The Quick Clean!!

[1860]

The thread about useing Tripple 7 and it's ease in cleaning got me thinking;  What do you guys do or use when you want to give a BP revolver a quick cleaning.

If I'm too short on time to break the gun down or I'm gonna shoot it again soon, I use the hand cleaner called Go-Jo, without pumis.  The stuff is amazing at cutting BP crud and it leaves a little lanolin(sp) that seems to inhibbit rust for a short while, I still lube the gun.  A little on a toothbrush goes along way, I keep some warm water handy to rinse the brush when it gets cruddy and then I put some borebutter type stuff on the brush to leave a coat of lube.  Works well for me, you guys might want to try it.

Anyone else?

60

[Cowpox]

OK 1860, I don't want you to think I'm plain lazy, so I first want to say I only do this when something more important than the important job of good cleaning comes up, or when I will be shooting the gun the very next day. I clean it the same way I clean a sticky revolver at the range. I use moose milk or a mix of Ballistol and water, whichever I have at the time. I put a bore brush on the pistol rod, and wrap it with a cleaning patch wet with the mix. Leave the excess patch hang off the end of the brush, so it will get the bottoms of the chambers. I make a trip through the arbor hole in the cylinder , then through the bore, then each chamber, wetting the patch every two chambers. I repeat three times, and maybe do a fourth one if the third patch is very dirty. I then use a tooth brush wet with solution around the nipples and wipe the whole gun with a good quality paper towel , also wet. Dry with a second towel,and spray with straight Ballistol, wipe again. It only takes about three minutes.  I wouldn't try this with Black, but so far I have gotten no rust cheating like this with 777. Needless to say, I get back to clean it better the first chance I get !  Cowpox

[Gatofeo]

For a quick clean, I use the same home-brew solvent I've long used.
I take a small spray bottle, meant for travel. Fill it mostly with water, add a couple slices of Ivory soap or a few drops of dishwashing liquid (I've used Lemon Joy and Dawn. Doesn't seem to make a difference) and then add a few drops of white vinegar.
Give it a little shake and let sit 24 hours for soap slices to dissolve. Works fine. And it makes my fouling soft and manageable ... er .. sorry .. been watching too many shampoo commercials ... heh.
I remove the cylinder and its nipples. Swab out each chamber with a patch damp with the above cleaner.  Then I get down in the bottom of the chamber with a Q-tip wet or damp with cleaner. Finish with dry patches and dry Q-tips. Don't forget to turn the Q-tip into the nipple threads, to get any moisture there.
Nipples are cleaned on the exterior with an old toothbrush, and the flash channel with a pipe cleaner.
The bore is cleaned with patches damp with the same cleaner, then dried with a couple of dry patches. A damp patch wipes off the interior of the frame, around the rammer, the sides of the hammer and the hammer channel in the frame.
Reapply fresh grease (I use CVA Grease Patch) to the cylinder ratchet, bolt, hand, sides of the hammer and hammer channel. Put a tiny amount of olive oil on the nipple threads and put them back in the cylinder.
The bore also receives a couple of passes with a patch damp with olive oil.
Chambers also get a quick pass from a patch lightly coated with olive oil.
This sounds like a lot, but it can all be done in about 10 minutes, sometimes less.
When I do a detail cleaning, I put quite a bit of grease in the guts. This shrugs off fouililng and keeps things from binding for some time. I don't use my cap and balls in freezing cold weather, so the grease hardening and making the action stiff is not a problem.
If it's that cold outdoors, I stay inside. I'm a fair weather cat ...

[Will52100]

Wow, you guys make me feel lazy!  I work offshore and for the two weeks I'm in most times I just wipe the arbor pin and hole out with bore butter, run a bore snake through the barrel and it's ready for anouther 100 rounds or so the next day.  Only when it starts getting slow on the hammer and action do I get detailed with it.  

When I first get a new cap and ball revolver I tear it down to every last screw and clean all the oil off and put a good coat of bore butter on everything and put in a toaster oven at 300 deg. F. for an hour.  This seams to "season" the metal and make clean-up easier.

A day or so before I head back to the rig I give them a detailed cleaning with Ballistol lube and water mix.  I have left them uncleaned for a two week period and found no rust though.  I also shoot nothing but black powder.

[Cowpox]

I hear you Will, I quess we all react to this cleaning thing according to what we can get away with. I tend to, at least, give it a quick cleaning , because about 25 years ago I got a rush call to go on a two week trucking trip while out getting my 1860 replica dirty. I just soaked it Outers oil, and put it in a sealed plastic bag to keep the humidity away, and came home to a real mess, with permanent damage, and have been a little more diligent ever since.  Cowpox

[Will52100]

I used to have a rust problem years ago till I learned the trick of baking the gun with bore butter, and before I discovered ballistol lube and water.  I live in a very humid area and long as they stay dry in the house don't have a problem with rust.  Had a parts gun sit on the shelf for close to 15 years after beeing fired and had very little rust on it.

[Cowpox]

That humidity likes to get high here in Minnesota about half the months of the year also. I bought the first cap and ball in the spring of 1970. Took it out to a pasture to shoot gophers on a hot humid day in June, and was surprised to notice the gun was forming surface rust by the nipples and barrel / cylinder gap area, while I was using it! Always have carried a lub soaked rag for wiping it down since then. Of course, that , and the rust disaster were decades before I heard of Ballistol. I never thought about seasoning a revolver. Makes sense, my cast iron camp stuff never rusts. I don't know if I will be able to stick revolvers in the oven though. I'm still feeling funny about boiling them in a stew pot !   Cowpox

[xnmr53]

TM7 wrote

But I was playing ard with removing the grips and cylinders and putting in the dishwasher for a cycle!!! Is that a bad idea?

Can you say lead poisening?

[leverfan]

Every time I clean up after shooting black or pyrodex through a revolver, I remember the old Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.  There's a scene where he's scrubbing away at his snubby in a sink full of suds, totally soaking the gun, and going at the chambers with a bottle scrubbing brush.  In the movie, it's meant as a joke, of course. :-D

[Cowpox]

Hollywood allways gets stuck on the same ideas. In "Stop or my Mother will shoot" , the Itaian Stallion's Mom washes his gun in the sink. I wish they would have shown the bottle of dish soap she used. It took the blueing of his gun, and I never want to get any of that stuff !! Just further proof you don't have to know anything about the real world to write screen plays.  Cowpox

[1860]

Cowpox,

What you mentioned about the movie reminded me of something I did this year.  I bought an original, very early win 92 Carbine in .44-40, everything solid and original except someone "refinished" it at some point in time.  Getting that thick coat of varnish off the wood was easy but whatever they used for blueing on the bbl and mag tube would not come off by conventional means.  I tried everything. vinegar, coke, even bought some birchwood casey stuff, nothing touched it.  It looked almost like paint but various strippers didn't touch it, and it was ugly.  My wife came out to the garage while I was working on it and suggested I try some of her house hold cleaners, she has every cleaning item known to man and I suspect some that are not.  After a few tries with things I recognised, Fantastic, 409, and the like, she handed me this purple bottle of "KaBoom".  Thinking that it wouldn't work, like everything else I tried, I just sprayed it on, and the blueing(whatever it was) just ran off the bbl.  I was amazed, and the really nice thing was, the original finish was still under it, it came out nice and brown with even a little hint of blueing between the bbl and mag tube.  

60

[1860]

Whoever said that we do whatever we can get away with hit the nail on the head, I was just looking for ideas of what everyone else gets away with.  

The dishwasher is a bad idea IMHO, both for the gun and your family.

When I do break the guns down, I'm very liberal with the grease on the insides when I reassemble.  Only trouble with that is shooting in cold weather, they can get pretty stiff.

I'd like someone to break down and try Go-Jo, and tell us what you think.  It's the best thing since sliced bread in my book.

60

[Cowpox]

Ok 1860. I have a couple of cans of the smooth GO JO around here. The next time I shoot I'll use some black and give it a try. Thats why I like haunting this place. I have picked up a lot of good tips here in the last 6 or 7 months.  I hope someone reads about that coating, and knows what kind of stuff would have been on your lever gun that could resist all the things you tried, but would rinse off with a household grease cutter. I have seen some older military rifles that had a rather blackish metal finish that looked like a poor paint job. I wonder if Herter's used to sell a "World Famous, Professional Quality" you dip it gun finish?  Old  George Leonard, and Jauque P. always had a different way of doing things, than the rest of the world. Of course a lot of their stuff was pretty good, but then again, the next thing of theirs you tried would make you wish you had never heard of them.  Hope someone who reads this can shed some light.  Cowpox

[Bigdog57]

When I got my recently acquired 1851 Navy repro, I considered the tub of GO-JO cleaner, but it had turned to a gooey liquid - way too runny!  So, I used the Kiwi "Mink Oil" paste - good stuff!

But the oven-baking with grease to season the metal sounds like a pretty good thing to try.   :-)

[1860]

Bigdog,

Yeah, it turns into a brown sort of liquid, and that's perfect to put in a squirt bottle, like T/C #13 comes in.  It still works as a liquid, both on your hands and on the gun..

60

[Hancock]

I use a couple of items to sort of "automate" the cap n ball clean up. One is a $40.00 parts washer from Northern Tool,I think that it has up to a 3 gallon capacity , but I have loaded it with 1 gal Moose Milk (10/1 water , ballistol).It is a cute little thing, that I plan on making a slide out shelf for in the shop. Take a look at one of these next time that you are in one of those tool supply type stores, you'll be surprized at how handy they are . They work just like the bigger ones that we are more familiar with, with an electric pump, flex nozzle, and removeable,cleanable filter.
The other thing is a cheap cordless drill.
After shooting, I disasemble the gun, putting the small parts in a small basket made of window screen , and this goes in the parts washer to soak. The barrel, frame , and cylinder go with me to the sink , to flush with as hot of water that will come out of the tap.The drill , and a bore brush that I have mounted in a 10" brass rod is in the drill and I push this thru the bore (without running the drill) a couple of times, and then run the drill in all the cylinders,and arbor hole under the running water.The rod is replaced with a pipe cleaner mounted in the drill, and this is turned in the nipples.I leave the pipe cleaner long,and just cut the dirty part off with a side nipper when a fresh area is needed.
Then the big parts are put in the parts washer, generaly scrubbed with a tooth brush, and dried . I turn patches layed over the bore brush to turn in the cylinders, to dry them,(it takes a couple), and then dry the nipples with the pipe cleaner ,turned by drill , until clean and dry.
A dab of Bore Butter spread on any hole that threads will be turned into , and assemble .
It goes very quickly really, (Cowpox says it looks like a pit crew for cap n ball), and is pretty thorough.It works for me.
Kip