Muzzleloaders ruined?

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Yep, another person may have ruined a gun with Bore Butter. TC got rich off the Bore Butter racket. They claim the bore of your gun can be "seasoned" like a cast iron skillet. It's all cheap hype; the bore rusts under the Bore Butter.

Every year i would get as least five or six guns with ruined bores. The owners expected me to perform acts of magic that would return their guns to pristine condition for a pittance. Now i tell the owners the gun is ruined, go by a new one.

i'm with frontier gander. For years i fired Pyrodex exclusively. In 2000 i bought a cheap CVA Stag Horn rifle. Sometimes the gun remained uncleaned for a week or more. The bore of that rifle is like new after firing over 3,000 rounds, most loaded with Pyrodex.

i now use mostly Black MZ powder. Last Saturday i killed a big doe with my Encore. The gun will be cleaned at the end of deer gun season.

Yeah, black powder lovers to great lengths to trash Pyrodex as being more corrosive than their favorite stuff. BP and Pyrodex both contain sulfur: Sulfur is the chief culprit of corrosion of both. IME: Both are equally corrosive.
 
frontiergander said:
If the pellets are over a year over, toss them out and buy fresh.
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Fine Figure of a Man said:
Why?
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I had issues with this 2yrs ago before switching over to BH209. I purchased 250gr Shockwave bullets and powder/pellets from last year and couldn't hit the paper at 100yards. I had a buddy shoot the gun and he too had issues. We went to 50yards and had issues. Scope was checked and still shot like crap. My buddy said try these pellets. They were the magnum pellets but they were fresh and the gun shot really better. I've had hang fires from using 1-2yo pellets also.

I shot a 125'' 8pt 3yrs ago on a very, very cold day (-15F) about 40yards away, broadside and the gun sounded a little funny when it went off and he made it about 100yards with no exit wound. All i can think is either the bullet blew apart cause we never found it or powder didn't push it fast enough. 45yards a 22lr should have ripped right on through that deer's rib cage.
 
I have Muzzleloader hunted for the last 13yrs and some of the issues i have ran into were crazy when it comes to 777 pellets.

1) Hang fires
2) Crud rings so bad I couldn't seat another bullet
3) Next day, two days or a week later resulted in rust or minor pitting. IDK if this is correct, but IMO with ML costing $100-200 for the cheapest ones I'm betting they aren't using very good high carbon steel like a center fire rifle so the bores do go to crap faster. My buddy left his CVA buckhorn uncleansed for about 2 weeks and the crown has a ton of rust on it, the barrel is completely trashed. He gave the gun to me and I cannot get the breach plug out of the gun so I'm thinking as bad as this gun is I'm cutting it in half with the sawsall.

I have had an older CVA rust up on me and I soaked the barrel with WD40, 12ga shotgun brush on a shotgun rod and cordless drill and kept soaking the barrel with wd40 and low speed on the drill. It cleaned it up pretty good but there was minor pitting. I don't use bore butter cause IMO its got water in it and anything water in the bore is bad. I clean with CVA foaming bore cleaner, pop the breach plug, push the stuff out with a tight patch, shoot in in there again and run a brush through, shoot the CVA in again and tight patches until dry. I even use scalding hot water and dawn dish soap followed up by tight patches soaked in either Lucas gun oil or another thick oil and leave it for the season.

I switched to Blackhorn 209 last year for the cleanliness and the accuracy and I'm glad i did. No more scrubbing, no more crust ring, and accuracy is way better. Just make sure your gun and breach plug is rater for it before using.
 
I'm of the same school of thought about cleaning after shooting. I have lived in a desert climate for many years and have not seen a lot of rusting in barrels. However last year I saw flash rusting on one of my pistols after shooting Pyrodex. It happened during clean up. Humidity was less than 15 percent. I believe the corrosion depends on having the right conditions to help it along. It's seems like a crapshoot to me to leave ones favorite gun uncleaned and take a chance on screwing it up. I have switched to Black MZ for my capguns as it is so much easier to clean. Stuck with black for the rocklocks for now.
 
It has nothing to do with your cleaning technique or bore butter. Frontiergander is right. While 777 loose powder seems to keep it's power, the pellets don't. I had the same problem as you. Accuracy came back with new 777 pellets. I toss them out after the season and open a new pack every year. Wait until after muzzleloader season and you can get them cheap at walmart and such. As long as you don't open the pack, they will stay good for the next season. This year I vacuum sealed the open pack of pellets to see if they'll still work next year when I sight in. I'm hopeful.
 
alsaqr said:
Yeah, black powder lovers to great lengths to trash Pyrodex as being more corrosive than their favorite stuff. BP and Pyrodex both contain sulfur: Sulfur is the chief culprit of corrosion of both. IME: Both are equally corrosive.
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Except the evidence shown in the tests shows otherwise...
 
yeah 19 years with pyrodex and none of my rifles are rusted or rotted. One powder that did pit my bore however was blackhorn209 when it first came out as non corrosive. They changed the label the following year.
 
troy fairweather said:
lol that how i am, i have gotten up in the middle off the night before and cleaned my hawken one more time.
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Yep. I think guys get into BP mostly to extend their hunting seasons (works for me) and many may not realize the diligence required to maintain their firearms. If you don't like cleaning guns then this type of firearm may not be for you. lol
 
Aim1 said:
I have 2 Thompson Center Bone Collector Truimph muzzleloaders. For the first few years great. At the end of the year I’d clean them and then run Bore Butter down each barrel for storage. I shot 2 Triple Se7en pellets and Powerbelts for deer hunting.

Well, all of a sudden no matter what I do I can’t get them on paper at 50 yards. I used a ton of Powerbelts and powder attempting to sight them in.

Someone said Triple Se7en will ruin muzzle loader bullets. I’ve never heard of that until now.


Are my muzzleloaders ruined?
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There is a slim chance you can reclaim some of the accuracy by lapping the bores with JB paste on a tight patch. If there is light rust, that is. If there is pitting, sorry, you're done. You CAN'T wait til the end of the season to clean, whether with black, pyro, triple 7 or any other substitute. If your owner's manual didn't specify that, I don't believe it. I recovered a rusted Renegade bore by lapping, and I'm going to do a .54 Renegade next week but I don't hold out much hope.
 
frontiergander said:
over night is pure exaggeration. I shoot a ton of pyrodex every year, hunt with it at times, 9 days straight and have not had anything turn into a crap bucket over night.
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Absolutely NOT pure exaggeration! Had pitted rust all over and in the bore of a Pietta 1858 after a late deer hunt and shot the gun the rest of the way out to unload it. The next evening after I got home I was horrified. Maybe your temperature swings and humidity levels are more forgiving.
 
yeah hunting in rain and show, humidity levels do drop low? I'd suspect what ever you are carrying your guns in, is causing the rusting or the speed up process to cause such heavy rusting in so little time.
 
frontiergander said:
yeah hunting in rain and show, humidity levels do drop low? I'd suspect what ever you are carrying your guns in, is causing the rusting or the speed up process to cause such heavy rusting in so little time.
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Not, the gun rusted in my garage laying on the bench after overnight and the next day, around a 24 hour period. You can keep grabbing at straws all you want but I personally witnessed Pyrodex nearly ruining a gun in a 24 hour period without being cleaned or oiled. LOL if it was the holster, which I make all my own leather gear, why doesn't the ones I carry every day rust?
 
i use pyrodex because black powder is illegal here in new york state. i once shot a deer with a tc renegade 54, the deer was just over 100 yards but with a ditch between use. i walked around, maybe 30 minutes went by and my bore was turning red. i used some water in a puddle and the small thing of dawn in my possibles bag, sed a tooth pick in the bag to plug the nipple an added the water/soap there was still some snow that i used to seal the bore. that was a very nasty day of hunting.

i felt if i did not do this by time i dragged that deer to my truck and drove home the rust would have bin worse.
 
There must be a reason why folks have such opposite observations about Pyrodex fouling and I suspect that the amount of humidity where one lives may be a factor that affects how quickly rust develops.
Perhaps there's also other factors such as the type of steel, bore coatings etc...
Once when it was snowing, the Pyrodex fouling stained the unblued muzzle crown of my gun because it came into contact with the snow flakes.
I don't think that the stains harmed the metal, it was just cosmetic, but it happened in a very short period of time.
Sort of like how flash rust can occur some times and at other times it doesn't during what seems like a similar situation.
The only time I put a revolver in the oven to dry, some flash rust developed.
So I didn't do that anymore but many people do that without any issues.
 
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Find it VERY hard to believe a barrel is RUINED over night if it isn't cleaned. Now using BP subs and leaving them uncleaned for a couple weeks in high humidity situations or running a spit patch down the bore and calling it "cleaned" for a couple weeks too I can see it happening.
 
darkcloud said:
Find it VERY hard to believe a barrel is RUINED over night if it isn't cleaned. Now using BP subs and leaving them uncleaned for a couple weeks in high humidity situations or running a spit patch down the bore and calling it "cleaned" for a couple weeks too I can see it happening.
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I don’t feel mine was ruined. It did take a long time before I’d run an oily patch down and not get a bit of orange after cleaning it well. I periodically do this when they’re stored. I don’t feel the patch being grabbed so I don’t think there’s any serious pitting. It was less than 24 hrs. But it did take hours that day to get a clean patch back.

And it’s not really the corrosive properties of Pyrodex that turn me off. Your gun(s) should be cleaned after use and I know how to protect it if I don’t have the time. BP is highly corrosive too if given the chance.
 
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