19th Century cleaning/lubing gun gear questions

[deepdiver]

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So I'm sitting here watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly while reading the forum and there is a scene where Eastwood cleans his Colt 1851 Navy. He is using what looks like a nylon bore brush with the bristles held in place by twisted wire just like modern ones. He just uses the brush, reassembles and uses it. No lubing, no chemical cleaners, etc. Being one who enjoys history I realized that I know nothing about the care and cleaning of guns prior to modern times and would find that info interesting.

So here are some questions for you C&R guys:

1) Did bore brushes like that even exist back then? If not what did they really use? Does anyone know when brushes like that were invented? If there were gun brushes back then were they boar's hair or something else?

2) What did they use back in the 19th century for gun lube, if anything? How well did it work?

3) Did they use anything to clean off powder residue besides brushes?

Any other historic info on cleaning/lubing would be great.

 

[LeMat]

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I don't recall if his 1851 was a conversion or not.

If not, he was shootingcap'n ball with black powder - all it really needs is warm water. Soap too, if you got it. As far as lube, some sort of gun butter would have been around.Dabbinggun butter over each ballprovided enough lube for the cylinder not to get bound up.

When smokeless came around, I imagine there was some sort of cleaning agent around (hasn't Hoppe's #9 been around forever?).

Not sure as to what kind of brushed they used, but I can't imagine they were all that different than what we have today.

 

[deepdiver]

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The 1851 he actually shot in the movie was a modern cartridge conversion according to what I can find on the web ( here's one link http://www.imfdb.org/index.php?title=Good%2C_The_Bad%2C_and_The_Ugly%2C_The ) which would be an anachronism in the movie.

I didn't realize that black powder could be cleaned effectively with just soap and water (while I have had the opportunity to shoot several black powder weapons I have never maintained one).

What would "gun butter" have been made from back then?

 

[Doug Huffman]

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deepdiver wrote:

What would "gun butter" have been made from back then?

Tallow, lard, beeswax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cartridge

 

[deepdiver]

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Thanks, Doug.