how in the h*ll do you keep a ML clean

[CHAMP198]

I just have a cheaper Traditions ML but i cannot for the life of me keep this stupid thing clean......i had it all gooped up in bore butter and i never used it last year but cleaned it after it was used thats when it got the bore butter treatment.........and i get it out this year and the Bore butter is still there but the barrel had rust all over inside it as well as the breach.....is there a trick to this or do you just clean them a lot throughout the year?? its kind of aggriviateing every year its the same thing got to spend an hour cleaning this thing so i can shoot it

[lemoyne]

If it was really clean it should not rust, Borebutter does not work very well for a preseveritive unless the bore is seasoned with it which I do for my side lock PRB guns but I dont mix sabots and borebutter.
The best way to deal with this problem now that you already have rust started is to get all the rust out then clean and scrub it out regular till it quits trying to rustand if its a sabot gun skip the bore butter. I use Sheath or Barrier since I dont like oil in the barrel. Lee

[frontier gander]

Bore butter is horrible stuff to keep in your muzzleloader over a long period of time. Take the rifle apart and stick the breech end into a hot bucket of soapy water, use a borebrush and pump the water through the barrel a couple dozen strokes and dump the water and get fresh hot soapy water and use your cleaning jag with a cotton patch and run patches untill they come out clean. After that, dry the barrel off very good and run patches down the bore untill you feel no wetness on them. Use some Rem oil and run a heavily dosed patch down the bore a couple times and allow it to dry for a few minutes, then use a dry patch and run that down to mop up the excess oil. After a day or two, run another patch to make sure its ok and no rust is starting.
I dont even oil my barrels but i live in a dry state with pretty much no humidity.

[gleason.chapman]

ORIGINAL: CHAMP198

I just have a cheaper Traditions ML but i cannot for the life of me keep this stupid thing clean......i had it all gooped up in bore butter and i never used it last year but cleaned it after it was used thats when it got the bore butter treatment.........and i get it out this year and the Bore butter is still there but the barrel had rust all over inside it as well as the breach.....is there a trick to this or do you just clean them a lot throughout the year?? its kind of aggriviateing every year its the same thing got to spend an hour cleaning this thing so i can shoot it

My son left his ML uncleaned one year, the bolt was frozen on the rifle and it rust and crap inside the barrell. I got a can of break cleaner. Took the barrel off the stock and soaked the end of the gun in break cleaner, then cleaned the bore with the stuff and a brass brush. I had to pound the breech plug out with a mallet, but it finally came out. It took a couple of hours but it came clean, it was pitted of course, but at ML speeds and 50-70 shot accuracy was not hurt significantly. Best thing you can do with a ML is clean it right away (even 1 spit patch swab is better than nothing) and put a little bit of Rem Oil on a patch an run it thru. Chap Gleason

[cayugad]

Well what happened is the bore butter was not applied properly. Because of that the rifle rusted on you. All you can do is clean the rifle as best as possible and then protect it with some quality gun oil. Boiling water is the best way to get the bore butter out of that barrel. After you have that barrel clean, take some J-B Bore Paste and scrub that barrel to remove as much rust as possible. After that clean the barrel again using some quality solvents. Then dry patch the barrel until you're positive the bore is dry. Then coat the bore with good gun oil. Since you had it rust, put that gun oil on kind of thick for now so it can soak into the metal.

Before you shoot it next time, take an alcohol patch and swab the barrel to remove the oil. Then some dry patches and then load as normal. Throw the bore butter in the trash if you do not shoot conicals.

[wabi]

I've used bore-butter as a preservative in the past and had no problems. I use Rem-Oil anymore and have no problems. I'd have to say you probably didn't have the bore clean if you had rust. I have found in some cases bore-butter created a brownish-red residue that made me think I had rust, but there was no roughness or pitting in the bore. The rust-color residue only happened when I used T-7 & bore-butter. Never had it happen with any other powder & bore-butter, or with T-7 & Rem-Oil.

[IndyHunter83]

I would try the hot soapy water method like frontier gander suggested. I've always used it for my traditional muzzleloaders and it works great. Good luck.