The soldier, sailor, or marine would tie knots in the rope, oil it, drop the weight through the barrel from the breech end, and pull it through to clean the bore.
I've never heard of the pull through being used that way, where did you hear that technique?
As far as the rope cleaner, could I make one? And if so what should I use?
There is a bit more (but not much) than a piece of rope involved. Sure there is rope but it has splits & loops formed in it to hold cleaning patches (commonly called four by two's) which were torn off of a roll & used to swab the bore. There is also a HORRIBLE piece of metal screen mesh wire that can be wrapped in a figure-8 shape to destroy, err, scrub the bore ( Kind of like a modern bore cleaning brush, but way more damaging). Like Tiki said get one for the sake of completeness, not for actually cleaning.
As for oil bottles, get a brass one, yep they are a few dollars more, but they work much better than the plastic ones which crack & leak pretty much always.
Cleaning rods were used, but not on a day-to-day basis, or by the individual soldier, the armorer had a thing called a "T-Handle" which was used to push, never pull, a detachable brass jag which was wrapped in (guess what) more TwobyFour.
The jag was not threaded & was never attached to the T-Handle it could only be pushed through the bore that way. It was also used to clear bore obstructions from the breech end, should they occur as a pull through can't push, just pull.
Here's my kit.
The "T-shaped" handle with a notch is a striker( firing pin) wrench, not normal issue, but handy to have & the Brush is an extra (but authentic) accessory. The brass jag is in 2 sections with a pivot in the join which allows the head to rotate as it is pushed through the rifling. The
Charger ( never "stripper clip") holds 5 rounds of reloaded Softpoint ammo.