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FOREWORDA while back, my friend and fellow UDSA board member JeffCee purchased his first firearm, a Mosin-Nagant M44 Carbine, and he asked me on a thread "...What support gear should I get? I have nothing." I mean this whole-heartedly, JeffCee has a gift for article ideas! I wouldn't have even thought of this article without his suggestion.So, you just purchased your first firearm and a box of ammunition for it! It's an exciting time. Buying your first firearm is a lot like buying your first car; there's an excitement that can only be known once in your life. But now what? What do I need to keep this firearm functioning properly? How am I going to carry it in the field? In a survival situation, what spare parts should I keep with me? These and other questions don't immediately don upon you, but they should be forefront in your mind when buying a firearm.Please bear in mind that this article is not written to teach you how to properly maintain the rifle, it lists the equipment necessary to keep your firearm properly cleaned, lubricated and functioning properly, at home and in the field. To make this easier to write, I'm going to write this as if I had just purchased my very first rifle, a Mosin Nagant M44; This article is mostly written for JeffCee so I feel that this is a fair compromise and either way, most of this information will transfer over to purchasing any other firearm.BASIC CLEANING KITIf you come from a background that has little experience with firearms, often times the only knowledge you have about firearms maintenance is what you've gathered in literature, on television or here on the internet. You may have never cleaned a firearm in your life! Don't worry; we've all been there at some point, some sooner than others. You may or may not have any idea what kind of supplies you need to maintain a firearm. While this article doesn't address the age old question "Who makes the best gun oil?" it does tell you what you need. So you've just paid for your Mosin-Nagant M44 and you have heard that you should probably buy a cleaning kit for it. What do you get? What do you need? Well, like everything else, your choices are really dictated by budget. You could buy a general caliber-specific gun cleaning kit but if you'd like to piece one together yourself, you can do that as well. I'm going to do the latter for the article's sake, so that we all know what we should need piece by piece.First, you're going to need a cleaning rod. The Mosin-Nagant rifle is typically issued with one, which is screwed into the stock under the barrel, but I do not use this myself. Why? I don't have any brushes or jags that fit it. My factory cleaning rod stays in the stock. There are different kinds of cleaning rods, and I suggest highly that you use a 1 piece rod over a sectioned rod, simply because they're more durable and will last a lot longer. However, they tend to be much more expensive, so do what your budget can handle. This particular rod to the left is designed for .30 to .32 caliber rifles and would work nicely for a Mosin Nagant, though its nearly 5 times more expensive than a sectioned rod and much less convenient to store; however it'll last as long as your rifle will.Next, you should purchase brush heads and jags for the rod you just threw into your cart. Both brush heads and jags are caliber specific- meaning that they can be used for only one caliber. There are many different kinds, all catering to different budgets, so choose what you can afford. The brush is used to help loosen up hardened carbon and copper/lead fouling, and a jag is for pushing a sheet through to remove the fouling. Brushes don't last much longer than a few years at my camp but jags, though more expensive, tend to have a much longer life expectancy. You should also purchase some bore sheets and shop towels. The bore sheets are for removing the bore solvent and fouling from the barrel (when pushed through your barrel) and the shop towels are for removing carbon out of your receiver, cleaning your bolt, and removing excess lubrication. There are some sheets and a mop shown to the right in a three piece kit, included with the bore brush.You may also want to throw a couple of screwdrivers into your gun toolbox. They are essential for completely breaking down your weapon and there should be one on hand. Make sure to have a phillips, flat and maybe some torx or a set of hex keys on hand as depending on your rifle, you might need them.SOLVENTSThere are a huge variety of different solvents on the market and they're all about equal, and some people prefer different products than others. In my experience, all of them work about equally, though I have developed some personal favorites... but I'll try to keep my opinions to myself!You will need a good bore solvent that will breakdown lead/copper fouling. This is very important. Every time you pull the trigger on a live cartridge, microscopic amounts of metal are sheered off the bullet and bound by explosive forces (heat and pressure, carbon) to the rifling of your barrel. This accumulates over time, and a dirty bore typically does not shoot as well as a clean one (though there are exceptions). A carbon solvent will remove the carbon but does nothing to remove the copper from a jacketed bullet, or lead from a wad-cutter or cast bullet. There are many brands and formulas out there but the longest enduring is undoubtedly Hoppe's No. 9, and it's very effective. You should also purchase a good gun oil. Again, there are tons of different brands and types to choose from. Aerosol, liquid, squirt-bottle... They're all designed for different purposes. When I first got my hands on a Mosin-Nagant, we used aerosol Rem-Oil almost exclusively. It was effective, cheap, and sufficient for the task at hand. Just about any will work, including fresh motor oil, and if you choose motor oil, I suggest 5W synthetic. It can be applied thinly enough for semi-automatic rifles and is great when drops of it are used for bolt action rifles.There are many other products out there, but in a bare bones kit that's really all you need. You can add on items as needed; you might find a need for more specialized gear. However, this should do the trick quite well.LJ26's Weapons and Practical Skills Corner by (LJ126) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.Based on a work at www.zombiesurvivalwiki.com.