Top 10 cleaning blunders: common sense and quality products = happy handguns

You had a great time at the shooting range, right? Now it's time for the boring stuff--gun cleaning time. But you're hungry and tired, and the sofa beckons. We all do it--put the gun away dirty and tell ourselves we'll do a good ,job of cleaning it the next time. But if you take the time to clean it now, and do a few preventive maintenance tasks, you can save yourself lots of trouble by heading off potential problems before they start.

TIP #1--Use minimal lubrication.

Over-lubrication is one of the worst things we do to the guns we love.

"Too much oil holds all the grunge and the unburned powder and the junk like that, and that gums up the gun," says Ken Jorgensen of Ruger. "It takes very little oil to lubricate a handgun; too much oil actually makes it unreliable, whether it's a pistol or a revolver. All it takes is five or six drops of oil. On a pistol, a drop of oil front and back on the rails and a drop on the barrel hood, and that's about it."

If you do use too much oil and end up with a gunky gun, do a real good cleaning job on it. If it's a pistol, field strip it. "Take the slide off, take the barrel out of the slide, and use some solvent to clean everything up." Jorgensen says.

TIP #2--Be sure the screws are tight.

This is mostly a revolver issue--most autopistols use pins rather than screws. "Depending upon the design, the most important screw is the one that holds the cylinder in place," says Jorgensen. "Different makes of revolvers secure the cylinders in various ways, but any way is critical and you need to keep an eye on it."

On autopistols, grip screws often loosen, and oil revolvers like Colt's Single Action Army and the clones, frame screws. hammer and trigger screws and especially the ejector rod screw all work loose regularly. Use proper fitting screwdrivers (like those from Brownells) to make sure you don't bugger-up the screw heads.

TIP #3--While you have the grips off, clean under them.

"Clean under the grips even on stainless steel guns," Jorgensen says. "Moisture gets trapped under the grips, and if you don't look under them for a few years you may have something going on that you're not to happy with." This applies to autos or revolvers. A good toothbrush can also help you to get in those tiny nooks and oratories where rust can hide, like around sights.

TIP #4--When you take a pistol apart, be careful where the springs go.

"When you take the slide off the frame, the mainspring is either a captured-type or loose," Jorgensen says. "If you lose control of the spring it may go shooting across the room. If it happens to whack somebody, or if you're not wearing safety glasses and it hits you in the eye, you have a serious problem. I've seen a spring hit a ceiling panel and leave a pretty good sized mark." Sometimes it's not a bad idea to take your antopistol apart by holding down into an open cardboard box to help catch errant goodies that may fly off. At least until you get the hang of it all.

TIP #5--If you take it apart, make sure you get it back together the way it was. This one's pretty self-explanatory, right? Wrong. Go to any neighborhood gun store and they'll tell you the stories of the "bag-o-gun" customers who come in. Generally they're wearing a sheepish face and are carrying a brown paper bag full of gun parts that used to fit together nicely. Small fortunes have been made by smiling gunsmiths as they put S&W revolvers back together. There's been a few Ruger Standard Autos brought in as "bag" guns too! The digital camera age can make this chore easier. Take some photos as you break your gun down and you then have those to rely on to put things back in order.

TIP #6--Check for parts that are cracked, especially on guns with alloy frames.

"Look at the frame," Jorgensen says. "On a pistol, look where the slide rides back and forth, on the rails, because that gets hammered all the time." Pull the grips off and look under them for cracks as well. If you have a Smith & Wesson revolver, save yourself some embarrassment and don't assume the line on the right side of the frame is a crack--it isn't. The line is where the side plate goes in, it's a very carefully machined cut-out the side plate fits into.

TIP #7--Clean your gun every time you come back from the range.

OK, so this one's obvious. But do you do it'? If you're like the rest of us, you probably tell yourself you'll do a good job of it the next time and head for the sofa and the remote.

"First, a gun is easier to clean if you do it more often," Jorgensen says. "Cleaning a gun isn't a real exciting thing to do, but if you do it more often you don't have to do it as long." It's easier to get the grunge out if it hasn't built-up over ten shooting sessions! With modern powders and solvents, a good cleaning job shouldn't take more than about 10 to 15 minutes tops.

TIP #8--Wipe your gun down alter you use it.

This is another one that's obvious, but that a lot of people simply don't do. Each time you've been out shooting or hunting, wipe your gun down before you put it away. Those guys behind the counters of gun stores can tell you about all the rusty fingerprints they see all the time!