Hoppe's Elite is a little better than the #9 at soaking the plug with. As Ron stated, Windex AP also does a pretty good job of softening. Get yourself one of them screwdriver handles that you can put the drill bit in for cleaning your flash channel. And the properly sized torch tip cleaner for the flash hole. Another cleaning tip I ran across a little bit back was dry wiping your bore a couple of passes before you hit it with a wet cleaning patch. You will find you will get a faster cleanup if you run a dry patch through a couple of passes to clear out the ash.