[Mac Attack]

I recently received a previously owned TC Hawken rifle and want to take it apart to clean. I wanted to know what kind of cleaning solutions I would need to clean my rifle. I visited my local Dick's sporting goods store today and the employees were not very helpful. Lucky for me there was an old timer there who shoots BP. The old timer told me the way he cleans his rifles is to use hot water with dish washing solution like Pledge, or Dawn. He said he has been using the hot water/cleaning solution for years and has never had a problem with it. This is not the first time I have heard this but wasn't sure if they were just pulling my leg.

Anyways, Dick's had three different types of barrel cleaning solutions and barrel butter. I wasn't sure what cleaning solutions I would need and decided to check with you all first before I spend my hard earned money.

Thanks for your advise.

Mac

[4v50 Gary]

Key ingredient: hot water. Make the water as hot as possible. It'll heat up the barrel, soften the fouling and make drying more rapid (since the barrel is warm). Soap helps and you can use the dishwasher detergent of your choice.

[BullRunBear]

Clean up on your Hawken sould be easy as it has (I think) a hooked breech making barrel removal simple. Pull the barrel and remove the nipple. Stick the breech end in a bucket of HOT water. I put in a little Simple Green cleaner but dish soap will work as well. Use a tight patch on a cleaning jag and push it up and down in the barrel. After a few swipes, change to clean but still very hot water as a rinse. The water coming back out of the barrel should be clean. Drain it well and run some dry patches through it to be sure all the moisture is gone. The heat of the barrel will help. When dry, I run a patch with a little Thompson Center Bore Butter down the bore. I've followed this process for years and never had a problem with rust, even in humid northern Virginia.

I use a pipe cleaner in the first soap solution to clean out the nipple and the other end to dry it. I smear a dab of Bore Butter on the nipple threads before putting it back. (Be careful not to block the flash hole in the nipple.)

I use a toothbrush to clean the hammer and lock plate/mechanism and dry them well. Lube the lock innards as needed.

Finally, I wipe the entire barrel assembly and stock with a silicone cloth and wipe it again with a clean soft cloth to remove any excess.

This sounds like a lot but it only takes a few minutes. Hope this helps.

Regards, Jeff

[mykeal]

BullRunBear and 4v50Gary hit it out of the park. Exactly the same process I've been using the last 30 years with excellent results. Except I use Gorilla Grease on the nipple threads, but Bore Butter will work as well.

Actually, I did use a different process the first time. Not believing that the patch on the jag would pull water up into the barrel through the hole in the drum, I put the muzzle in the bucket, attached a hose to the nipple and sucked the water up into the barrel. Right up into my mouth... Never did that again.

[Pancho]

Your TC is a great gun to start out with for many reasons but one of them is being able to separate the barrel from the wood easily. In fact I'd sooner clean my TC sidelocks than any of my inlines. All of the advice so far given can't be improved on but I add one step and that is after I rinse the entire barrel inside and out with hot water I liberally splash rubbing alcohol in and on the barrel. The alcohol will mix with and evaporate any water that can be left in the barrel around and under the rear sight even under the dove tailed front sight. Be ready to use bore butter or whatever you prefer as soon as the barrel is dry cause that baby will rust right before your eyes.

[Mac Attack]

So the old timer and the guy at the store weren't pulling my leg when they said to use plain old hot water and detergent. :)

I do not have a manual for my rifle so I don't know how to separate the barreled assembly from the stock. I know there is a brass cross flat-pin, do I just pull the pin and the barrel will pull off of the stock? Thanks for all of your help.

[Pancho]

Yep Mac, that's all you do. You can make a good gentle punch out of the spring type clothes pins just separate the wood pieces and you now have two punches. Make sure the ramrod is removed push out the wedge and then lift the barrel up from the front.

[mrgrzeskowiak]

Hot water is great, but I sometime's use equal parts of Murphys Oil Soap and Hydrogen Peroxide. Works great , especially if there's no hot water available.

[Ifishsum]

Have fun with it, I sure enjoy mine. Here's a link to download the manual:

Shooting_TC_Side_Lock_Black_Powder_Guns.pdf (http://www.tcarms.com/assets/manuals/current/Shooting_TC_Side_Lock_Black_Powder_Guns.pdf)

[Mac Attack]

Ok, I took the barrel off of my stock and there is no rust. If I use the bath tube and hot water method, do I need to take off the ramrod channel off the barrel assembly? Also, do I just clean the firing mechanism in the stock or should I take it out as well?

I have been around firearms my entire life and have to say this is the most excited I have been about a firearm in a very long time. I can't wait to shoot it tomorrow. :)

[mykeal]

Ok, I took the barrel off of my stock and there is no rust. If I use the bath tube and hot water method, do I need to take off the ramrod channel off the barrel assembly?
Nope.
Also, do I just clean the firing mechanism in the stock or should I take it out as well?
Most of the time you do not need to remove the lock from the stock, but periodically it should be taken out, scrubbed with bp solvent/hot water & soap/etc and then oiled with a vegetable base oil like olive oil.

[Macmac]

If you use bore butter, soaps and detergents will remove the "seasoning".

Do you have and use a real cast iron fry pan? If so do you wash it with detergent? What happens to that cast iron then? Well you will find you have removed that "seasoning" with soaps and detergents.

I maintain plain real hot water is just about all you need. I use a mop, or make a mop mounted on a worm, and with hot water pump the bore clean. This is easier with your hooked breech set up than in my Bess and other long guns with more or less full and pinned stocks, where getting the barrel out is a chore.

Once you believe the bore is clean, a new mop or a new patch to dry the bore, which is more like make sure the bore is dry will show wether or not the bore is really clean. If it is, then a dob of new bore butter run down the bore will end it, as a lubed bore.

I tight mop will in fact act like a water pump with this system. If you ever wanted too, you could place the nipple end under cold water in a crevice of rock that has water and pull up enough to fill a bottle easy.

A tool I am surprised isn't mentioned here is easy to make, and maybe why no one mentions, since buying one isn't likely.

A TC worm is no more than a threaded fitting made of brass, with a bent wire to snag patches from the bore. Often times these wear out and what you get is a brass piece seemingly useless. That wire can snap off, but is only crimped in place.

So with a common hack saw cutting the crip is easy, removing what is left of that wire is easy. Then what you do is find a sliver of brass or copper sheet metal about in this case 1/2 inch long, by 1/4 tall, and soft solder it into the slot. You can use longer than 1/2 inch and trim after soldering as easily.

Now you have a breech face scraper that will get into the square breech face corners, and no more yucky build up of crusties... You will need another wire worm....

Another tool I like, probably because I made it, is a long jag looking rather bullet like, on the modern sence of a bullet, and all ribby to hold a patch.

I set this tool in a "V" block and drill a 1/8th" hole about centered. Then I cut the jag off just over the hole. The next step is to drill a hole at each end into the first hole, right on the edge, and remove the outter sliver left over.

The idea is to relieve the width over all to this tool which is becoming a stonger worm.

The next step is to poke a 1/8th inch wire thu the first hole and bend the ends up, which should be flush with the outter most sides of the jag, so the wires are not to wide to fit in the bore. You want a little clearance.

Once you have made adjustments if needed, then stake the center of the jag with a prick punch to snug the wire in the tool.

The wires should slide over a 3/8" steel mandrel made from any 3/8 steel round stock now. You drill that round stock near it's end and place a small length of 1/8th wire in that, so about 1/4" sticks out of the new wire bending mandrel you just made.

With an old ram rod screw what is to be come a new heavy duty worm into it real tight. Wrap a little leather to catch both the rod and the jag, and grab that with vise grips.

With a plumbers torch heat the wires to red hot and turn the whole deal over the mandrel in a vise counter clockwise, and you get a double cork screw with a clockwise twist. When you have tinkered enough to get things pretty even stop and allow cooling, or add a drop of solder if things are clean enough right then.

File and dress the wires ends to be pointy, but flattened some on the breech facing sides and you are done.

Time well spent, not presto clean and quick maybe, but you won't be buying any more flimsy TC worms anytime soon.

Jute twine and manillia rope pony tails just became your new friends.. Best of all after you beat these to nill, and dry them these make great tinder bundles.

Saves on store bought patches, and you get more uses. Just don't be pickin yer nose with this and Osha will have no problems.

[Mac Attack]

Macmac wrote: If you use bore butter, soaps and detergents will remove the "seasoning".

Do you have and use a real cast iron fry pan? If so do you wash it with detergent? What happens to that cast iron then? Well you will find you have removed that "seasoning" with soaps and detergents.

I wish I would have know that before I cleaned it yesterday. I hope that I didn't remove the seasoning. I removed the barrel assembly from the stock and soaked it in the bath tube with VERY hot water. I then used a liberal amount of dawn, ivory soap, patches, brush and my rifles ramrod... I did't know that BP tips would not work on a normal cleaning rod so I had to use my rifles wood rod. I treated all exterior parts with silicon cloth and olive oil on the sites and bore button on the inside. It looks really nice now and was the perfect way to end the new year.

There's a lot of information in your thread. I will have to obsorb it before I comment on the rest. Thanks for your input.

[Macmac]

Well it takes time to create "seasoning" it doesn't happen instantly. Use creates it. The more you shoot and the more you use clean and just hot water, the better seasoning gets..

A cast iron pan is easy to see. You cook steaks, bacon, and other animal fats in a pan like that and it seasons the cast iron to be smooth and shiney black. These oils get down in the pours of the metal when the metal is hot. As the metals cool these oild become trapped.

It is a simple thing to clean a cast iron pan with no more than hot water and a clean rag. When it dies it will be shiney and black. No foods will really stick to a seasoned cast iron pan, so using detergents isn't something needed to be done.

Today with hyper cleaning things people tend to want no chance of germs, and so tend to ruin a good seasoning in pans.

That stripes oils and leaves open pours.. A dry looking cast iron which will rust given a chance.

As to germs, well they maybe be on dead clean gray dry cast iron and or they may be on a seasoned pan, but heat from cooking kills them again.


Patch worms are not much of a big deal tool and are very handy. In longer term storage I send a long patch soaked in bore butter down my barrels and leave it there.

After shooting at events these days wanting a little more un-needed security, I send a like patch down the bore , and pluck it out with a worm when I want to shoot again.

The TC worm is far from a real old time worm, and flimsey. The old time worms are smaller than bore size because they are steel. You don't want steel tools in the bore, that will touch the bore. A worm is fed and wrapped with fibers of one sort or another, and so steel never touches steel.

All that blather is no more than text to make a 2 prong corkscrew. I made another one from one dead bolt...

Forged it thin to be threaded 10x 32 a standard thread. "Upset" the bolt to thicken it below the threaded area. Hammered below the upset to flatten steel so as to spread the bolt and cut it from the bottom in the center making a sort of 2 prong fork.

Bend these prongs so the whole looks like a steel "T", shape the T ends, and wind em up on a mandrell. All one piece.

[mykeal]

There is a world of difference in materials between a cast iron skillet/frypan and a steel rifle barrel.

While I am throughly familiar with seasoning a cast iron skillet, in 30+ years of shooting two bp rifles and several pistols/revolvers I have seen no evidence of this "seasoning" effect on my guns. If it exists, and I'm not saying it doesn't, I haven't seen it, certainly not like I have on my cookware.

[Macmac]

mykeal. Under seasoning there are two types of people. Those who don't believe this can be done and those who do.

I have that 30 years + myself, so we are on the same page there. But most of that page is blank, because you and I did not have this newer bore butter.

Irreguardless, You clean with hot water and I clean with hot water.

Yes cast iron is not steel, there isn't carbon in cast iron, nor is cast iron wrought. The idea is a mental picture which can be seen I had hoped.

However the best steels still have pours and these pours can be filled with oils, and once they are no water will touch steel again, unless you degrease them, and that is my point.

Add that to wear which means polish as I believe with pressure and heat and a moving oiled patch bores get polished every time a ball is fired, that sooner or later you come to a point there things are as good as it gets in that paticucluar bore and every shot there after things get a bit worse. However unless you shoot maybe 50 rounds a day for 25 years wearing a gun out isn't much concern.

As to originals well they got used and they were not the same steels we have and use today.. Nor were they made anything like those of today.

You would know as well as I do, a well seasoned pan cold, and a drop of water; that that drop beads up and will not "wet" the metal no matter what you do. It just will remain a bead of water.

You strip that pan in detergent to raw iron, and that bead of water will "wet" and spread right out and soak into the pours and seemingly appear dry, when in fact that water just went into the metal, maybe 0.003" deep

That isn't a problem on a pan and it isn't really a problem on a bore.

I think where any problem is is that the pours are rougher and the oils tend to fill and smooth them over even more.

I know for fact that you can take cold rolled mild steel not fit to be a tool and cut the scale so the metal is bright, but not polished. You can cut a hunk off that, and polish it to a mirror bright.
Place both in weather and the mirror bright will not rust first. What has been done is the pours have been smoothed over, and so are semi sealed more..

So this seems to show these 2 hunks will both rust left with nothing, but one will rust an probably over night in 75% humidity.

So since we are adding humidity as hot water, and a bore could be seasoned, then perhaps we are cleaning goo, and crud off a seasoniong rather than off raw steel. It might be no water ever did touch steel if seasoning is complete.

Or am I a duck out off water?

[Marlin 45 carbine]

I always use one of the nylon brushes to brush the bore a lick or two, then dry patch 3-4 times before cleaning it gets a lot of fouling out. I've found that windsheild washer fluid is good for cleaning, either hot (I prefer that) or cold, straihgt out of bottle. plug nipple with toothpick, pour bore full and let soak awhile, dump and repeat. then use a patch or 3 wet with w/w fluid to finish up. dry patch and lightly grease.

[mykeal]

Macmac - There is a 3rd kind - those who just don't know. It's not that I don't believe it, but rather that I just don't see evidence of it. And the claims about bore seasoning go back to way before Bore Butter made the scene. There were people at the Four Flags Trading Post in Wichita and at the original Silver Dollar City in Branson that claimed one needed to season the bores of one's rifle at the beginning of that 30 plus year stretch.

But I'll keep looking for some evidence...

[Pancho]

Macmac, you're right it is a belief and would be a great discussion over beer after a day of shooting ending with no decision. I have a booklet that was written as a primer on muzzleloading by one of the founders of the NMLRA that states that seasoning is a matter of degrees. Back in the old days when barrels were wrought iron and very porous seasoning was absolutely important. Modern steels are less porous and seasoning isn't as important but still a factor. Nontheless, his thoughts were that only modern solvents could ruin what seasoning was created and that soap and hot water wouldn't disturb any seasoning.

[Macmac]

Well I don't know about yer cast iron pans, but if I go at em with detergents they get stripped to bare cast iron.

I suppose if one believes modern steels have no pours, then no season can take place.

I once understood that valve grinding compound was something to start a new guns life out with too, but I never did. There were two ways.

If I were to pick and choose one I would use the by hand and ram rod method with a patch soaked with valve grinding grit, and run it all by hand to lap the bore.

The other way seems most excessive to me and you soak and load a patch in the same, and shoot to lap.

If I came by a beater all rusted in the bore I might try the shoot it out method, but so far I have no beaters, other than my Bess which after being lent out for a year was fired and never ever cleaned once!

Don't mention that to me too much as I still want to KILL that guy over it.

That with one other thing pissed me off to the point I refuse to socialized with him any more.

Getting back to seasoning. Well as a sort of x foreign car tech back in the day when we did a lot of valve jobs, so a lot of cut metal met new cut metals, I did a lot of lapping. Car valves don't get seasoned either, but dino oils more or less took care of most of that problem. Valve faces and seats never really got oiled at all, unless someone added something in fuel.

I can see seasoning on my pans. I openly admitt these newer steels are less prone than wroght to rust, but then old real wrought iron rusts in a very different way. Real wrought iron is a lot more like wood to me than any other metals. You can heat real wrought iron and beat one end and split it into grains which look just like if you beat an ask stick on a anvil with a steel hammer.

Rear wroght iron can not be hardened. To make a cutting edge you have to one way or another weld a steel bit into it. A carbon steel bit at that.


I won't say "I KNOW", but I will say I believe, and seeing things as I do I'ld guess there is a good chance, since I am sure there are open pours in almost all materials worked by man.

Maybe if steel could be so sharp that it would slice and divide molecules like obsidian does, then maybe no seasoning could take place.

As to bore butter, I am none to sure what's in it, as "they" ain't tellin.

My guesses would be bee's waxes, tallows/oils, and some from(s) of oils made from plants.

A Seems to me an easy test. Use that steel as cold rolled I mentioned above, and leave it rough.

Add a drop of bore butter and or a home made bore butter, heat the metal, and check it with drops of water.

If the water "wets" the metal, then no seasoning occured. If it does, well then I WIN! LOL With my winnings and 75 cents I might be able to buy coffee.

Back into the snow for this Ol' boy. we got a true Yunqueeze Snow Storm round heya' last night. No problem execpt where to put it all! This white stuff is waist deep now!

[TheWall]

Try Ballistol mixed with hot water.

After drying barrel, I run a patch moistened with Ballistol down the barrel. Ballistol also breaks down all the gunk around the lock pretty well.

Only been doing this a year and half but have had no rusting problems with T/C Hawken and Armi Sport Enfield.

[Pancho]

TheWall, I just got my first bottle of Ballistol to try. Do you follow the 50/50 mixture suggested in the instructions or do you use the spray can?

[Pulp]

I've found through the years that the easiest way to clean my T/C is:
1. put a teapot of water on the stove
2. go to the bathroom
3. put breech end of barrel in toilet
4. stroke with bore mop
5. flush
6. stroke with bore mop
7. go get teapot off the stove
8. pour boiling hot water down the barrel (wrap the barrel with a towel to protect your hand)
9. give it a few minutes to dry.
10. swab it down with Bore Butter, inside and out.

[Macmac]

Pulp, Most certainly my wife wouldn't like you! She gets angery enough with me for soaking my tomahawks in the toiliet to swell the heads...

[Pancho]

The toilet is better than what one of our members said that he used the bathtub. He was either single or his wife wasn't home. Talk about a bathtub ring!

[Macmac]

Well, being a rural country dweller, and not owning any hook breech guns, I tend to use a hot water bucket and a tree. I hang my guns muzzel end down off a limb, at what ever height seems handy, and get to scrubbing.

OR I stuff a feather in the flash hole, and fill the bore with as hot water as I can make, and cork it, for a good soaking.

A few times a year I pull the barrels to clean the stocks, lock mortices, and undersides of the barrels.

If I have combined methods I will hang the gun corked full of water. With a rag in hand pull the feather first and then the cork and a whole lot of black water pours out with authority. A worm wrapped in jute/ or manilla acts as a brush, amd I run it in and out changing mopping as needed. A clean white rag makes for a test, and once it is clean enough to suit me, I run a dry mop of jute and cotton as a drying mop then with a bore butter like substance which I make and keep "secret" of course I lube my bores.

No water touches metal on my guns.

There are times when perhaps my "Old School" methods varry from those in the new school. To me buying store bought is a sin.. But then I am dyed in the wool.

[TheWall]

Yes, I use about a 50/50 mix with very hot water.

After running a few dry patches, I then run two patches doused with Ballistol before storing.

On the outside of the barrel, I spray directly on and then wipe.

Around the lock I spray and then let it sit for while.

Ballistol is great stuff. And despite what a lot of folks say, I rather like the smell!

[.44walkersabot]

Can't believe all I'm reading here but it sure is interesting and I'm absorbing as much of it as I can.
My pitiful few firearms (Though plenty for me. Only own 5 guns and that's more than I can wear out in a normal lifetime) are .44--.45.--.31 and a .22. In reference to the remark about blackpowder cleaning tools not fitting on a regular cleaning rod, that may be true. Honestly, I don't even know. The only thing I'vd ever used the ramrod for on my rifle (inline CVA .45) is to push a round down the barrel and seat it good on the powder. I'vd never used a 'mop' although I'vd got several of them. Got about 6 tubes of Bore Butter I'vd accumulated over the years. (If it hasn't all dried up from just laying there in the tube. Got lot's of patch pullers, ball pullers, and the other stuff just like ya'll have) On my .44 and my .45 I use a shotgun cleaning kit. The cleaning rod with the small adaptor screwed in the end and the .410 shotgun bore brush, and I scrub the hell out of the bore with a good blackpowder cleaning solvent. Blackpowder or not, retired or not, if the Marine Corps knew that I had just sort of brushed around and wiped around and poured a little hot water down the bore and patched it and put it away and called it clean without using a good bore brush and some cleaning solvent I fear they would come and get me and sentence me to at least 27 years and 9 months in the electric chair.
My .44 and my .31 and my little .22 get disassembled and boiled in a pan of water on the stove, but I still scrub the bores. On the .31 I use a .32 caliber bore brush, and on the .22 (not much barrel on that little .22, I can tell you that!) I use the .22 bore brush. I scrub out the chambers to. Then I patch it and dry it good, put gun oil in the small crevices and Cabela's Muzzle Loading Lube everywhere else. Well, anyway...Okay...P.S, But I do know that a good cast iron pot (especially the skillets) need's to be seasoned. I cook almost all the time with cast iron and my sisters do also. (That's what we grew up with) Like one of them I know has used the same skillet for cornbread for nigh onto 17 years and she has never washed it. (scrubbed it or used detergents on it) She just wipes it out real good and she cook's cornbread in it every day for a fact. The cornbread flip's out of that iron skillet perfect every time...By the way, anyone want to know a good rule for making the 'ball puller' tool obsolete? Just remember this--"The powder goes before the ball or else it will not shoot a'tall"...

[Mac Attack]

Hey, I used the bathtub and it didn't leave a ring. Maybe that's because it was already clean so maybe next time I clean my rifle it will be outside of the tub.