waksupi, I know you know your stuff and I respect you for all your knowledge accumulated in your lifetime of shooting and building muzzle-loaders, but I can't agree with your statement of not removing nipples every time the gun is shot to clean the channel. Some guys remove the barrel, submerge it in water and pump the cleaning rod in and out to remove the fouling in the channel, but it's just not practical with today's tiny flash hole nipples. I use them in all my percussion guns, original or re-pop. They prevent a lot of blow-back and nasty stuff from accumulating on the wood and bolster with their tiny choked lower flash hole, but don't behave very nice when it comes to having water flushed through them. The old large hole nipples, okay, you could flush them pretty good without removing them, but not these new choked ones. They really should to be removed for cleaning, lubrication, and inspection each time they're shot in my opinion.