dry patches and an oily patch. I thought this to be inadequate, but time will tell. I still remove the barrel of my Hawken from the stock, remove the nipple, and stick the breech end in a bucket of warm soapy water. Using a cleaning rod and patch I get kind of a hydraulic action going, sucking water in and out of the flash hole and up and down inside the bore. Dry and oil.

DG

[country gent]

O have used cotton flannel patches cut to get a good fit from a flannel bedsheet. These had a lot of knap on them and really held the fouling. The newer patches for smokeless ammo don't have this heavy knap on them that holds and collects the heavy fouling. It dosnt take alit to clean BP and can be done quickly.

[Gtek]

When that big toenail makes a hole in the end they go to the big bag of to be patches. They work great in the shotgun tubes also with that smooth outside and fluffy inside.

[rfd]

as long as there are no synthetics in the cloth, all is fine. i refurbish all old cotton t's, socks, shirts, whatever, for cleaning/fouling patches. patching for the balls is special in that i want it the same for every shot, which is why i have about 10 yards of jo-anns' red stripe pillow ticking. :)

[cas]

I use windex with vinegar at the range to clean between stages and preclean before heading home

Yup. I used all manner of mixtures and combinations or lack there of... water, dish detergent, murphy's oil soap, ballistol etc etc. Switched to windex with vinegar and life it much easier and neater.

[idahoron]

I clean down to bare metal every time. I am not sure why guys fill bath tubs and 5 gallon buckets. I use a tin can that originally had green beans in it. A guy doesn't need gallons of water. I also only use warm water not hot at all.
I have Green Mountain stainless barrels so they have the breach. I have a brush that has been stuffed into that breach so many times that it fits pretty well. I scrub it a couple 3 or 4 strokes and I am done. I use an endoscope to look down the barrels every once in a while to make sure they are in good shape. Neither lead or plastic have ever fouled my barrels so all I remove is powder residue.
First shot accuracy is the only thing that is important to me.