Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics MZloader powder residue on lenses?

I am looking at a MZ loader and am thinking my Kahles 1.5-6 would be a good fit for it but have heard that the corrosiveness of BP can ruin scopes. Any truth to this and how do you protect against it?

I had a scope get specs all over the front objective lens coating before. I don't believe it was from the smoke after the shot. I actually realized that the damage came from when I stood the gun upright and I swabbed the barrel between shots and as I pulled the patch out of the barrel some of the residue was falling off the patch and spilling off the edge of the barrel and onto my lens which was facing up. If you put a flip open scope cap on your front scope lens and just remember to shut it before loading or swabbing between each shot your lens coatings should be fine. I would clean your lenses after each shooting session with a good optical lens cleaner just to get rid of any residue left from the smoke. Just my opinion.

Another good reason to avoid sticking a cleaning rod down the muzzle.

As far as the original question, if you're going to shoot a muzzleloader with a scope on it, chances are it'll be a modern in-line rifle shooting sabots or modern ML bullets and using a 209 primer. There's no reason to use BP in that kind of rig, it's hard to find and you'd be better off using a BP substitute like Blackhorn 209 or Triple 7.

The corrosive properties of BP come from the sulfur--it combines with moisture to form sulfuric acid. So if you want to use it, check with the optics manufacturer and see what they say about that.

I was using triple 7 powder and pellets. The left over residue must have been corrosive or still hot. Either way it damaged the coating on my Zeiss conquest a little before I noticed it. I was using a TC ENCORE.

What kind of solvent were you using?