Also, is this with conicals or patched round balls? My wheelhouse is centered around PRB's and spit patch which effectively cleans the bore with each loading. I've gone all day countless times in offhand matches wherein I never touched a cleaning patch to a bore, and experienced zero deterioration in accuracy or ease of loading. Conicals won't do that unless they're a super tight fit, and who wants to have to pound his bullet down the bore? The expedient to that adopted in the mid-19th century was to use hollow base conicals of a diameter sufficiently small to be loaded into highly fouled barrels, and then depending on the powder explosion to swell the bullet skirt to fill the rifling. My advice: target shoot/plink with PRB's and save the solid conicals for hunting.
What size powder charge do you use? The more powder you burn, the more fouling you get. A wise man told me once that the ball only needs to make it to the paper and then put a hole in it. For a day of plinking/competition I never shoot more than 40 grains in a .45 and 50 in a .50. Save the full snort loads for hunting, if you feel you must. That protocol also undoubtedly contributes to my experiences described above.
Another factor is humidity. Shooting on a really humid day tends to keep the fouling soft and less of a problem. Granulation of powder contributes to a degree also- the finer the granulation the less fouling.
As for picking nipples. I don't. I don't even know where my pick is right now. If you're using a hot cap and your powder is good quality and small granulation (I use 3f for everything anymore) your spark channel/path should stay clear for a day's worth of shooting without having to mess with it. If not, somethings wrong with either the design or the execution of that flash channel.
Lastly, what shape is the bore in? TC's aren't known for their beautiful bores. (Run a borescope into a couple sometime, and then compare to a higher grade gun.) If the bore is full of chatter marks it'll induce fouling buildup more quickly.
...And get that thing out of that damp basement!! (If moisture from humidity in the clean barrel remains a problem, simply swamp it out with alcohol before starting to shoot.)
Last edited by gnoahhh; 08/29/19.
