A lot of hay gets made
on shooting forums about cleaning, and the fact of the matter is, there is no fact of the matter.
I had my beat up old SKS for ages, and despite me deliberately doing nothing north of swabbing the bore, it functioned perfectly. And I hear horror stories all the time about AR platforms clogging or jamming, and I cannot but believe this is more about other things than cleaning.
There’s a simple soilution that can fix all this.
At IMTS, I was pleased to actually see this, an ultrasonic gun cleaning tank. (The company listed in the ad is a distributor)
No, this is not a consumer grade product. It costs over 4k, and is more suited to things like clubs and PD’s. But man, oh man, does it clean. Of course, they didn’t have any dirty guns to clean in Mordor, but they had plenty of stuff to demonstrate; imagine taking a burned looking nasty piston out of a 40 year old vehicle and having the ultrasonics remove the varnish, grease, and smeg, and make the piston look like freshly machined aluminum in about 20 minutes with no operator intervention.
And you ca put an AR in the tank, stock and all. Open the bolt, and just drop it in. It also has a second stage dip tank that allows you to rustproof (Think Rem oil or similar) the firearm after cleaning (the cleaning solutions are typically caustics which don’t harm blue)
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Take a look at their 2 handgun cleaning system. $595 delivered w/chemicals? Might be worth it, and it looks large enough that you could probably put in a long gun barreled action in it (vertically) as long as you put up some sort of support bracket. Barrel still would be cleaned the old fashioned way, of course.
I try to clean my AR once a year and my 1911 also. They both run fine and I can still get tiny groups with the AR when I practice a lot.
Fired my Flintlock rifle today in a loosely organized match. About 30 rounds (these were REAL rounds) Do ya think that if I dropped the barrel & lock in that cleaner that it would clean that unholy mess? Or would the smell drive off all the customers?
Roger (LOL)
“I had my beat up old SKS for ages, and despite me deliberately doing nothing north of swabbing the bore, it functioned perfectly.”
ohyoudon’tsay. :-P
Adding that to the Lotto list :)
Clean all my iron as soon as I get home from the range.
My shooting buds clean, maybe, once a year.
Their shit and mine run the same.
What, I’m anal? I suppose. Prolly could save a buck or two, Butches ain’t cheap.
One word of warning with these cleaners. They work as advertised to loosen all the dirt and crud from all the nooks and crannies in a firearm, but they can’t defy physics. After the crud is loosened, it falls to the bottom. If the loosened crud is inside an action or a bolt (esp metal shavings of any sort, such as lead or copper), IT WILL NOT COME OUT OF THAT ENCLOSED SPACE. So, what you get at the end of the cycle is a very clean weapon, with crud in the enclosed spaces, now in a PILE instead of distributed around.
To use these, you have to get the action completely open, remove the firing pin from bolts, remove side-plate covers from revolvers, etc.
I used the one in our Sheriff’s Office gun cleaning station for years, but in the end, found that all the tear-down and re-assembly work wasn’t worth it.
Oh, one more thing: all that cleaning fluid just keeps coming out of the action for days unless you do some serious blowing on it with a compressed-air nozzle (suit up for that!)
yeah, I wouldn’t put a whole gun in for the above reasons- but the fluid is caustic, (think lye in suspension, like Safe-T Kleen) and it is formulated to suspend and remove the dirt. It gets dirty FAST, consequently, and has to be continually filtered- but it doesn’t just move the smeg around, it dissoves and flushes it, which is the difference between modern stuff and the systems from even four years ago. They reccomend an air knife and an enclosed box to do the blowdown, and you MUST re-oil the firearm immediately, because the process removes ALL protection from the firearm.
Be damned useful for some things.
I usually clean everything when I get back, though- depending on what and what ammo was used- a couple of patches through the bore & chamber and a wipedown of bolt & surfaces exposed to sweaty hands takes care of it nicely.
Except the carry piece; that gets a thorough cleaning. Probably not necessary, but it makes me feel better
I used to wash my hands with Safe-T-Kleen at my former job. Gets the grease stains off skin real well.
I have looked into this extensively for the Army. The cleanliness requirement for an AR-15 is a myth that goes back tot he 60’s. There have been significant improvements in the model since then. In modern ARs there are three primary causes of malfunctions:
1. Damaged magazines. Most soldiers use the same 7 mags day after day. 6 are stored in his body armor, which he takes off and throws to the ground at the end of each day. If the tops of the mags get bent, even a little, the feed path for the rounds is now changed just enough to cause a missfeed.
2. Lack of oil. In the desert, old NCO’s tell their troops that oil attracts dust and grit and leads ot malfunctions, so they should keep the actions dry. The truth is that dust anf grit are a part of the environment and will be in the weapon no matter what you do. Oil make the dust and grit slippery.
3. Damaged Ammunition. Ammunition that is part of a soldier’s basic load is already out of the box and loaded into magazines. Dust, grit and corrosion builds up between rounds in the magazine. Ammo needs to be maintained, just like guns.
Hope this helps.