I agree with you that a lot of people swear by this Bore Butter and the idea of " seasoning" their barrels!! Some of these folks are very experienced, pretty smart fellows, like Ross Seyfried!! So I decided to try it. I cleaned two guns very thoroughly with boiling water (2 quarts per barrel), then diligently applied the recommended number of strokes with the Bore Butter to the still-hot barrels, per Ross Seyfried' s instruction from Rifle Magazine. After the next five or six trips to the range, I cleaned my guns using only water-based solvent (T/C I believe), and lubed the barrels after drying with Bore Butter. Since I was shooting a couple of times each week for about two months straight and cleaning almost every other day, I detected no visible problems.

However, I never got the " ease of loading/cleaning" I had been led to believe would result from the seasoning process! Powder fouling was as bad as ever, necessitating swabbing after every shot, just like before. One of the barrels was a Green River Rifle Works barrel, the other a Bill Large. I was using two of the best quality ML barrels ever made, so barrel quality was not a problem! Then I made the mistake of leaving my .58 GRRW flintlock sitting for two weeks with nothing to protect it from rust except the coating of Bore Butter I had put in it after a thorough cleaning following my last trip to the range. One evening, after about 14 days had gone by, I got a sneaking feeling I' d better check that bore! Good thing I did! It was full of rust, which took me about an hour to completely scrub out using J.B. Bore Paste! I got it ALL out, and there were no visible pits. A patch still slides through it without any felt roughness. But had I not checked that gun that evening, it would have been ruined for sure!!

Bore Butter for patch/bullet lube ONLY! Boiling water for cleaning!! Birchwood-Casey Sheath or Break-Free to prevent rust!!