230 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 
made of leather. This covers the breech and prevents wet 
reaching the chamber of the gun to a great extent. The 
cap should be made to fasten underneath with a couple of 
straps and buckles. Keep the leather breech-cap well greased 
with the same preservative as recommended for dressing 
leather boots. 
To clean a punt-gun inside after being in use, knock 
through two or three tight-fitting plugs of oakum. Next 
send through a wire brush, to stir up caked and burnt powder, 
and follow with another couple of plugs of oakum. Then, if 
the barrel is clean and bright (few are perfectly so), grease 
inside with vaseline or Stauffer’s grease and sperm oil mixed, 
To remove any rusty spots inside the barrel, apply paraffin 
and a wire scratch brush. Rub the paraffin off carefully before 
greasing. Wire brushes are used for sweeping locomotive 
boiler tubes. Some makes of these (either brass or steel) 
form capital punt-gun brushes. To clean a punt-gun properly, 
place it on a firm bench or a couple of trestles. Sometimes 
wooden forks stuck in the ground, are used instead. As 
a rule, however, they cannot be fixed steady, and trouble 
is experienced in keeping the gun firm. Before placing 
the big gun in her case, plug both ends (of course, only 
one end if a muzzle-loading gun) of the barrel with taper 
wooden plugs, around which has been wrapped linen pre- 
viously soaked in tallow. These plugs fit tight and exclude 
the air. 
We have up to the present been speaking only of breech-load- 
ing punt-guns. To clean inside a muzzle-loading punt-gun, 
first wash out the tube with two or three lots of cold soft water. 
The gun-breech may be placed in a bucket of water and the 
cleaner, standing on a bench, can, with a cleaning-rod wrapped 
with oakum at the end, and used as a plunger, pump the water 
through the nipple in and out of the barrel, and thus 
thoroughly wash out all burnt powder. To dry the barrel, 
