Cleaning Your WeaponsThis is a featured page

After knowing how to shoot your gun, knowing how to properly clean it is the most important part of firearms ownership. Unfortunately, cleaning is a tedious yet necessary process that many owners (especially amateurs or non-serious owners, like your average criminal) do not know how to properly do or when to do it. An unclean gun can result in jamming, especially when you need your gun to work best. There's no point in buying a pistol for self-defense if you don't clean it after your range visits and it seizes up during a mugging!

This article aims to explain some important tools useful for cleaning your weapon, possible alternatives to more specialized objects like gun oil, and proper cleaning techniques. Every weapon needs to be cleaned in a different way, so make sure to read the manual and understand what you have to take apart and how to treat it right.

Tools of the trade
Your average cleaning kit (which may come with the weapon, depending on the purchase) comes with a number of tools that will help you clean. These are:

  • A three-section aluminum cleaning rod of the appropriate diameter to fit in the bore (one-section rod for pistol kits)
  • Two rod tips for holding cleaning patches
  • Cloth patches
  • Bore brush
  • Liquid powder solvent
  • Gun oil
  • Gun grease (not all kits include this)
  • Bore swab (usually for shotgun kits)
  • Cleaning rag (not always included, but necessary)
  • Directions for proper use (most important!)
There are also some extra tools and products that you might find useful, but might not come with your basic kit:

  • Silicon cloth/silicon-based spray for wiping off fingerprints.
  • Toothbrush
  • Q-tips (be sure to be careful with these and clean any lint they leave behind)
  • Cotton pipe cleaners (can be bought at big-box stores)
  • Prolix total gun care product: an all-in-one cleaner, lubricant, and preservative for replacing the liquid powder solvent and oil
  • Gunslick: A series of chemicals, including a foaming bore cleaner, graphite-based lubricant, and rust protectants. Fairly popular as a replacement for gun oil and normal lubricants for automatic weapons.
  • Rem Oil: A Teflon-based gun oil from Remington that works well for stainless steel.
  • Bore snake: A weighted cord with a surface designed to act as a brush. When dropped down the breech and pulled through the barrel, it cleans faster than the usual scrubbing motions with multiple patches.
  • Silencio Tico Tool: Essentially an adapted feather duster for removing loose powder residue from shotgun bores
  • Bore light: An angled penlight that can be placed in the breech to illuminate the barrel.
  • Outers Foul-Out Kit: An electronic contraption that can be hooked up to the gun to clean the bore electro-chemially, a process that takes 30 minutes to several hours.
  • Other bore brush materials: Bore brushes are made of stainless steel, bronze, or plastic. Bronze is the common brush for basic cleaning, while stainless steel is a tough option that is actually somewhat less effective due to the looped design of the bristles. Plastic brushes are only meant to be used when the gun is cleaned with powerful solvents meant to clean copper fouling, as these solvents will dissolve a bronze brush.
Tips
  • Have some old newspapers handy to lay your gun on while cleaning it and keep any spilled solvents or oil from wrecking your furniture or floors. Nitrile gloves are recommended (latex gloves have a nasty tendency of falling apart during cleaning). Safety goggles like the kind you'd find in a school science class are also recommended for eye safety, especially since splashed solvents can damage prescription eyewear.
  • Go easy with the oil. Very little oil is required in the action and none is required in the bore, and excess oil can gum up the action, attract dirt and grit, and even soften and damage your wood stock. Replacing oil with a spray bottle of Prolix and silicon cloth can easily remove these woes.
  • Cleaning your weapon after every range visit is recommended, though you can wait for three or four sessions before doing a thorough cleaning unless you're cleaning a self-defense weapon; those should be cleaned after every visit to keep them in top condition. Black powder weapons should be thoroughly cleaned after every shooting, as the powder is corrosive and can easily foul up the bore. Generally a visit to a gunsmith once a year is a good idea, similar to getting a yearly check-up from your doctor.
  • RTFM. Some weapons have a long, complex disassembly process for cleaning, while others aren't to have their mechanisms taken apart except by a trained gunsmith. Your owner's manual will tell you how much disassembly is needed for routine maintenance and cleaning, so follow it well and don't break anything!
  • Follow all the instructions on your cleaning kit and bottles of oil or Prolix to avoid damaging or improperly cleaning your gun.
  • If you run out of cloth patches but can't/don't want to go and buy more, you can cut up old t-shirts to make new patches. If you don't have any old shirts, you can find cheap ones at a garage sale or Goodwill that can be cut into many patches.
  • Clean your cleaning rod off to avoid getting any gunk from the rod on the inside of your gun.
  • ALWAYS OBEY THE FOUR RULES OF GUN SAFETY! This cannot be stressed enough, as a weapon can fire as long as all the necessary parts are in place. Always treat it as if it is loaded until it's in pieces, do NOT point it at anything you wouldn't want dead/destroyed, keep your finger off the trigger unless you have to pull it as part of the disassembly process, and remember to keep it pointed at a solid backstop; interior walls are NOT backstops, as even a .22 can go one or two rooms away and hit someone on the other side of the house. More than one person has accidentally been shot or shot themselves when cleaning.
  • Remove the ammo from sight before proceeding to disassemble the gun; a common mistake of gun owners is to habitually reload the weapon without intending to, and you MUST make sure a deliberate, conscious effort is required on your part to reload it. Just the same, re-check the weapon for ammunition after returning from moving the ammo; make it a habit to always check if a weapon is loaded whenever you pick it up.
How to clean your gun
Note: This is assuming you are using gun oil and a standard bore brush and have disassembled the weapon.
  1. Disassemble the weapon as needed, constantly ensuring that it is unloaded and keeping it pointed at a safe backstop just in case; on the ground floor of a building, the floor is a safe backstop. If necessary, find yourself a backstop specifically for cleaning. Examples include a two or three-foot stack of phone books in a box, a cement wall, a very crowded bookshelf (no space between the books) with the weapon pointed at it from the side, or a five-gallon bucket of sand.
  2. Screw the patch holding tip onto your cleaning rod and thread a cleaning patch through the opening in it. There should be an even amount of cloth on each side.
  3. If your cleaning rod is dirty, make sure to oil the patch by hand. Otherwise, lightly dip your rod with patch into the bottle of oil to get it oiled.
  4. Run the cloth through the barrel from the breech end several times, making sure to run it all the way through each time. Set the barrel down with the wet patch still inside and attached to the rod.
  5. With another patch or cleaning rag oiled up, wipe off the rest of the weapon and parts (read the manual to determine what should be cleaned and how). If you have a pipe cleaner or toothbrush, dip it in gun oil and use it to clean out the nooks and crannies that your rag/cloth can't reach.
  6. Checking that the inside of the barrel is still wet (re-soak it if necessary), run your bore brush through the barrel from breech to muzzle; always push it all the way out of the muzzle before pulling it back in to keep it from getting stuck. Don't be afraid to shove hard when pushing it through, but keep it straight.
  7. Run a wet patch through the bore with your cleaning rod again. Continue to alternate between wiping and brushing until the bore is clean; to check, run a dry patch through the bore and see if it comes out clean (the patch doesn't have to be pristine when it comes out, just not particularly dirty).
  8. Clean the outside of the barrel with a cleaning patch or rag.
  9. Use a dry rag to dry off the barrel, frame, and parts. Try and make sure all leftover solvent is removed.
  10. If necessary, lubricate your weapon (follow the instructions in the manual and on the bottle to avoid overlubing the weapon),
  11. Reassemble the weapon and wipe it clean with a clean rag.



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musicrox414 Rifles 8 Mar 31 2013, 8:09 PM EDT by Ssgtcal
Thread started: Mar 29 2013, 6:33 PM EDT  Watch
It's a lot better for precision rifles to use a single hardened steel rod. It cost a little more then the aluminum peices but over time aluminum can get scratched and have grit embed in it. This can scratch your rifleing in the barrel to hell and cause the rifle to miss at 50 yrds.
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