After a thorough cleaning, you need to coat the barrel with an oil to lube the barrel and keep it from rusting.
I use Ballistol to lube my Hawken rifle's barrels after thoroughly cleaning them with very hot water and blowing out all the liquid with compressed air from my small air-compressor. Then I run a patch down the barrel with a good amount of Ballistol on it to lube and preserve the barrel. I've never had ANY rust develop in the barrel in the 7 years I've been using Ballistol even when the rifles have sat several months over the Winter and early Spring.
Ballistol absorbs water and still lubes metal parts to keep the steel from rusting.
In a test lasting 90 days using small steel plates and left out in all kinds of weather, only Ballistol and one other very expensive oil kept ALL rust from forming on the raw steel plates. All the other brands of gun oil and lubricating oil failed to stop the rusting of the plates.
There's also a product out that supposedly coats and sticks to the bore's steel that was made for use in muzzle loading guns. My black powder shooting buddy has used it on his 3 inter-changeable barrels for his Hawken cap-lock, muzzle-loading rifle. The coating supposedly bonds to or sticks to the steel in the barrel. The product supposedly penetrates and bonds with the molecular structure of the steel. I do not know this to be true, but that's what the label sez.
I called my shooting buddy and got the product's name. The name of this product is
DynaTec Bore Coat. According to the instructions that come with it, the kit will coat the bores of 5 or 6 long guns.
Here's it's web site address:
www.DYNA-TEC.comI hope this works for you... good luck !
Strength & Honor...
Ron T.
