Having been the go-to lady for keeping firearms clean for the last few years I’m often asked questions about my trade. Sometimes it’s as simple as “how do I take this thing apart?” More commonly it comes down to one of two categories: products that I have used or recommend, and what the process is for cleaning a gun. This month I’m going to go into some detail on what it is that I do.
Carbon can be pretty stubborn stuff but it’s also a good communicator which likes to make its presence known. Every time you send a round through the barrel a little more carbon (or a lot more carbon if you’re using a suppressor) gets dumped back into the firearm and starts to make a mess, however there are some details which we can learn about every firearm by tracking down these deposits. Some areas only get a light dusting while other areas build up so much that it might seem like your firearm is trying to create blocks of coal.
With chrome, nickel, stainless, or lighter colored finishes carbon fouling is very easy to find. All you have to do is look for the dark spots. On all black guns it can be a little more tricky, but it’s still not too difficult. What you’re looking for is any surface area which has taken on a matte texture. Sometimes this will be as dark as the inside of a black polymer frame. Sometimes (most notably at the end of the muzzle) it will appear more as a dull grey powder coat. Sometimes you can find traces of light brown or aquamarine in there as well. On the inside of the barrel you’ll see what look like rough edges around the rifling grooves or packed into the valleys of polygonally rifled barrels. Where you see the carbon you should clean the carbon, even if it’s “just cosmetic.” If it isn’t cleaned it will become harder to clean later, plus it has a nasty habit of rubbing off of external surfaces and going all over the place. It’s a good idea to not give it the chance to build up over time. You’ll be glad later that you kept it clean.
Different calibers foul at different rates. The good ol’ .45 ACP is a particularly dirty round in all of its forms while the 9×19 is generally pretty darn clean. Compounding this matter is that different firearm actions foul differently than others as well. Manual actions such as bolt, lever, and slide or pump run very clean while blowback and gas impingement designs are downright filthy. Try putting a few rounds through a .380 blowback pocket pistol then pick up the brass, a fair amount of it will be coated black. All of that residue is going somewhere and most of it (lucky you!) is getting dumped straight into your gun.
Great, so you’ve just put fifty plus rounds through your nice clean firearm and it’s starting to show signs of carbon fouling. This leads to another popular question: How frequently should I be cleaning my guns? My answer here is two-fold. The first part, is your firearm still operating reliably? If yes, clean it whenever you feel like it’s ready to be cleaned. There is no hard and fast rule here. I’ve heard stories of some guns going through multiple thousands of rounds without ever being cleaned, where the carbon is oozing out of every nook and cranny and it’s up for debate if all of that carbon might be in the process of evolving into a new life form beneath the slide. Some guns keep running away while others will choke and cease to function at all. Just keep in mind that the more often you take the time to clean it out the easier it will be the next time you want to clean it.
From my own perspective I like to clean my firearms as soon as I’m done using them. I don’t like the idea of putting them away dirty as one, that grime might make its way into an otherwise clean environment and two, I won’t know the status of that firearm when I next pull it out. That said I do tend to be a bit more lenient with the long guns. They don’t see quite as many rounds through them in a range session and, frankly, they can be a pain in the backside to clean. Pistols are easy. Rifles are a bit more of a time commitment. Still, they won’t see more than 200 rounds through them before that voice in the back of my head nags me to do something about them. “Protect your investments” and other such sound reasonings.
This all leads to the popular question I receive: “how do I clean it?” A lot of the areas to watch for are universal across the board, but every gun is a little different and as such they will foul differently. My best advice here is to learn to read the carbon patterns so that you will know where to look. Beyond that, there’s a lot of places to look for. (No, there will not be a quiz at the end of this article.)
The entire barrel. The entire recoil spring and guide rod (or the entire assembly if it cannot be taken apart.) The front and entire inside of the slide (the serrations are also really good at building up crud from your hands over time as well.) The front and entire inside of the frame.
But wait, I’ve just described almost the entire firearm! Unfortunately, this is correct. Carbon will get everywhere, and boy does it get everywhere. If you want to really clean your firearm, then be prepared to grab a mound of cleaning patches and invest some time. With enough experience you can fly through this process without giving it too much thought, I can clean most Browning action pistols in about 15-20 minutes these days. But, if you’re looking for a “swab and go” approach to hit the more critical areas, then you can shave a lot of time off, but you will be left with a fair amount of gunk still lingering about.
The abbreviated list focuses on the following: Bore and chamber, feed ramp, bolt/breech face, action rails/runway, recoil spring(s).
You want two things for proper reliability. The first is that the rounds can easily strip free of the magazine, chamber, and eject. The second is that the action is allowed to freely move with the fewest number of interruptions. If you’ve just put some practice rounds through your carry gun (and good for you for practicing!) and want to return it back to your hip as quickly as possible, then these few areas will keep your gun in the fight without all of the looking pretty of a full cleaning. I would also recommend wiping down the front of the slide, frame, and guide rod to keep that carbon from getting your clothes and holster dirty.
After cleaning simply apply a thin (THIN!) layer of oil or grease to any operating metal surface. The action and springs will always benefit from some lubrication but anything that slides, turns, or locks up against something else should see a little attention here.
It’s also a good practice to clean out your magazines from time to time though this step can be put off for a much longer period, which is good as they can be frustrating to clean out. Usually all it takes is a little solvent and a handful of Q-tips. Only thing to remember with the magazines is to install the spring in the correct direction and DO NOT lubricate your magazine. Yes, not even the spring. Lube in a magazine will attract all manner of unwanted crud and it will make a mess. They are happiest when they are running dry.
Now that I’ve listed almost everything under the sun to keep clean, how do you actually clean it all? There’s some key pieces of equipment which I feel everyone should have and some which I’ve personally come to not be able to live without.
The most important pieces are a bore brush and jag for your caliber of firearm, cleaning patches, some manner of solvent and lubricant, and a brush of some fashion whether it be nylon, brass, or bronze. Don’t use a brush with steel bristles! Gloves and a cleaning rag are extremely useful as well. The bore brush and jag (looks kind of like a brass piston with a thumb tack on the end) will need to be threaded into a cleaning rod. Again, don’t use one that is bare steel. Popular choices are brass, which can be pretty easy to unintentionally bend, and the high end ones which are a nylon coated spring steel. Brass is okay because it’s a softer metal than steel but whenever you have steel on steel contact you will eventually end up with undesired wear. With barrels in particular it’s possible to damage the crown and rifling. Flexible cleaning rods may be great for compact storage but there’s nothing preventing them from bouncing around inside of the barrel.
Personally I wouldn’t recommend the slot-style patch holders as I feel they don’t do nearly as good of a job, or any cleaning rod accessory which is made out of polymer as they are much easier to break.
There’s also something called a Bore Snake which can take the place of the cleaning rod, bore brush and jag all in one but if you use a bore snake make sure that you keep it clean as well.
Bore brushes and jags are designed to have a tight fit. Further, proper cleaning rods should freely rotate. This is because when the brush goes through the barrel it naturally wants to follow the rifling which means the whole thing wants to rotate as the brush is passing through. This is an operation which you will want to allow. These brushes also have a fairly limited life cycle, once they become fairly easy to pass through the barrel then they’re no longer any good and should be replaced. If the brush and cleaning rod can drop through the barrel with gravity alone, then you definitely need a new brush. A proper bore brush should require a bit of effort to run through the barrel. Worth noting, the wire bristles on these do eventually work themselves free so always be sure to run a patch down the barrel afterward in case one of them got left behind. Lastly, never try to change the direction of a bore brush partway through. Run it all the way out the end then draw it back through. If you can, always start from the chamber end rather than the muzzle end, too.
When using the right size of jag and cleaning patch you will also be in for a bit of a fight as these can fit much more snugly than the bore brush. If it’s too hard to push through then you can back a jag out, just be careful as it can separate from the barrel quite suddenly and with a fair bit of force. One trick to make a patch go through the bore more easily is offset the patch. A patch which is centered upon the jag will be a tighter fit than one which is not centered.
When cleaning barrels the first step is to run a wet patch through before switching to the brush. Give the brush a couple of passes and don’t worry about getting all of the carbon out. Short of some really aggressive cleaning options you will never get all of the fouling out of your firearm. For most applications it doesn’t have to be perfect, you just want to break up most of the crud. Again, this is easier to do if you regularly clean your gun!
Run another solvent patch or two through when you’re done scrubbing. If it comes out with a few light grey lines then you’re okay. If it comes out really dark then you’ll want to scrub it some more. If you’re using a particularly greasy solvent then you’ll want to run a dry patch through when you’re done to mop up the excess. Ideally this dry patch will come out looking really clean but don’t be too hard on yourself if it doesn’t. It’s real easy to spend a whole lot of time scrubbing the bore to within an inch of its life trying to get that last speck of carbon out of there but at the end of the day it just isn’t worth the trouble unless you’re ultra-competitive with accuracy.
The rest of the cleaning operation is a lot more straightforward. Look for the fouling, then keep poking at it until you bring the pretty out. Plastic dental-style picks and Q-tips are excellent for reaching smaller spaces while a wire or nylon brush is great for larger or flat surfaces.
Another common question I’m asked is which solvent/oil I think is best. Frankly, as long as you keep up with regular maintenance I’ve yet to find one which is remarkably better or worse. Some guns might prefer one kind more than another but I’ve used a number of different products and they all get the job done. These days my solvent of choice is Hornady’s One Shot. Before this I had been using Hoppe’s #9 for years, but upon discovering One Shot I’ve really appreciated not having that greasy film which #9 leaves behind. But, both still get the job done. Feel free to experiment and find one that you like, though do note that some cleaners are strong enough that they state right on the container not to let them sit or not to use them on certain finishes!
A lot of these cleaners will also claim to be a lubricant, but I don’t fully trust these claims. My belief is that if a product tries to do two things at once then it isn’t doing any one thing as well as it could be, so after using any solvent I will always follow up with a separate lubricant. These days it’s a Hoppe’s synthetic oil. Again, a little oil goes a long way. I can completely lubricate a pistol with just one dot of oil on a patch. Too much lubricant attracts debris and can make a mess, two things which you want to avoid. All you need is a thin film over the operating parts.
Remember that aquamarine coloration I had mentioned before? As I understand it, that’s what happens when the jacket of a bullet starts to vaporize from being fired. When that kind of metal oxidizes it turns that lovely shade of greenish blue. This type of fouling won’t easily come free unless you use a brass solvent, which also works wonders for removing brass wear or drag marks anywhere else upon your firearm. All you have to do is soak a patch then mop it over the area you want cleaned. Let it sit for a couple of minutes before wiping it dry. This can take several passes to fully clean an area and it’s slow going but it will eventually erase these marks.
Wrapping this up, there are a few additional tools which have become necessary within my own kit and out of these the one to have found a permanent home is what is called a ‘pick cleaner/scraper’ from Pro-Shot. This solid brass tool looks about the size and shape of a pencil with a flat head screwdriver on the end. Being brass it won’t hurt your gun, but it really lets you break up the harder to reach areas or the thicker carbon deposits. If the screwdriver looking bit gets too rounded then it can easily be brought back with a few light passes of a metal file. This tool is inexpensive and will last you forever. I’ve been heavily using the same one for over a year now.
Small punches aren’t a bad thing to have. Some firearms are tricky to take down or reassemble and especially for taking apart magazines, a good punch is a lifesaver.
Dental picks are a mixed bag. Plastic ones are great to have but metal ones can be used if you’re very careful. These are hard steel and can absolutely damage your firearm, especially with polymer surfaces, but if you need to be super precise then they work wonders. Just remember to be gentle any time that you are working with steel tools, just like a dentist doing that final inspection. My steel picks tend to be used for removing blobs of fouling which have already been broken up by the plastic picks or grabbing a cleaning patch which got away from me. Some people will say to never ever use metal picks, but if you have a delicate touch they do have their uses.
Modern firearms are pretty forgiving in regards to operating despite moderate to heavy fouling, but nothing beats keeping your tools cleaned and ready to go. It’s important to take some time to learn about your own firearm’s particular needs. All you have to do is keep the barrel clean and follow the carbon.
