Can any body run me through a proper gun cleaning procedure?
I have gotten so much different info that I am confused.
How often do you clean your firearms?
Will solvent actually wear off the blueing?
What if anything do you use to clean the action.
Will solvent harm a poly frame?
Can you clean a firearm too often?
Any help and detailed instructions from somebody who knows would be greatly appreciated

After every time I shoot, at least once a year if they sit in the safe, a basic wipe down once a week if it's a carry gun, and a full cleaning at least once a month for a carry gun. Also I give it a wipedown or cleaning, and lubrication any time it starts to make a sound I'm not used to, something acts different from normal, or I just feel like it.



I don't know. Might. I haven't had a problem with it so far, but someone might have a different experience than mine. My guns with bluing don't get used quite as heavily.



T-shirt material rags, a nylon brush, q-tips. (Actually, buy the walmart brand. They're $1 for 1,000) Dental picks. Anything else I need to soak up, wipe or scrape off anything that I don't want where it is. That's generally what I use. I here Remington sells a good thing to blast crud out also, but I haven't used it in years.



Not that I know of. I've gotten plenty of solvent on Glocks, but you might want to spot test it first just to make sure.



Not that I know of. Just, take it easy on abrasive cleaners I'd recommend. They sell some out there that have abrasive materials in them. On things like rifles they can damage the corners of the rifling which will affect it's accuracy over time. I tend to lean toward "take care of your gun and your gun will take care of you."

I'll work on a procedure tomorrow if someone doesn't do it. My mind is doing funny things. I started writing something out, and it didn't really follow a train of thought. Hopefully the rest of this did....

Your gun goes to bed before you do. Any day it gets fired, it gets cleaned.
Fieldstrip the weapon, then alternate wet (with solvent) patches with dry ones down the barrel (pushed in from the chaber end) until a dry one comes out clean. Wipe down every other available surface, especially the breechface, with solvent, too. One lightly oiled patch down the barrel, then a drop on each slide rail, re-assemble, and you're done!

More guns have been worn out by excessive cleaning than by excessive firing.

How important it is that you clean it every time you shoot depends upon what kind of ammo you use.

When I'm shooting my Mauser, I carry a bottle of soapy water and pour it down the bore immediate;y after firing. I use surplus Soviet ammo that has KClO3 in the primers. Shooting it embeds KCL in the bore. If you wait until you get home before you start to clean, you will have rust.

And black powder leaves so much residue that a weapon will foul after only a couple of dozen shots unless cleaned.

But modern ammo, with non-corrosive primers? It's not really as important as all that. Leaving the weapon dirty won't damage anything, and there's little enough residue that it takes thousands of rounds to build up enough to cause reliability problems.

When I'm shooting weekly, I may clean only once a month.

I clean mine after each use. I spray the polymer frames and the metal frames with Gun Scrubber so it's easier to blast the residue out of all the nooks and crevices. I clean with solvent after Gun Scrubber to remove the Gun Scrubber residue. Then lightly oil and dry wipe. Most semi Autos require little lubrication other than the slide rails and the outer barrel and guide rod surfaces. I don't think it possible to clean a gun too much, I have never worn one out from cleaning it. I also clean my carry gun at least once per month and those that don't get fired once every six months. There is some debate whether or not to leave oil in your barrel, some say it increases pressures when firing some say it doesn't. I always run a dry patch through my barrel before use or carry to make sure there is no oil build up.

If you shoot alot like I do you need to be checking for copper and lead buildup inside the barrel, this also decreases the barrel diameter and can cause pressures to increase. It's important to use a good bore brush (If the one you have is worn out throw it away and get a new one) to get all of the copper or lead build up out of the barrel, Hoppes #9 is the best I have found for this. Just run a god wet patch through your barrel, let it sit for ten minutes, then use the bore brush until all of the build up is removed.

Do you have a source, study, evidence, anything to back that up? I would think it would depend heavily on what you're using to clean it and how you're cleaning it of course. Excessive firing (what's that ?) leaves lead and copper fouling as well as powder buildup and etc as well as exposing the gun to the preassures of a controlled explosion on firing. How can cleaning be more damaging that that (assuming you're not using a dremwel and steel wool)

There are a lot of experts who disagree with you. Including the authors of the US Army unit armor course curiculumn, circa 1986.

Most of the problems froom over-cleaning come from spending too much time at it, rather than doing it too often. If you're running patches until they come out spotless, you're over-cleaning. If you're spending more than 15 minutes on a gun, you're probably over-cleaning.

As for cleaning after every trip to the range, there's no downside to that.

But with non-corrosive ammo, there's no particular downside to not cleaning after every trip to the range. The residue isn't harmful to the gun. It will eventually build up to where it interferes with the action, and in a semi-auto it will result in increased wear on the slide rails, etc., well before it begins to interfere with the action. But there's no significant difference between firing 100 rounds on each of five successive days and then cleaning, or firing 500 rounds on one day and then cleaning.

I'm not telling you not to clean. (Though I am telling you not to get carried away - if your gun was clean before you fired it, and you're running more than 4-6 patches after you fired it, you're over-cleaning).

But if the time you spend cleaning after each trip is limiting your abillity to shoot - if you're passing up short, 50-round sessions during the week because you'd not have time to clean afterwards - be aware that waiting until the weekend to clean isn't going to cause you any problems.

(Unless, of course, you're using corrosive ammo, and then you should pour something down the bore to neutralize the corrosion before you leave the firing line.)

I used to clean mine every time I shot them, but as my collection grew and I occasionally brought 3 or even 4 guns to the range at the same time, the time necessary to clean all those guns just wasn't realistic, nor did I appreciate the exposure to the solvents.

I now try to clean them after every 3 range trips or less. I also carry a Hoppe's Boresnake with me to the range and I snake the barrels with a dash of Hoppes and a little oil before I leave the range. I honestly don't know if this saves me any cleaning time or effort later, but I feel better.

As an experiment, I put about 500 rounds through my S&W 1911 over a month or two without doing any cleaning and had no failures to fire or other obvious problems.

I haven't heard anything about cleaning solvents damaging bluing; Hoppes #9 has a warning about extended contact with nickeled firearms. I would presume that any modern polymer firearm would have been tested for exposure to all manner of solvents, and given the number sold, I think we'd hear about it if there was a problem, especially with high-profile brands like Glock.

Excessive use of brushes and patches round the edges of the rifling, significantly reducing accuracy. Sloppy handling of the cleaning rod can dent the edges of the rifling, or worse yet the crown.

Correct me if I'm wrong... T-shirt matetrial patches round the rifling? I can see it happening (like a leather stropffor a razor) but man that would have to be excessive. The brush I can see happening definitely and carelessness with the rod and etc I can see.

The quote you supplied is on mil-spec rifle barrels which are chrome plated. how does that relate to the average carry piece?

re-reading, I can see where my replies here could seem confrontational. That is not my intent. There's a ton of talent and knowledge on this forum and I was hoping for citations or sources so I could do some more reading.

It doesn't, really.

If you don't have a chrome-plated barrel, you need to clean more often. If you're not concerned with squeezing the last tenth of a mil of accuracy out of your gun, you don't need to be as careful.

A lot of it depends upon what you're actually shooting. The rimfire target shooters clean their bores very rarely. The pressure of a .22 is low enough that it's next to impossible to shoot a bore out, and the rifling is shallow enough that wear from cleaning is more damaging.

If you're shooting .357s, the pressure from the bullets is sufficient that almost nothing you do with a cleaning rod is going to matter much.

And .357 centerfire leaves a lot more residue than does .22 rimfire.

Over-cleaning was a real concern, back when I was a unit armorer. The Army is full of old sergeants who want to see the barrel shine. And service rifles get enough service - and enough cleaning - that over-cleaning really shortened the service of the barrels.

It's a concern for varmint hunters, benchrest shooters. etc.

I don't think it's something to be concerned about for your typical permit holder. There's no reason why you shouldn't clean after every firing. Three or six patches isn't going to significantly shorten the life or worsen the accuracy of your gun.

But there's no reason why you should feel you have to clean after every firing, either.

Don't let an inability to clean every time cause you to pass up an opportunity to get some practice.

This is what I generally thought about cleaning. Your original reply came across a bit stronger to me though so I was looking for clarification. Thanks for providing it, it makes sense.

What do you define as clean, though? I don't think 4-6 patches will actually "clean" a barrel, it will just remove substantial fouling that might impede operation or harm accuracy. There's still a lot of crud in the rifling.

I find that getting my .45ACP 1911 barrel clean -- to the point that most visible fouling is removed from the rifling -- after 2-300 rounds of handloads (usually jacketed bullets over VV N320 or Unique) requires some elbow grease with a bronze brush and more than 4-6 patches.

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The abrasion caused by two materials rubbing against each other will always cause wear to both surfaces. However the specific hardness of each material when compared to that which it is bearing on will relate directly to the amount of wear on each surface.
Typical cleaning materials, copper/bronze/nylon brushes, cotton patches etc. (not on the Rockwell scale) are when compared with normal barrel steel (which has a hardness of 40 Rockwell D and chrome plating is about 60 Rockwell D) very soft. Most wear from cleaning comes from the use of steel rods that bend in the barrel and abrade the rifling. This abrasion on the rifling can be obviated by using plastic coated single piece rods and a muzzle guide. Further reducing the amount of wear caused by cleaning is the lubricity of solvents and oils used in the cleaning process.

All of this means that normal cleaning does not significantly affect the accuracy of a firearm. However, I have seen that in military situations, where weapons are cleaned more often that they are fired. When they are cleaned with equipment we would not dream of using (steel rods, screwdrivers etc.) and by individuals who (at least in peacetime) don’t care about how they treat their weapons, that barrels do wear significantly because of cleaning.

Using commercial solvents, following the manufacturer’s directions, will not damage the finish of a gun, weather it is blued, nickel, chrome or plastic. Commercial solvents are supposed to be formulated to be non-destructive to gun finishes, but not everyone uses commercial solvents.

A thought on cleaning any weapon; is that many chemicals (such as those contained in primers and propellants) can have an adverse effect on any material over varying amounts of time and small particles mixed with lubricants can become abrasive. So clean the chemicals and remove the abrasives, often enough to prevent damage or wear.

A rule of thumb for a quick clean, pull the barrel through soon after shooting with a lightly oiled patch (a bore snake is more convenient but retains chemicals from the last cleaning etc.) and wipe down all surfaces, especially bearing surfaces with a lightly oiled cloth. While this isn’t a real cleaning, it will keep the gun in working condition until time can be made for a take down cleaning. My feeling is a real cleaning should be done every 6 or 8 trips to the range or at least once a year.
WARNING. Some people have very acidic skin oils, fingerprints and handling marks should be wiped away with an oily cloth to prevent corrosion while in storage.

</diatribe>

Agreed entirely.

I also think uneccesary, deep detailed stripping and disassembly and re-assembly can cause more wear than cleaning.

The parts rubbing against each other, being forced into place, etc. when being assembled and disassembled can cause excessive wear. Some parts, like the upper on a Ruger MkII 22lr auto-pistol, should probably not come off more than once a year, or only when reliable function has been affected. The little tabs that hold it together weren't really meant for the repetitive stress of frequent disassembly. Pulling the bolt out is a different matter.

I'm sure there's other examples, but I'm not familiar with all of the firearms out there.