I have been seeing some stuff about barrel conditioning, nothing detailed, just some mention of it. I have an 8 year old Knight Disc extreme .50 cal stainless barrel. I did not do anything special with the barrel when i bought the gun, just worked up a load and hunted. The gun is accurate and clean. Question? should I do something now to condition the barrel or is it too late or not important at this time? I am shooting Blackhorn and 250 and 300 gr. Thors. Thanks for the help.

This theory of barrel conditioning first came up back in the early 80s when T/C came out with a new bore lube...Before that, I had never heard of conditioning the barrel of a muzzleloader...

They would compare it to conditioning a cast iron fry pan, problem is steel is not cast iron...

You can't condition the barrel in that Knight...Just keep doing what you have been and she'll be fine...

There is a product I use called Montana Xtreme Bore Conditioner. I use it on certain rifles. I have found a reduction in fouling when shooting those rifles. But I will not swear its the bore conditioner that caused that. It is a good way to protect the barrel also.

But if the rifle has been shooting will for you.. I would just keep doing what you have been doing. Why change something that works for you.

You can condition any metal and conditioning a barrel is not uncommon. It certainly is not as simple as the frying pan example, but all metal has pores and the pores of the metal can be filled with various substances including fouling and/or oils.

For years I used a the infamous bore butter and it did reduce the fouling from t7 and nearly got rid of the the famous "crud ring". I even used it in my trap shotgun chokes to help reduce the plastic fouling in them...

Today there are products on the market that preform this conditioning with better results and have less reaction with the heat and compression of explosion of powder.

Western Powders offers a product called Montana Extreme Bore Conditioner... Another product that works very is Slip 2000 as well as Ezoxx - and of course I am sure there are others.

I have been using Xtreme BC for a long time now and it certainly has helped my bores with the reduction of fouling and ease of cleaning.

http://www.montanaxtreme.com/product...oreConditioner

The other one that I use is Slip 2000.

http://www.slip2000.com/allconditionslube.html

You can help your bore... not a magic thing and will not happen over night but, conditioning can be done as long as there are pores in metal.

Try the Montana Extreme bore conditioner for a few months. Ive been happy with the results sofar but it did seem to take a few applications to notice an improvement. I cant say it conditions the bore but cleanup is a bit easier and if you forget to clean it out before firing it doesn't seem to have a big negative effect like some other products that contain Teflon.

Personally I use Montana Bore conditioner because it works well for me. I do not believe in fixing something that is not broken but a good bore protector is the difference between a good shooting gun and a rusted up mess. Taking care of what you have is the only way to keep it usable.