Introduction to Firearms: Cleaning Your Gun

Hi there. Let's talk about how to properly maintain your firearms.

My previous posts in this introduction series have attempted to help people who are completely new to firearms learn the very basics of owning firearms, particularly in America. I have covered what a firearm is, what you can do with a firearm, and how to legally purchase a firearm. You can read each of those posts here:

Introduction to Firearms: The Absolute Basics

Introduction to Firearms: So what do I do with this thing?

Introduction to Firearms: How to Buy a Firearm

Now I'd like to discuss how to care for your firearm. Basic preventative maintenance is a simple process and can keep your firearm functioning properly for, potentially, decades if not centuries. A firearm is a fairly simple machine with a minimal number of moving parts and there are numerous examples of firearms from the 19th and 20th centuries still working precisely as well as they did back then and at least part of that is due to a proper cleaning regimen.

Firearm Materials

Firearms are a mechanical tool with a variety of moving parts and require maintenance just like any other tool. In addition to environmental factors, particularly moisture and dirt, the actual use of a firearm introduces factors that must be addressed to ensure proper function.

Firearms are, predominantly, made from metal and wood, though plastics and polymers are very common replacements for the wood elements. Wood, polymer, and metal are all durable materials but do require at least some care. I'll get into some basic principles of general care and then go over actually cleaning your firearm.

Metal should be cleaned of any clinging dirt or debris with an appropriate cleaner and then lightly oiled. There are an absolutely ridiculous number of cleaners available suited for a variety of purposes, but something as simple as a little bit of dish soap and some warm water to dampen a rag will likely be enough for any surface dirt. You don't need to boil your firearm or soak it in the tub, and if you use a degreaser you need to ensure that you oil the metal to prevent rusting.

My personal preference is either Cleaner, Lubricant, and Protectant, more commonly referred to as CLP or Ballistol. There are a huge number of CLP products on the market but they all work in the same basic fashion. Apply lightly, scrub lightly, wipe down, apply a final thin coat. The goal is to remove dirt and buildup but still leave a thin layer of oil to prevent rusting on metal surfaces.

Wood needs to be kept dry and sealed. A common issue, particularly with guns that see use in very moist conditions such as waterfowl hunting, is for water to either work its way in between the wood and metal components or to actually soak into the wood itself. This can easily cause some pretty serious rust issues in the unseen spaces or even warp, deform, or crack the stock. Wipe the dirt off, using a gentle cleaner and as lightly damp of a rag as you can get, and keep the firearm in a cool, dry location, disassembled if necessary.

Plastics and polymers are incredibly easy to take care of and are essentially immune to the warping and cracking that can occur with wood. You still need to ensure that the firearm is dry with no moisture trapped between the plastic and metal components. Some solvents do not play well with common firearm polymers, so stick with firearm specific cleaners. A lightly damp rag should take care of most situations.

The above is just a general overview, suitable for most, but definitely not all, situations. I will not accept responsibility if you decide to clean your antique revolver with bleach, salt water, and a scouring pad. A small amount of a gentle cleaner applied with a soft brush or rag will solve pretty much any common situation that will present itself on the exterior.

Now, for the interior. I will not go into a lot of specifics here as the takedown procedure varies wildly from firearm to firearm. Some firearms are as simple as locking the slide to the rear, flipping a lever, and releasing the slide. Some firearms pretty much require a gunsmith to disassemble and reassemble. You need to be responsible and read your user's manual and ensure you understand how to care for your firearm. If the manual is of little help or you don't have one then YouTube is your manual and you can almost certainly find at least one video that pertains to your particular firearm.

There is one incredibly important and universal rule when cleaning your firearm:

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

This rule is not optional. This rule is the absolute first step you take when you clean your firearm, every single time. Unload your damn gun. Did you unload it? The magazine is out of the firearm, or the integral magazine is unloaded? The chamber is cleared? Are you sure? Check again. Now, check again. I'm not kidding, check again.

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

It's a fairly common to see news stories about a gun "going off while cleaning it." There are exactly two reasons a firearm "goes off" while cleaning it:

The person is either an idiot that didn't make sure the firearm was unloaded or the person is an idiot that was playing with a loaded gun and is pretending to be an idiot that didn't make sure the firearm was unloaded. If a gun "goes off" while cleaning it that person is either an idiot or a lying idiot.

There is absolutely and unequivocally never a justification for a firearm to "go off" while cleaning it. Never.

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

It is literally impossible for me to stress this enough. Ignoring this rule, this profoundly simple, incredibly important, stunningly and mind-bogglingly easy to obey rule, can get you, your family, or someone completely uninvolved killed.

And it will be entirely and totally your fault. You will have ended someone's life because you didn't bother to unload the firearm.

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

Alright, so now that you're absolutely and completely sure that the firearm is unloaded, there are some basic principles to keep in mind that apply regardless of the type of firearm.

Supplies

The main purpose of cleaning your firearm is to ensure all of the little bits and parts move and act as they are designed and intended. Aside from environmental factors, firing a cartridge produces debris and fouling that deposits and builds up over time. Remember, you are literally creating a tiny explosion to force a piece of metal through a piece of metal every time you fire a round, and this leaves behind powder residue, particles from the bullet, and collected gases from the combustion, all of which need to be removed.

There are two basic cleaners you'll need, a CLP-type product and a solvent, largely for the bore (the interior of the barrel) but also used for other areas. The type of solvent you need depends on the type of round you're shooting but will almost certainly be either a lead or a copper solvent. Hoppe's No. 9 is probably the most common, widely used solvent and is effective on lead. Hoppe's also has a copper solvent product available.

For most applications, a simple lead solvent is all you'll need. Copper, being much harder than lead, doesn't necessarily require cleaning with a copper-specific solvent every single time you shoot. Copper solvents are also slightly more involved as you have to ensure you're using an appropriate bore brush. Most of your common bore brushes are made from bronze, an alloy that contains copper, and will literally melt away when used with a copper solvent. There are, of course, a wide variety of appropriate brushes available on the market.

In addition to the cleaners you will need a caliber-appropriate cleaning rod and bore brush, a patch holder that fits your cleaning rod, a rod guide, some patches, and a small brush, all of which can be found at any store that carries guns and quite a few that don't. You don't have to buy everything separately either, cleaning kits are very common and range from little pocket pouches to full-on luggage-sized tool chests complete with handle and rollers. Just get a small kit that's sized for your firearm, kits are based on caliber and will be clearly marked.

Disassembly

Now there's about three different stages of disassembly your firearm can be in: assembled, field stripped, and detail stripped. Before you do anything though, can you guess this next part?

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

Even if you're just wiping the dust off, don't handle the firearm for any cleaning without ensuring it is unloaded. It's not impossible to catch a rag on the trigger and put a round somewhere you don't want it if you didn't:

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

Assembled is basically useless to our purposes here, but take this opportunity to wipe off any excessive dirt or dust or anything like that. If you dropped it in a mud puddle you should probably address that first, otherwise we'll move on.

Field stripping means you've disassembled the firearm far enough that you can access and clean the major components that require frequent attention. The term comes from the military, like many firearms terms, and was applied to literally disassembling, or stripping, the firearm in the field where a properly functioning weapon is critical. The point of field stripping and cleaning is to prevent and address issues before they render the firearm nonfunctional, while also removing a minimal number of parts. This ensures both that the firearm can be quickly reassembled if the situation changes and that the small, easily lost, parts are retained in the firearm while minimizing the number of parts that are removed and can potentially be lost.

For our civilian purposes, field stripping is just the minimum level of disassembly for cleaning that should be done every time you use your firearm. You'll remove the major pieces, such as the slide and the bolt, and address those and the chamber and the bore. This level of cleaning, depending on your firearm, will be sufficient for a very long time as long as you do a thorough job after every shooting session.

Detail stripping is, almost certainly, a pain in the ass. This is taking the firearm down completely, to each individual component, as far as you can until every single piece is separate or you've reached parts that aren't intended to be disassembled by anyone other than a gunsmith or the factory. Detail stripping is really only necessary if you also need to replace parts or diagnose some other issue.

If you are not comfortable detail stripping your firearm, then don't.

There are quite a few tiny pieces that have to be removed in a precise position or sequence and may require specialized tools that are either difficult or impossible to find or far too expensive in quite a few firearms designs. In addition, it's all well and good if you do manage to take it apart... but can you put it back together? This is why there are gunsmiths. If you're not comfortable, or if you think you are and end up making a mess of things, then call your local gunsmith.

I strongly suggest not detail stripping your firearm unless you are absolutely confident you know what you're doing, have access to complete diagrams and instructions, and are comfortable potentially damaging your firearm either to the point of having to replace one or more parts or beyond your ability to repair.

Cleaning

We'll assume you've field stripped your firearm, after you, of course, say it with me:

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.

Did you make sure? Are you still sure? Alright, good.

The actual cleaning process is uncomplicated. Soak a patch or a Q-Tip generously with your solvent or cleaner and wipe down any areas that have accumulated residue. Focus on any location directly in contact with the round when chambered and all nearby areas. The accumulated residue will almost certainly be dark grey or black, so look for areas that should be shiny but aren't. If your firearm doesn't make seeing the carbon buildup easy then focus on the areas mentioned and work your way out from there.

It's important to keep in mind that you're just cleaning off residue. You don't need to go full speed with a scrubbing pad or anything like that, you're not trying to scrub off the finish or polish a flat spot into a part. Most of the time all you'll need is a patch and some moderate pressure. If you need to use a wire brush don't bear down on it like you're trying to force it through the entire piece. Keep the pressure moderate and use more solvent.

This part is simple, we've all cleaned things before. When your patch gets dirty, use a new one. You're done when your patch stops being dirty. Lightly wet a patch with two or three drops of oil and give everything you've just cleaned a nice thin coating. I also like to give the barrel and every surface I can easily reach a very light coat as well. Don't overdo it on the grips, if you give them a coat then I would suggest taking a dry patch and wiping them down further.

Cleaning the bore is only slightly more difficult, but there are some things to keep in mind. If at all possible, you should always clean from breech to muzzle, or from back to front. The term breech describes an opening at the rear of the firearm intended to accept a round while muzzle indicates the face or the end of the firearm from which the round exits. If it helps, think of muzzleloaders which are loaded from the muzzle end of the firearm.

Do not insert the rod through the front end of the barrel if you can avoid it.

However, on some designs this is impossible to avoid. That's okay, just go slow and take your time. The primary reasons for this are to protect the rifling and the crown of the barrel.

Barrels are specifically designed to facilitate movement of the round from the back to the front, and your cleaning rod should be no different.

At the end of your barrel, all around the bore, is a precisely machined divot, groove, or rounded edge called the crown. When you fire a round, the gases propel the round forward and are actually moving faster than the round at the instant the round leaves the barrel. The purpose of the crown is to distribute those gases out and away from the round evenly so they don't effect the flight of the bullet. If the crown is damaged then these gases are not pushed evenly away from the bullet and can actually push the bullet around and influence the point of impact.

So, protect your crown, go from breech to muzzle, if possible, and be gentle coming back through. You should be using your rod guide, a small round piece with a hole in the center that fits around the rod and centers it in the barrel, regardless but it is particularly important to remember to use it if you have to go from muzzle to breech.

To actually clean the bore, simply soak your brush with your solvent and then gently but firmly push it into and through the entire barrel and then pull it back out. It's up to you whether you do several strokes through or if you do one and let the solvent soak for a short while and then do another. If you haven't cleaned the bore in awhile, I would let it soak for up to a minute or two and then run the brush through again, but for regular cleaning you can usually get away with just a good scrub.

After brushing, take a clean patch and run that through the bore exactly once. It's gonna be dirty. Replace the dirty patch and do it again and repeat until the patch comes out clean.

There's some arguments about this part, but what I like to do is very lightly wet a patch, and I mean very lightly, with oil, we're talking two drops at the most, and run that through the barrel several times just to get a nice, very thin, very light, protective barrier on the squeaky clean bore. This isn't strictly necessary and you definitely don't want to overdo it, but it's how I like to finish off the barrel.

After everything is nice and clean and has a light coating of oil, just put the firearm back together. I like to do a functions check at this point, which is simply performing every action as though the firearm were loaded and attempting to dry fire.

It is important to make sure your firearm is safe to dry fire.

A large number of firearms are completely safe to dry fire, but read your manual or check online before doing so. Older firearms, rimfires in particular, should not be dry fired as this can damage either or both the firing pin or the chamber. If you have any doubts then don't dry fire. There is a product known as snap caps which are fake dummy rounds that allow safe dry firing for functions checks and training.

Conclusion

Cleaning your firearm is a fairly simple but absolutely vital task. You need to become comfortable enough with all of your firearms to be able to properly clean them after every use. I've heard of firearms that have been used heavily for half a century without being cleaned once that still work like new but I've heard countless more stories about firearms that require frequent and thorough cleaning to run properly. Cleaning your firearms is one of those tasks that can be a chore, I admit, but as you continue to do so you'll get to a point where it is a routine, even relaxing, task.

Thank you for reading. I welcome questions, comments, and requests in the replies, and I hope you'll continue reading in the future. This post was originally intended to include information about storage as well, but the cleaning portion kinda got away from me. So, I intend to cover proper and safe storage in the next post in this Introduction series.

Thank you again for reading, and one last time:

MAKE SURE THE FIREARM IS UNLOADED.