Gun cleaning sucks!

[The Saint]

Just cleaned 14 guns from the range trip today...only took a little over an hour, as all were smokeless. Coming from my black powder roots; the rule is "If you shoot it, you clean it." It's that easy to keep good habits and long life of firearms.

 

[Budo7]

Depends on what gun it is I am shooting. AR, I wipe down and lube. Sig EDC since I shoot that 2 x a week 100 rounds, I clean it every 2 weeks. Long range guns since they tend to sit longer, I clean after I shoot since they tend to stay in the safe till the season rolls around.

 

[SavedbytheGraceofGod]

Some of the analogies comparing gun cleaning to car maintenance and laundering clothes got me like . Be careful out there...

 

[Samlab]

Not cleaning them right after shooting them is asking for rusty guns. They are metal, period. Does not matter the type of ammo. I take pride in avoiding lazy. Its a fight as Im only happy after the results of spic n span. Cleaning is the it sucks part of shooting as I get older. I should have stuck to the simple .22

 

[SavedbytheGraceofGod]

Not cleaning them right after shooting them is asking for rusty guns. They are metal, period. Does not matter the type of ammo. I take pride in avoiding lazy. Its a fight as Im only happy after the results of spic n span. Cleaning is the it sucks part of shooting as I get older. I should have stuck to the simple .22

Agreed! We don't want to be shooting something that could malfunction due to negligence in cleaning properly. The tolerances are small and it's not worth the risk of hurting ourselves or someone nearby when we could simply follow the manufacturers instructions to clean, store, and properly maintain our firearms.

 

[teratos]

Not cleaning them right after shooting them is asking for rusty guns. They are metal, period. Does not matter the type of ammo. I take pride in avoiding lazy. Its a fight as Im only happy after the results of spic n span. Cleaning is the it sucks part of shooting as I get older. I should have stuck to the simple .22

Do you shoot in a lake?

 

[rooster]

I went to the range yesterday and shot a bunch of my guns. It was a blast. <Get it Blast..... Now the part I hate. Cleaning them all. I know there will be many of you that say one day at the range doesn't mean the gun need cleaning and maybe they don't but I am just that guy that likes to keep my shit clean. I can't help myself. Who hates cleaning guns as much as I do?

I shoot full auto (a 5.56 and a 9mm) and almost always shoot 500+ rnds/gun at the range. So I clean after every trip. What a pain! I think it would be a profitable business to offer traveling cleaning services. I'd gladly pay a person to clean my guns!

 

[forging.a.better.tomorrow]

Lube is meant for application on clean and well-maintained surface contact points/parts. It's designed to prevent wear by reducing friction and to ensure smooth movement between them.

The accumulation of particulate matter in lube changes its viscosity and degrades its lubricating properties. This accumulation can affect lubricating performance on these parts and it can subject the firearm to greater wear and malfunctions as a result. Lube can also cause this particulate matter to travel and accumulate at critical function points inside the firearm, and cause malfunctions as a result.

I'm not carrying or depending on a gun unless it's freshly cleaned, lubed and function checked... and I do it every time after a range session.

How often do you clean the lint out of your carry firearms?

 

[FRS GOCAV]

I went to the range yesterday and shot a bunch of my guns. It was a blast. <Get it Blast..... Now the part I hate. Cleaning them all. I know there will be many of you that say one day at the range doesn't mean the gun need cleaning and maybe they don't but I am just that guy that likes to keep my shit clean. I can't help myself. Who hates cleaning guns as much as I do?

Yes, you are correct. only thing worse is cleaning your gun when you run 2 or 3 hundred of rounds of blanks.

 

[Tactical Patriot]

I went to the range yesterday and shot a bunch of my guns. It was a blast. <Get it Blast..... Now the part I hate. Cleaning them all. I know there will be many of you that say one day at the range doesn't mean the gun need cleaning and maybe they don't but I am just that guy that likes to keep my shit clean. I can't help myself. Who hates cleaning guns as much as I do?

I prefer to clean my firearms after I shoot them. If I take multiple to the range I normally just clean 1 a night until they are all clean. Sometimes I’ll clean 2 if I feel up to it. Sometimes I enjoy cleaning firearms sometimes I don’t. Lol makes it better when it’s a new gun!

 

[AKbythebay]

Part of the reason I rarely shoot is that I hate cleaning them afterward.

Hate to admit it, but this describes my feelings as well. Sometimes when I go to the range, which is very rarely these days, I purposely take only a couple guns just because it's less to clean after. I hate cleaning the damn things. I get no joy in it at all. Hell I haven't even cleaned my CCW gun since qualifying with it a year ago. Ugghhh, before you say it ... I will clean it I promise.

 

[Wheaton Hills Sportsman]

The older the gun is the more I clean it, a Glock, or an AR-15, can go hundreds of rounds between cleaning, but a Colt Hammerless, or a Savage 99, need more inspection and more frequent cleaning.

 

[Sunrise]

How often do you clean the lint out of your carry firearms?

I've never found lint inside my carry firearms, but I specifically chose an enclosed optic which doesn't accumulate lint in it FWIW.

I have a high standard for what I consider clean and functional when it comes to my carry firearms. You do you.

 

[Sunrise]

Just cleaned 14 guns from the range trip today...only took a little over an hour, as all were smokeless. Coming from my black powder roots; the rule is "If you shoot it, you clean it." It's that easy to keep good habits and long life of firearms.

Serious "pit crew" skills here. Respect.

 

[Sunrise]

Part of the reason I rarely shoot is that I hate cleaning them afterward.

Question for you or anyone who's used it:

Does Federal Syntech 9mm run appreciably cleaner than Speer Lawman 9mm? I've never tried it. Curious about people's experience with it.

 

[davlan1879]

My M91 Mosin Nagant is the worst, no matter how many patches I run through it they don't come out clean.

 

[Dippah]

Having a clean and properly lubed gun gives me peace of mind so I don't mind at all.

That being said, I don't clean my guns often when I know i'll be shooting them regularly and I make sure the ones that aren't in rotation are well cleaned and lubed before storing them away.

In fact, before all the craziness I wanted to run a Glock and AR to the point of failure with just keeping an eye on lubrication and neither failed me before I concluded I'd hate to be in an actual fight that one time it fails!

 

[willtill]

My M91 Mosin Nagant is the worst, no matter how many patches I run through it they don't come out clean.

Yep. The exception... old C&R battle rifles are like that. I have some that I have really, really, really, really worked hard at to get clean patches out of them. It just ain't happening.

Well, one day it may. Tenacity is my middle name.

 

[lazarus]

Jeesuz H Kroist! Do we really need another reason to divide ourselves?

Ford versus Chevy.

And....GO!

 

[lazarus]

I couldn't put a dirty gun back in a safe. You get into that practice, you forget what's been fired often and when was the last time you actually cleaned it.

Rode hard and put away wet. The horror...

Maybe I don't have enough guns, it isn't that hard to remember. As several others have said, if you do a through cleaning once a year, it doesn't really matter. My guns that get shot enough that they can stand to be cleaned more of than that aren't hard to remember which ones those are. Because it usually means a lot of shooting.

My only exception are hunting guns if they end up being carried into bad weather. Then they'll get stripped down to be dried, cleaned, and oiled at the soonest possible time.

The fact remains, the "clean them every time" crowd is generally wrong about the "clean them rarely" being wrong. The "clean them rarely crowd" happens to be right...but also, it doesn't really matter much so long as you aren't doing anything wrong in the cleaning of the firearm. or don't care about your "cold bore" shot being off. That last is something I noticed. After every cleaning, no matter what was done with the bore after cleaning, the first shot was always off. Stopped it, and my cold bore shots are right where the next, and the next, and the next shots were. After a cleaning, the first shot is almost inevitably from 1-2 inches off from my next shots at 100yds. Pistol that wouldn't really matter.

So long as you aren't doing overly aggressive brushing, or scraping a rod against the bore or crown, the extra wear involved in normal barrel cleaning chemicals and poly brushes mixed with the carbon and copper in the bore is probably at most taking low single digit life off the barrel even if you clean it after every single range trip for the entire life of the bore. Bronze brushes up that a little. Ehhh.

Mechanical reliability can go up some by frequent cleaning. But again, is it enough to matter? Failures from a gun being dirty that I have ever seen, experienced, or heard of have 100% been guns that have seen many thousands of rounds before a cleaning (and just as often have a worn out part that needed replacing too), or ended up being exposed directly to dirt/mud/sand/ice/snow or were used in a blowing sand environment. I have never heard of, seen, or experienced a gun suffer a failure because of a few hundred rounds through it before it was cleaned. A carry piece, sure I can grok generally keeping it exceptionally clean. But that is as much because it is getting sweaty, you are getting dirt on and in it sometimes, etc. and that .000001% chance of a reliability problem because you put 50 rounds through it and that slight hint of carbon build up is enough to cause it to have a failure to go into battery limp wristing it is because you should have replaced the recoil spring 1000 rounds before, well then why not clean it a lot.

"an unclean gun says a lot about a man" is just another way of saying, "I myself have a lot to compensate for". Since there is juice to the squeeze of not cleaning a gun frequently in both time savings and longevity, so long as there isn't some good reason to clean it, like corrosive ammo, then it says more that the person who isn't cleaning their guns obsessively better understands that, or isn't an obsessive person.

It would be like saying a messy car or messy house says a lot about a person. Sure, it means they live their life and/or doesn't have OCD. I want my house completely spotless? I can spend hours every week cleaning it, holding my kids to strict discipline to never make messes or clean up immediately after making one, etc. Or I can live with a little bit of a messy house and make sure no one is making a huge mess. And then just periodically clean things if it starts getting real disorganized or bad. If I didn't have kids, cats, and a wife, my house would likely be a lot cleaner, with a lot less effort. But then I wouldn't be living really. Or I can spend those hours and hours to get...what? I don't enjoy cleaning and it isn't like the house is falling apart because it isn't vacuumed once per day and everything picked up and put in its place the moment it is disturbed. Yeah, the opposite can be said for those people who have obviously never run a vacuum cleaner in their life, have a foot of junk in the back of their car or truck, and need to step over piles in their house. Or their guns are just gummed up and rusty. Rarely is an extreme a healthy or good thing.

20, 30 minutes not spent stripping and cleaning my guns and running patches and brushes down the barrels of my guns after a range trip is 20-30 minutes I can use for something else. Load some ammo for my next range trip. Be present for my wife or kids. Lots of time it is get back to my paying job as I am often taking a morning off to go to the range. Since it isn't needed usually and contributes to shortening the life of my bore, even if only in a very tiny why, why would I waste that time? I guess if I loved cleaning guns so much I get something special out of doing it, or my OCD simply does not allow me to not have clean things, in which case doing it would reduce my anxiety.