Cleaning the Blackpowder Rifle

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dave Meredith, the PR Director at Connecticut Valley Arms (CVA) in Norcross, Georgia, has hunted for more than 52 years, beginning at 8 years of age. Meredith enjoys hunting many species with black powder, particularly the white-tailed deer. He likes hunting with black powder because of the challenge of the sport, being in the woods with few other hunters and participating in a historical way to hunt like his grandparents and great-grandparents did.

Question: Someone told me I'll need to take this rifle into the shower with me. What's that all about?
Answer: That's an old joke that stems from hunters actually taking their sidelock rifles into the shower and washing them inside and out with soap and water. The new inline rifle comes with a tool to take the breechplug out. You remove the bolt, remove the nipple if it has one or just the breechplug if you're using the 209 primer, and you clean straight through with your cleaner. On the old sidelock guns you had to take a bucket, fill it halfway with warm soapy water, take the nipple out, take the clean-out screw out, and just scrub it out, which prompted some people to just take the rifle into the bathtub. With the new guns, cleaning is much more simple.

Question: When should you clean your rifle -- after every hunt, each shot or once every three days when you're hunting?
Answer: I clean my rifle every time I'm through shooting for the day. After every four shots, I use the procedure with the cleaning patches and the lubricant that we spoke of earlier in the week. When I'm through for the day, I'll take the gun apart and clean it. Once the gun's cleaned, it needs to be lubricated well to keep the fouling down because black-powder guns are corrosive.

Question: How many days can you hunt without cleaning your black-powder rifle and not have a corrosion problem?
Answer: You don't want to hunt for even one day without cleaning it. Clean it as soon as you're through for the day.

Question: Walk me through step-by-step how to clean an inline black-powder rifle.
Answer: First, disassemble it. Take the back out, take the bolt out of the gun, and remove the breechplug. Use clean patches with a black-powder solvent. Run the patches through the barrel until the patches come out white. If you want to use warm soapy water, make sure you dry it and re-lube it immediately with the black-powder solvent. Clean the gun, make sure it's dry, and lubricate it. You don't have to use the bucket of soapy water. Once you lube it, put some lubricant on the end of the breechplug, screw the breechplug back in, and put in the bolt. Then you're ready to go again. Also, you also need to lubricate all those parts well.

Question: What's the biggest mistake people make in cleaning, not cleaning, or not properly maintaining a black-powder rifle?
Answer: The biggest mistake people make is thinking they can set their rifles aside after they've been hunting with them, and clean them later; they'll end up forgetting about the guns. If you get in the habit of immediately cleaning your black-powder rifle when you're through hunting for the day, you won't have a problem with corrosion.

Question: Let's say I've cleaned my rifle properly, gone through my entire shooting sequence and squeezed the trigger, but the gun doesn't fire. What do I do?
Answer: Keep the gun pointed downrange, and wait about a minute. Recap the gun, or reprime it, and try again. If the gun still doesn't fire, wait another minute. It doesn't matter if it's an inline or a sidelock rifle. I always tell people to take the barrel off the gun, disassemble it as far as the point of getting the bolt out of the gun, getting the trigger off and setting the barrel in a bucket of water. You want to make that powder inert so it won't go off. Remember: it only takes a spark. Once you make the powder inert, take the breechplug out, and use the ramrod to push the powder charge right out the back. Once you do that, you have to clean it because you've made the gun wet. Clean the gun, dry it, put it back together, and then shoot.

For more information on CVA's quality black-powder guns, call (770) 449-4687; email info@cva.com; or, see the catalogue online at www.cva.com.

TOMORROW: The Blackpowder Rifle: Common Problems and Solutions