Hi, I recently purchased my first black powder rifle. It is a CVA Mountain Rifle in .50 cal purchased at an estate sale for $65. It was a rusty mess, but after a lot of elbow grease, I got it looking fairly good and it shoots well. I am not a black powder fan! Apparently the rifle was not cleaned properly after shooting and the breech end must be pretty corroded. When you clean with a patch, the patch will get stuck at the very bottom of the barrel. In order to make cleaning easier, I'd like to smooth down this part of the barrel so the patch does not get stuck. I have a couple of ideas on how to do it, one is using sand paper wrapped around the end of a rod, pushing it down to the bottom, then spinning the rod with a drill. I was thinking that maybe pulling the breech plug. But, the CVA has a barrel type primer nipple and, as I understand the way that is installed, it would block the area of the barrel I'd like to smooth out. I have already treated the barrel with evaporust. The rifling look good and the rifle is surprisingly (at least to me) accurate with a patched ball. I am reluctant to pull the flash barrel, if I can't get the timing right, I don't have a 30" drill bit to create a new flash hole. I can't stand the front blade site, it's no narrow it's hard to see when signing on a target. Anyway, anybody had the same problem? Did you come up with a solution?
By the way, I did a rookie mistake an put in a patched ball without powder. I could not pull the ball with a screw ball puller due to the above problem. So I unscrewed the flash barrel cleanup screw and poured powder down the hole until it was full, put the screw back in an fired the gun. The ball came out. Is there something terribly wrong to do this way? I've never read this as a technique, so I'm guessing there may be a reason for this.
Thanks!
By the way, I did a rookie mistake an put in a patched ball without powder. I could not pull the ball with a screw ball puller due to the above problem. So I unscrewed the flash barrel cleanup screw and poured powder down the hole until it was full, put the screw back in an fired the gun. The ball came out. Is there something terribly wrong to do this way? I've never read this as a technique, so I'm guessing there may be a reason for this.
Thanks!