richardlpalmer

Of course YMMV, but I found this blog posting to be pretty interesting.

Welcome to PreciseShooter!

What's your regimen?

qballrail

Well, I clean both my pistols and rifles after each shooting session. No matter how many rounds I put through them, they get a thorough cleaning with Hoppe's 9 then sprayed down with Rem Oil lubricant. My girl & I prefer Butch's Patches because they don't tend to fray as easily and are VERY absorbant.

I take issue with his liberal cleaning cycle because a dirty gun can be a broken gun. Powder in the wrong place can be deadly, so we clean our weapons after each and every shooting session, no exceptions. In fact, if we go more than a couple of weeks between range trips, we break out the cleaning gear and run through just to get rid of the dust.

Maybe I'm just paranoid but I was always taught to clean, clean, and clean again. My dad preached that a dirty gun can kill the one pulling the trigger faster than the one on the business end. That's a philosphy I live by to this day.

GixxerPete

You're paranoid.... I've read some stuff from pretty knowledgeable people say over cleaning a gun is worse than under cleaning it. I clean mine infrequently, when they start looking pretty grimy I give em a good cleaning. My ARs get a few squirts of BreakFree to keep em wet and they run just fine. When you go read some of the torture tests they do handguns and military rifles that they take in stride, it's pretty hard to imagine how not cleaning it every single time is going to hurt it one bit.

I read an article awhile ago from one of the big carbine training schools, and they had one of their range guns (standard DI AR, don't remember the brand) that went 20,000+ rounds with no cleaning, just lube. And those guns get run hard. It ran fine. Cleaning after every range session is waste of time and money, IMHO.

Barrel break in is another big myth. I'll trust the word of someone like Gale McMillan when he says it's a waste of time, and if anything it's hurting your barrel, not helping. His warranty explicitly states that some of the popular break-in/cleaning compounds will void the warranty if used. The whole concept of barrel break-in was invented by an old partner of Gales, just to sell more barrels!!

Read about here:

How to Break-in a Barrel

and more here:

Barrel Break-In

TheRedSkull

i rarely cleaned my weapons during deployments, just a quick wipe off and thats how i do it now, i prefer them a little dirty...

pnwvolks

My pistols are usually just a wipe down so they look pretty. After about every 5 shoots I will actually pull them apart and take a look inside to see if they need any attention. My shotguns i just wipe down and run a brush down the barrel every few shoots. My Rifles get attention after every few shoot. If my AR looks dirty around the action then I will give it some attention. Usually me and a few buddies clean all of our guns and we watch 80's action movies like Rambo, Commando, Predator, ect...

Cheers!

richardlpalmer

We pretty much clean pistols after every shoot. One of the reasons for this was so my boy got more familiar with them. He's happy as a clam to clean them and does an excellent job.

And more often than not we do it together. I always expected that I'd wrench on cars with my son, but that hasn't worked out. But I'm super pleased he'll sit there with me and do gun stuff. Today we reloaded about 300 rounds together. Fun as hell to spend time with your kid like that...

I haven't cleaned my Storm yet, but I haven't even put 1000 rounds through it. We'll probably break it down tomorrow though. And I'll probably start cleaning it regularly so I'm super familiar with it. But after a while, who knows...

35remington

I love to clean my guns and watch war movies at same time too, I even wear my revolver and watch The Good Bad and The Ugly. I think I will take out The ariska and watch PT109 next time they run it.

qballrail

Wow, you're really into it. However, I must admit, I'm armed pretty much 90% of the time at home AND away.

bigggbbruce

Revolvers get a wipe down..50 -100 fired.. solvent and a swab run through the cylinder then a quick brush to remove carbons on the gas ring.. drop of oil on the ejector rod once in a while..

auto's pull the slide wipe down barrel, inside of slide, breech face feed ramp, oil up and reassemble.. complete tear down when I feel like it...1000+ or so...

Rifles kind of the same quick wipe down oil em up....

I don't remove all oils off the finish... Easier to keep the rust away...solvent only goes down the barrel...

pnwvolks

I'm cleaning and doing a tune up on a buddies old Marlin all while watching Rambo: First Blood!

This movie made me pull out my 7' Ka-Bar and set it on the table...

35remington

I think I am on to something here, a bring your gun over and have a movie night. maybe I can talk my wife into letting my son and I bring our minibikes in the living room and watch "CHiPs" but I doubt it.

richardlpalmer

I like where your head is at!

Perhaps the Dirty Dozen? Platoon?