This is one of the more controversial topic in muzzleloading. There is a wide variety of products that clean the fouling quite well on black powder guns. Cleaning your gun is very important and it needs to be done well. Burned black powder attracts moisture and needs to be cleaned off the gun each time it’s taken out to prevent corrosion. The steel also needs to be treated with some anti-rust solution after it’s cleaned. Many shooters just use hot water to clean their guns and then wipe them down with bore butter.
Because I choose to clean my gun at the range, and we don’t have hot water there, I have found a simple solution that works quite well for me, a Ballistol and water mixture, also called moose milk.
There are directions on Ballistol that gives various mixtures of the two for different applications. I keep a bottle of moose milk to wet my cleaning patches between shots. I use the same mixture to clean the bore and wipe down the entire gun. After it’s clean I put one more coat of 100% Ballistol on the entire gun, inside and out. This prevents rust and the moose milk does an awesome job cutting the fouling with very little elbow grease.
Whatever method you choose to clean your muzzleloader, be sure to do it after each use. If you want your muzzleloader to last and the barrel to shoot straight, you must keep it clean and oiled.
For additional information on cleaning your muzzleloader, I suggest reading this article. http://traditionalmuzzleloader.com/index.php/cleaning-a-muzzle-loader
