In Praise of Ed’s Red

I looked back and found my first mention of Ed’s Red clear back in the first month of this weblog.

Rude, Rusty Surprises in your Smokepole.

Since then, I’ve gone through many pints of the stuff. I whipped up a batch a couple weeks ago. Much like I was doing in 2004, this was to use in a muzzleloader.

Now I do not shoot black powder in my hunting muzzleloaders. When I do, I use hot water and the following recipe:

1 part Simple Green
1 part Murphy’s Oil soap
1 part Hydrogen Pyroxide

In modern muzzleloaders, we’re dealing with a much different animal. A lot of the propellants like Triple 7 are more akin to smokeless in their constituents than the old black stuff. The other problem is what to do with the plastic gunk left over from sabots.

Here’s the authoritative page on Ed’s Red.

Homemade Firearm Cleaners & Lubricants

The basic recipe is:

1 part Kerosene
1 part Automatic Transmission Fluid
1 part Mineral Spirits
1 part Acetone

Of the 4 parts, the Acetone is the only one that has me concerned. It’s a bit carcinogenic. I’ve learned to keep it just to the first 3 parts and add in a bit of Acetone to clean the plastic wad residue out of shotgun barrels and the sabot residue out of muzzle loaders.

Otherwise, I treat my current inline’s care much like my centerfire rifles. My current one, the LHR Redemption was out with me this weekend in preparation for KY’s upcoming Early Primitive Weapons Season. It came home quite caked.

Hodgdon’s Triple Seven claims to be cleanable with just water. I’ve found this to be true up to a point. It is in about the same way that black powder is. A spit patch will loosen the worst of the crud between shots. A cleaning can be done with water– boiling water in the case of BP. However, there are deposits that come clean only with a lot of scrubbing or the addition of other agents (see my BP recipe above).

With the LHR Redemption, there is also the issue of the breach. LHR (and now Thompson Center) protect the threads of the breach plug by putting them outside the barrel. All that goes in to the breach proper is an unthreaded insert. It supposedly makes removal much easier.

It does. At least the threads don’t freeze up, the collar unscrews without trouble on mine. However, after a couple dozen shots like I did over the weekend, the insert is rather glued in with residue. If you look out on the web, the standard tricks that get mentioned for sticky breach plugs:

Penetrating oil and let it wait a week
Boiling Water
Propane Torch

And I sure as heck did not want to go those routes. I have a scope mounted on this rifle and season is next weekend.

As with my centerfire rifles, the trick is to let time work in your favor. When all my deer rifles are ready for their end-of-season cleaning, I just run a patch soaked with Ed’s Red down the barrel and let them sit for two weeks. I hold off on the final cleaning until the holidays and by then Ed’s Red has worked a miracle. The first patch is really cruddy, but I get to a clean patch very quickly.

When I break my rifles out of storage for preparation for the next season, I simply run a dry patch down the barrel again, and Ed’s Red rewards me with all the deposits it has worked loose over the intervening months.

So here I am with the LHR Redemption. I put a bit of Ed’s Red down the barrel- just enough to soak the breech, and then went up to eat breakfast. Four hours later, the breech insert broke free without a major hitch. It was still pretty well caked up, so I wrapped it in a patch soaked in Ed’s Red and let it sit until after the Steelers had finished off the Bengals. I went back to the bench and began wiping the insert. It came clean like brand new.

The barrel was now ready for final cleaning as well. I ran a few patches down and had a shiny barrel and a clean patch in no time.

One other hint, Fr. Frog suggests taking equal parts Kerosene and ATF and using it as gun oil. I readily endorse this recipe as well. It makes a good lubricant and will protect my firearms if they are going to be in storage for a short while. For being out in the elements or for long term storage I’m now adding a bit of Eezox to the patch.

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