when you go to the pistol range..do you clean mid-day?
 

my BIL took care of my home. i want to take him to shoot pistols as a thank-you.

i just did 9mm inventory, and i bet we can melt a barrel. i have thousands of rounds. i should probably "rotate" in fresh ammo..so i will shoot alot. my Sig 226 is very robust, but will i/should i clean it part way thru? or just spray down the hillsides and clean it all when i get home.

this is gonna be fun. i have a tupperware full of 9's.

Your sig should be able to go thru quite a bit of ammo *if* you keep it at a reasonable pace. Load up 100 mags and rip thru 'em as fast as your can and you may have issues... but normal shooting using 2 or 3 mags you shoudl be able to go all day.

I wipe every time I dump a load, regardless of time of day.

Well, if you manage to go through 5000 rounds in a single gun in a single session, then you may want to clean your gun. If you're going to go through 500-1000 rounds, I wouldn't think you'd need to.

If your gun starts to act weird and you've gone through a whole bunch of ammo, then maybe that'd be a sign.

I'd think that most modern guns should be able to go through a couple thousand rounds without being cleaned and still run fine.

Depends on the ammo. The cheapo Russian stuff like Silver Bear, Tula or Wolf, uh yeah, you won't get far without cleaning. But the quality stuff should give you thousands of rounds without having to clean.

U mean U wipe every time?

This.

If you're shooting really crappy ammo (read "Russian"), then take a can of Birchwood Casey's Gun Scrubber and give the pistol parts a quick blast midday, then relube and keep shooting. Clean the guns very thoroughly at the end of the day...

no cheapo stuff. the worst quality is the american eagle crap. most of it is winchester and federal.

thanks for the info.

Cliff,
I put a good quality synthetic "grease" on my pistol's moving parts immediately prior to going to the range and then they are very easy to clean and friction is kept to a minimum...

Lots of good advice here.

My rule of thumb is I don't clean my guns unless they are going back in the safe. (And I keep them in the safe.) The most I've shot through a single gun without cleaning is 500 rounds over a two day pistol class. I was shooting Winchester white box 9mm our of my G17 and had zero problems.

A friend in class shooting his Sig did have some problems with some reloads he'd done (on my press) because they wouldn't reliably cycle his gun (they would cycle mine fine).

Keep in mind that your gun will actually get more accurate after the first 10-50 shots. The theory I've heard is that a little fouling in the barrel actually provides for a better gas seal. (The carbon will fill in the low spots.)

If you're going through 5,000 rounds of quality ammo through a single firearm in a day, your biggest concern is the heat, not the fouling. If your going through 1,000 rounds of crappy Russian stuff with corrosive primers in a day, then yes, you need to clean a few times.

It sounds like you're well within the operating bounds of the gun though. Have fun!

Someone needs to find a MSDS for Gun Scrubber, and compare the contents to brake cleaner. It sure smells similar, and the brake cleaner costs about 1/3 as much.

Maybe more like mid-year.