I have a thompson new englander and havn't looked at it in years. Never fired it. took it out to check and clean and am in doubt if it's empty. It has a 26" barrel and I put the rod in and it measured 25 and 1/2, Anyone know what the length of the bore is. Should it be same as outside measurement?

It SHOULD be unloaded at that depth but just to be safe, remove the nipple and shine a flashlight into the hole, look down the muzzle and if you see light, it's all clear.

Doesn't really matter what the lengths are - lay the rod on the outside of the barrel with the tip at the end of the barrel, mark rod at the end of the muzzle, then stick it down the bore. If it doesn't come very close to the same mark, something is up.

Since you're within a half inch of the quoted barrel length, I'd assume it's unloaded, but I'd also want to confirm it. Pretty easy to shine a light down it, or even pull the barrel and pull the breech plug to confirm it.

An easy way to tell is to let the ramrod drop into the bore the last 6" or so. If it sounds "tinny" it is unloaded. But if the sound is sort of muffled or makes a thud type sound it probably is loaded.
Another thing you can do is, if you have an air compressor and a blow gun, is to remove the nipple and blow air into the nipple area. If an ample amount of air comes out of the muzzle its unloaded.

They have these things called "bore snake" now a days.

http://www.hoppes.com/quick-clean/more/the-boresnake

Normally it is run from breech to barrel.



IMO the Otis "ripcord" is the best.

http://www.otistec.com/ripcord/

pretty hard to do with a sidelock going from breech to muzzle! There are so many easy ways to determine if a sidelock is loaded or not.

Is this the easy way ??

Doesn't sound to definitive to me !

We are talking about KNOWING if a gun is loaded or unloaded - right (just sayin') ??