I only use soap and water with the sidelocks. My 30 year old T/C Hawken still shoots ragged one hole groups at 50 yards. The only bullets the sidelock sees are all lead conicals. I inspect my bores with a bore light regularly and after 30 years the Hawken barrel still has a mirror finish. No lead buildup. No pits. If you read my last post you will see that I do use solvent in my inlines. I don't use the soap and water method with the inlines as it is not necessary. Like I said I am very particular when it comes to keeping my B/P guns clean. My B/P guns are cleaner at any given time than most peoples centerfire guns. I think the one thing that gets a lot of people is using T/C Bore Butter. That stuff is just about as problematic to the barrels as the powder. T/C no longer recommends to use it as a lube for conicals in their guns. I use T/C Maxi Hunters (unlubed) in the sidelocks and PowerBelts in the inlines. A lot of guys are using the Bore Butter in my area to lube the sabots and PowerBelts. Since they switched over from sidelocks, and you practically need a hammer to push a sabot down the barrel, they use it in the newer guns. They are trashing their barrels this way and don't even realize it. My dad was unaware of this and has been using it in his new Encore. He has stopped now and switched to PowerBelts with no loss in accuracy. Bore butter cruds up the barrel, nipples and some people say seems to"wet" the powder it is in contact with. I'm not skimpy, 30 years and probably a 1000 shots / about a dozen deer later and my T/C Hawken has more than paid for itself. That doesn't count the other three dozen or so deer with other rifles. Two 8 points and two does so far this year. 30 years and 10 guns later and they all still shoot as good as they ever did. I'm not an old timer resistant to change. I simply find methods that work consistently and stick with them till a better one comes along. The original question was "Is it necessary to fire a cap prior to loading?" The answer is no. Does it hurt anything, no. I feel comfotable in knowing that my attention to detail when cleaning means that there is never a question whether my rifle will go off, even on damp days. I know a lot of guys that swear by the "better" solvents and continue to pop caps at and lose deer. The 209 primers are great but they've made a lot of people lazy when it comes to cleaning. A lot of guys have carried the old bad habits that they had with older rifles over to the newer ones, but now some of them are getting away with more than they could before. A guy, at work,[:@] last week popped a 209 primer at a deer and I didn't think that would be possible. A 209 primer should be an insurance policy not a requirement to make someones gun go off.