bp 8 gauge loads

[Harry Collins]

You want to avoid petroleum based products as they will foul the barrels badly when shooting. I take the barrels off the gun and put the breach in a plastic drywall bucket about half full of hot soy water. I wrap a cleaning patch around the wire brush and work it up and down the barrel. This will suck the hot soapy water into the barrels. It doesn't take many strokes to clean the soot out. I follow up with a new patch and a bucket full of just hot water. You're done cleaning. I have a heat gun (you can use the brides hair dryer) and blow down into the barrels with the nipples out. Some dry patches followed by Fluid Film and you're done. I go back an a day or so and run some dry patches through the barrels to make sure everything is still ok. Then another patch soaked in Fluid Film. There are many products on the market to make cleaning sound easy. The hot soapy water method is what I've found the quickest and easiest. Dawn soap works great. If you're into black powder heresy Alliant's Black MZ is a substitute that is virtually non corrosive and will clean with just a few swipes of a water soaked patch.