Pistol barrel marinade

[wittzo]

I was driving around yesterday showing off my Blunderbuss to a few gun buddies and I picked up a Harper's Ferry 1805 pistol a friend had in her shop. It was used, it had only been fired a couple of times. Neither she or the customer knew how to clean the bore properly; it had a couple of spots of rust, but it was in better shape than any of my rifles I bought used. I picked it up for $175.

I soaked the barrel in a gallon ziplock bag with enough Evaporust to cover it. It worked well with my rifle bores, but I was able to seal them at the nipple. Since this pistol wasn't blued, it was safe to soak the whole thing.

 

[4v50 Gary]

I would have started with hot soap and water. Then onto other treatments. Let us know how your barrel turns out and congratulations on a good score.

 

[wittzo]

I used hot soapy water to get the BP contaminants out of it after I fired it a couple of times. The barrel was clean when I put it in the Evaporust. Now there's no rust at all in the bore.
When I get it back together, I have to get it to spark. It sparked well at the store and at a friend's house and I was able to shoot it twice, but now it's not sparking. It either does nothing or it makes one or two, but not enough to ignite the pan. I pulled the bullet out and dumped the powder before I thought to use a lighter to ignite the pan.

 

[Jimbo453]

I dont like the lighter Idea ((BOOM )) I use a stick match with gloves

 

[Jimbo453]

I worked with a guy that set off a Bic lighter in his shirt pocket when stick welding (they think a chunk of hot slag burner into the plastic lighter ) he got burner pretty bad it would have been worse if he didnt have welding sleves and gloves on

 

[denster]

The Harpers Ferry are generally pretty good sparkers but they are sensitive to flint size and sharpness. If this is the flint that was sparking well before just knap it back a bit and it should spark OK.

 

[messerist]

Did you soak the frizzen? If so maybe there is residue on the face that is retarding the spark...ability(did I just invent a word?)of the frizzen. Ditto on what Denster mentioned. Sharp flints are the best sparkers.

 

[BHP FAN]

When you scrubbed it down, you may have ''cleaned'' the hardness right off the frizzen. I did this once with steel wool, I hadn't had much to do with flinters for years, being mainly a BP cartridge and revolver kinda guy, and when I scrubbed the rust off the gun, I noticed scratches on the frizzen of my new [to me] used Tower Pistol. ''That'll never do'', says I , and I got busy with the wet or dry 600 grit. Took those nasty scratches right off! Also reduced my spark to about 1/4 of what it had been, and changed a reliable Flinter into a wall ornament! Fortunately a welder buddy of mine had torches and a hardening compound known as Kasnit, and had me all fixed up in no time!