Proper Firearm Maintenance

[jyl]

Proper spoon maintenance questions!

How often should a gun be cleaned?

What is your cleaning procedure?

Is Hoppes 9 still the preferred solvent? What’s the preferred lube?

Cleaning from the muzzle a big no-no?

[Skytrooper]

Between practice and competition I go through a couple hundred rounds each week. I clean my spoons after every usage. I have tried many products but I still use Hoppe's #9 solvent. I use military grade PLS for lube most of the time. About every 10th cleaning I use the heavier Hoppe's oil. I clean the barrels from both ends, got to clean both sides of the rifling.

[KFC911]

I've been using Hoppe's for 50 years... for about 45 of them I prounounced it wrong (in my head) too !

[Tim Hancock]

What kind of firearm? My Glock rarely got cleaned even when competing weekly. They do not really need or like oiling. My Glock 34 probably has over 10,000 rounds thru it and only has been totally cleaned a handful of times... still goes bang EVERY time. All my nicer metal guns require better cleaning with hoppes #9 and a light oiling afterwards. My stainless Ruger .22 competition with modded light trigger required cleaning and oiling every time I used it to maintain the trigger performance I was accustomed to.

.22 every day type use cheap varmint rifles just get a little cleaning/oil when they get too gunked up to work properly as they are not very valuable and I have several.

Cleaning guns is always a fun relaxing way to spend an evening, but in reality not all guns "require" the same amount of cleaning/oiling.

[KFC911]

I also like Remington "Rem Oil" in a spray can.... lighter than Hoppes and easier to pronounce correctly .

[id10t]

It all really depends.

I clean my 22s when either accuracy falls off or reliability issues start occurring

I clean my rifles when shooting nasty ammo or I look at a part and go "eewwww" (semis), or when accuracy falls off (bolt guns)

I clean my black powder pistol within a few hours of shooting. I usually do the same for my BP rifle, but have let it go as long as 8 weeks, being shot every few days, and examining for rust (was part of a experiment to satisfy my own curiosity). Finally cleaned it when some gunk was blocking path from cap to powder charge and I got "pfft" instead of "kaboom"


Note that cleaning is different from wiping fingerprints and oils and crap from the outside surfaces...

[Seahawk]

Based on similar threads in the past, I have changed my gun cleaning habits a bit.

I do have a few shotguns, rifles and pistols I rarely shoot so before I use them I break them down and clean them...then clean and store after we finish at the range.

I have found that I like these bamboo cleaning rods quite a bit: https://ramrodz.com/

I have them in every caliber I use.

[Arizona_928]

Q-tips are a must.

Any organic (non halogenated) solvent is what i use. Acetone, toluene, rem oil, ect. I like to use low viscosity synthetic diesel oil for lubricant.

[Rot 911]

I’m not that fastidious of a gun cleaner. Maybe once or twice a year.

[Rick Lee]

Depends on the finish. Stainless steel, nickel, hard chrome, etc. I've heard can be damaged by Hoppes 9. I use a blend of Mobil 15W-50 motor and 75/90 gear oil on those finishes. For the black and blued stuff I use Hoppes 9. I generally clean after each range session and always if it's a carry or bedside gun.

[berettafan]

Infrequent pistol shooter these days so they get cleaned after each use.

2 of 3 of my regularly used shotguns do not have chrome lined bores so they too get cleaned with every use. This is really just the barrels as there is just not much need to pull the stock off an o/u unless it has been in the rain. The action on my clays gun will go to the mfrs office in Pa for a complete disassemble and cleaning maybe every 20-30k rounds. With ammo being in tight supply that's probably a 3 year time frame or even 4.

The third of the frequently used shotguns is my duck gun and that gets cleaned maybe once or twice a year. Camo finish means 'cleaning' is a damp cloth wipe down and barrel is chrome lined so really just getting accumulated wad plastic out.

[serene911]

[jyl]

Originally Posted by Tim Hancock

What kind of firearm?

I got motivated to post this because I got a new one, a target 22LR. New Spoon

I'll be shooting this one more and more often than I've been shooting my other guns. What with rising ammunition prices and declining eyesight, I've not been shooting often, but this one eats cheap 22LR and has an optic, so I've been resuming my target therapy. Maybe 100-200 rounds a week.

It is kind of a pain to disassemble. Unlike the usual tool-less fieldstrip of a normal semi-auto pistol, disassembling this thing requires removing fastenings. But you can't access the breech without disassembly, absent a pull-through bore brush.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Depends on the finish. Stainless steel, nickel, hard chrome, etc. I've heard can be damaged by Hoppes 9. I use a blend of Mobil 15W-50 motor and 75/90 gear oil on those finishes. For the black and blued stuff I use Hoppes 9. I generally clean after each range session and always if it's a carry or bedside gun.

I've heard that it's just nickel finishes can be damaged by Hoppe's, or any other copper solvent. I've never heard that it can attack stainless or hard chrome, though. That said, I've used Hoppe's on a nickel plated M29 for decades with no ill affect. I think it's such a mild copper solvent that, combined with modern nickel plating, there is probably no real risk.

I've used Mobil 1 as my "gun oil" for about the last decade. I picked up on its use from the air gun crowd. I have yet to find anything better.

Different guns require different cleaning. There is no "one size fits all". My handguns, all shot primarily with my own home cast bullets, clean up with just a couple of patches wet with Hoppe's. My cast bullet rifles get a similar cleaning, as do my mid velocity jacketed bullet rifles. My black powder guns only differ in that the initial cleaning is done with water, followed up with the Hoppe's.

The really high velocity stuff is another matter. Something must be done to remove the copper fouling. John Barsness recently published a great article in either Rifle or Handloader concerning the nature of this kind of fouling. It "layers" in the barrel, copper then carbon then copper then carbon and so on. It must be either chemically or electronically removed. I use Sweet's 7.62, a very strong ammonia based copper solvent. I'll clean with it until patches no longer come out blue, then switch to Hoppe's for the carbon, then go back to the Sweet's. It can be surprising how many times I have to go back and forth to get truly down to bare steel in the bore. Most folks stop well short, and bores can suffer when they do.

[svandamme]

people tend to overclean their barrels.
For accuracy, do not over do it. Most fanaticism bout cleaning barrels is because people used to shoot black powder and that deposits corrosive salts, those must be cleaned out religously each time.

With good smokeless and copper jackets.. good barrels don't need all that much cleaning.


I'de run a wet(ballistol) bore snake through a couple of times post shoot, and leave it.
to much cleaning upsets the barrel to much and then it takes a while to settle back with shooting.

beginning of a season I would get hoppes copper remover and run it through slowly and that then is a clean barrel
I'de shoot 100 rounds a week, 2 weekends a month average, and maybe do a full clean twice a year, tops.

That is for bolt action rifle, regular 30 cal, not talking zippers, i never shot thoses
But 3006 or 308, loaded to the speed of heat, to get max accurate velocity and fight the wind past 600

AR : make sure the action is very wet with FP10


AR15 is a dirty action, and it needs field strip and soak for all the carbon
Gotta keep the bolt carrier and bolt clean , soak lube , every time ..
barrel , bore snake again.. its really mostly the action that needs work on the AR..(if you shoot decent ammo, no rooskie crapola)

1911 pistol .. ballistol bore snake and FP10 for the slide

getting back in guns, had a sabatical since 2017, am oogling a new Dan Wesson, gonna order soon



Got some cocobolo grips laying here from my previous, will be happy to be styling at the range again :P

[jyl]

Oooo, purty!

[Skytrooper]

Un,, yeah...I have been shooting, military for many years. A clean annd oiled gun is your best friend. Period, if you guys want to decrease your weapons available fiirepower, you just go ahead and be lazy about taking proper care of your firearm, but when it doesnt go bang when you really need it to, it is your own fault.

[Por_sha911]

Different firearms (or ammo) require different cleaning regiments.

Glocks: clean when you feel like it.
1911: after every trip.
.22lr - clean more often
lead nosed ammo - clean after every trip
shotgun: "wait, you're supposed to clean it?"

I use Breakfree CLP for everything except if I have lead buildup in the cylinder of my stainless revolver. Then I'll use Hoppes followed by CLP. I was all set to post the video above but someone beat me to it.

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by Skytrooper

Un,, yeah...I have been shooting, military for many years. A clean annd oiled gun is your best friend. Period, if you guys want to decrease your weapons available fiirepower, you just go ahead and be lazy about taking proper care of your firearm, but when it doesnt go bang when you really need it to, it is your own fault.

Sure. Like i said. My ar got cleaned a lot.

But when its about accuracy. A bolt gun barrel is a different story. The action does not foul with carbon in a bolt gun.
Different powders used as well

I shot matches 3 -600 yds or more
Over cleaning the barrel changes accuracy

Making sure they go bang is more important in military than barrel accuracy.. us doctrine is squad based suppression fire. Not 1 shot 1 kill by each man