After a Shoot, What's Involved in Cleaning Your Spencer?

[Two Flints]

Hello SSS,

Everyone has their own tried and true method of Spencer cleanup after a fun day of shooting.

Specifically, what do you do to get your Spencer clean after a shoot?  What cleaning procedure do you follow?  Which cleaning solvents do you use, and which solvents work best for you? And does your cleaning technique change depending on whether you fired smokeless or black powder rounds? 

So, how about detailing what you do, and what you use, to get your Spencer clean after a shoot?

Two Flints

[Fox Creek Kid]

I use a .50 cal. boresnake saturated with Windex (vinegar) diluted 10 to 1 or more. One big pass from breech to muzzle knocks out about 99% of fouling. I then run a dry patch or two then follow up with Lehigh Valley Patch Lube (the best BP CLP there is IMO) on patches until clean, which is only a few patches. I then wipe the breech face with the last clean patch of lubricant used on the bore. Finally, I run a Q-Tip or two around the outside of the chamber & I'm done. The Spencer is so much easier to clean than a Winchester. Once a year I run a damp patch of Lehigh Valley Patch Lube in the magazine tube of the stock & the charging tube as well.

[geo]

Sluice out the barrel with running water. If you can use hot water so much the better. Boresnake saturated with Break Free run through twice; then spray bore with crc 666 or some such spray lube/demoisturizer. Since I live in Maryland (very humid place) and I haven't fired the piece in a while, I inspect the bore periodically and if necessary run the boresnake and break free through. The outside I keep wiped down with a silicone cloth.  Spelling was never my strong point: that's a SILICONE cloth. use it on the stock as well.  Good luck, geo.

[matt45]

To date, I use a couple of patches soaked w?shooter's choice, loosen the fouling, and then use a boresnake, followed by some Hoppes EFC.  I drop the action, swab all the housing, and pay a lot of attention to the extractor and the cartridge guide groove.  Every little while, I get out the linseed oil, and put a light coat on the wood.

I wipe the action down (more EFC) and then blow it all out w/ an air compressor, set down to 30 psi, and wipe the magazine follower down.  Generally, I will run a couple of patches the next day as a follow up, but that is probably too many years of "Army Training, Sir"

Just as a general thought, could one of the reasons for the Spencer's popularity have been the relative ease of cleaning

[French Jack]

Takes more time to type this than to do it.  First is to run a patch soaked with Kroger's "Everyday Living Multisurface Cleaner with Vinegar through the bore.  Follow with second patch soaked.  Swab with dry patch and then follow with one wet down with WD40.  Remove lever/block screw and wipe down action inside and breech block with wet patch (Multisurface Cleaner) and then dry and Q-tip all corners, recesses, rim recess, etc.  Wipe down with WD 40 and reassemble.  Wipe down magazine tube and replace.  Done. 

The Kroger's cleaner is considerably cheaper than Windex with Vinegar, and sprayed on, you will see the fouling just float away.  It is cheap enough, I don't even bother to dilute it.  Dries up nicely, and leaves no residue.

[matt45]

Just as a note of caution- I knew a man who is with us no longer because he was using wd-40 and it inerted (sic) a primer at exactly the wrong time.

I watched that stuff take parkerization off of M-16's, 60's, and never do much for rust preventitive.

Of course, I am a novice Spencer shooter, and have been, often am, and will be wrong, and this could be one of those cases

[French Jack]

Strange, I conducted an experiment one time, regarding the effectiveness of Wd 40, water, and other solvents in deactivating primers.  I had about a hundred primed cases that had been primed with an unknown primer, that is to say, not ones I put in them.  I did not want to load up the cases not knowing the specific primer.  So, I undertook to see if the stories about WD 40 killing primers was true.  I took 50 cases, sprayed WD 40 directly into the case with a wand, onto the primers.  I then set them up in a loading block and left them 24 hours.  I gave them another shot and left them another 4 days.  I did the same with the remainder of the cases using water and brake cleaner, then more water.  I left them the same length of time.

Strange, all of those primers detonated at first strike from the firing pin in my pistol.  I was going to try this method to kill some primers for display rounds, but decided it would not be dependable. 

Others may have varied results, but that is what happened to the primers I wished to "kill". 

I don't use WD 40 for long lasting rust prevention, I use it to get the last remnants of moisture and fouling out of my guns.  I usually revisit them several days later to see if anything has worked out.  I have used the stuff for nearly 50 years, with no problems.

[matt45]

Well, I guess the proof is in the pudding, as they say.  The fellow who had the problem main problem (aside from not breathing after the incident) had been hosing down his service revolver with at least wd-40, and probably lots of other stuff.  Anyway, for whatever reason, the thing didn't go boom when it was supposed to.  We identified inert primers as the cause of that problem, and since he had been seen to use the stuff in question, that was labeled as the cause.  However, it very well could have been something else, and he should not have been using anything while bullets were in the weapon.

So, I stand corrected