by Jim
Modern guns are pretty awesome. What’s not to like ? With modern smokeless powders and non corrosive primers, you can shoot your favorite plinker at the local gravel pit and clean it later if you want to wait. The ammo is clean burning and reasonably priced. Or you can hunt multiple rainy days on an outing and not have to worry much about corrosion in the bore.
But what if you’re a traditionalist shooter like me ? I do enjoy the modern guns often, but I really like the old guns that shoot the “Holy Black” as it’s sometimes called. Black powder. There’s something about putting out clouds of billious gray smoke when you’re out on the hunting fields — doing it Old School as your ancestors did. With muzzle loaders and even black powder cartridge guns, it can be kind of gear intensive. Seems like there’s every gadget under the Sun devised to keep your old smokepole running. Well. Not really. It doesn’t have to be so gear intensive if you have the right tools to keep it clean. And the first item I’m suggesting is a blow tube.
Simply put, a blow tube is nothing more than an old cartridge meant to fit in the breech of your BPCR with a tube on the end to blow moisture into the breech between shots. You don’t have to do it for every shot, but it does soften the powder fouling by allowing you to blow your wet breath into the barrel. About 50% of the powder remains in the bore as residue once black powder has been burned. And it’s hygroscopic, meaning it pulls moisture from the atmosphere and forms a corrosive compound of fouling. This fouling can become quite hard and can be difficult to clean and it can even make it difficult to load the next round. By using a blow tube to keep the residue moist and soft, you can mitigate some of the problems for fouling.
A blow tube is easy enough to make if you’re handy or you can order one online. You can be as fancy or as simple as you want to be with it. Here you can see that I have a cut off hull with the primer pocket drilled out and a brass tube epoxied in place. You can even use clear rubber or silicone tubing.
Now we come to the subject of keeping your smokepole clean. There are as many formulas and ideas available as there are stars in the skies. But my best standby is called “moose milk”. Some of you are not as fortunate as I am, and you can’t get it straight from the tap as I do here in Maine.
Moose milk is a mixture of a water based emulsion that really removes fouling and gunk from your black powder guns. I make mine from 1 part Ballistol (any water based emulsion will work), 1 part Murphy’s Oil Soap, 2 parts peroxide from the local drug store, and 20 parts of distilled water. The result is a milky color and you simply shake it up and soak your cleaning patches in the stuff. It dissolves the powder residue and neutralizes the priming salts of percussion caps that causes corrosion. You can experiment with your mixture and even leave out the peroxide if you like. For muzzle loading guns it can be as simple as plugging the vent and filling the barrel with moose milk, propping it against the wall and letting it soak. Dump it out in a while and start running the bore brush down the barrel to clean out the crud.
Just make sure to run a dry patch down the bore and oil it once you clean the gun to prevent rust.
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