Yesterday's Weapons Forums

I just got the Pattern 1853 musket stock scrubbed & it's looking good now. Next move is to clean the barrel.

As mentioned, it has been fired - a LOT. And not cleaned very well. Looks like BP residue in the barrel - a crusty grey powdery stuff... kinda-sorta.

What's the best stuff to attack that? I've never messed around with BP before. SW

...dang- I hope it and rusty underneath that ...dunno...mebbe plug the und an pour in boiling water to soak and loosen a bit???...and then dry out,plug again and let some kinda solvent like hoppes or something to soak a long time???...how 'bout that foamy bore cleaner stuff...that worked super on a barrel i once had that I thought was hopeless

I was going to suggest that as well.
The one I have is "CVA Barrel Blaster"

O-tay. I'll try the boiling water bit when I get home. Then scrub heck out of it. I'm hoping it looks shootable. My hollow base Minie' mold should do the deal with a mild charge o' powder.
SW

good luck , wishin for the best , would like to hear how it works and see some range photos when you get it going

It went well. I poured in some liquid soap & filled with very hot water. Let soak for a while & scrubbed with a 20ga brush & mop.

Lo & behold, there's a teeny bit of rifling left! I dropped a nickel 44 case in & there's shine, too!

I got the stock scrubbed & the whole rifle back together.

No pics at the moment as my steenking IP is down for some reason. Charter is bad about that.

I think it's shootable, but I'll wait til I get a P53 parts rifle from IMA to see if that barrel is better. Haven't gotten a bad barrel from them yet. SW

During the US Civil War they cleaned out heavily encrusted barrels by firing a special cartridge with a bullet that had a zinc washer afixed to its base.
Zinc alloy bullets are also known to remove both leading and copper fouling from bores.

With this old musket its probably best just to shoot normally and throughly clean often. Old deposits will break loose sooner or later.

Minor shalow surface pitting was shown in tests to actually improve velocity and accuracy over a new highly polished bore.
The tinier pits would capture bullet lubes and the lubes would form globules that acted like millions of microscopic ball bearings to reduce friction.

shootable sounds good , rifleing [even a little] sounds good , im looking for photos