As I was writing a different article, the subject of gun cleaning, maintenance, and properly lubricating firearms popped into my head. That led me down memory lane back to 1987 and my time on Parris Island with the then-new M-16A2. The levels to which we went to prepare our rifles for “final turn-in” bordered on psychosis when you step back and consider what we did.
Of course, when you’re a Private, you don’t question what you’re told, you just go along with the program trusting that those who are in charge know what they’re doing (I know). Nonetheless, now that I have the benefit of time and hindsight, some of what we were told to do would be viewed by any sane human as rather excessive.
To Clean or Not to Clean
For those who weren’t born and didn’t have the benefit of a thorough historical education, after we stopped using black powder in our guns — which was highly corrosive — and moved on to smokeless powder during the Spanish-American War, ammunition makers continued to use corrosive primers.
Corrosive primed ammunition got a bad rap as uneducated users equated the term “corrosive” with “instantaneous rust.” The truth was that the corrosive primers did exactly what was expected of them; they fired when needed and the big benefit was that corrosive primed ammo could be stored in military ammo bunkers for decades. Not a few years, but ten, twenty, thirty years or more.
When the Soviet Union fell and American importers brought in wonderfully inexpensive ammunition, I was shooting 7.62x39mm and 7.62x54R with corrosive primers that had been canned in the 1950s and 1960s, during the 2000s. It proved to be 100 percent reliable. You just had to clean the bolt and barrel once in a while. Your grandparents and great grandparents fought WWII and the Korean War with corrosive primed ammunition.
The “Mattel Rifle”
Way back when, the old GIs referred to the new M-16A1 as the “Mattel Rifle” as it was rumored that the plastic parts were made by the toy company. So modern and futuristic was the AR-15, with its all-aluminum receivers and polymer furniture that, combined with the new, totally non-corrosive 5.56mm ammunition, it was thought that maintenance and cleaning were an afterthought.
We all know the stories of GIs being sent to war in Vietnam minus cleaning kits or even the basic knowledge of how to properly clean and lube the futuristic rifles. The result of that, combined with a switch to ball powder from stick for ammo, proved disastrous. Soldiers paid a heavy price for the erroneous thinking. This resulted in the now famous cartoon booklets issued to GIs when cleaning instructions.
If the military is good at anything, it is over-correcting. By the time I was in boot camp in the 1980s the thought process had become one of a fear of a dirty gun. Military armorers wouldn’t just perform what you might call a “standard inspection,” they played f*ck-f*ck games with us that included things such as sticking a pipe cleaner deep into the gas key on the bolt carrier and proclaiming that the gun was “still dirty” if the white pipe cleaner came out gray.
Every shooter with more than two brain cells to rub together knows that, after an M-16 has been fired hundreds of times that it’s close to impossible to get into the gas key and remove 100 percent of the carbon. Also, carbon, in and of itself, doesn’t cause corrosion or rust.
I recall during the final phase of training, prior to final rifle inspection, our Drill Instructors collecting up all of our bolt carrier groups and soaking them in an ammo can filled with a liquid that was definitely not USMC-approved CLP. We didn’t ask and they didn’t tell us.
Carryover to the Civilian World
I once had a conversation with a custom precision rifle maker who had a customer send back a rifle because it would no longer hold a group. Upon closer inspection, it was determined that the rifling on the $400 custom barrel was shot. It was ruined.
Diving deeper, it was determined that the end-user had swabbed the barrel with a highly caustic copper solvent. So afraid of copper fouling was this man that he left the solvent in the barrel overnight. The end result was the destruction of the rifling. The copper fouling boogeyman is very real and many shooters have been taught to fear it like grim death.
From my forty years or so of shooting long-range precision rifles, I have never felt the need to even use copper solvent, much less leave it on overnight. Yes, there are certain calibers that do indeed produce copper fouling faster than others, but it isn’t the demon that has been portrayed in literature or Youtube videos. A good practice with a .308 precision gun is to run the bore-brush with CLP down it a few times every hundred rounds or so. Then run patches until they come out clean.
Mr. Glock’s Plastic Fantastic
Just as the AR-15 was supposed to be “maintenance free,” when the GLOCK 17 reached our shores, a similar claim made the rounds. Users were led to believe that the new plastic pistols were somehow self-cleaning.
The good news was that a G17 could indeed be run for hundreds of rounds without the need to strip it down for maintenance. But, even that gun needs some TLC once in a while. Lube needs to be applied to the rails of the slide and a light amount to the barrel with a quick scrub of the extractor.
A Happy Medium
What we witness today is two extremes. Those who believe that the bore needs to be swabbed with copper solvent every five shots and those who believe that as long as the gun is running, it doesn’t need to be cleaned.
As an example of that, we had a student come to us to say their EDC pistol wouldn’t fire. Upon inspection we discovered there was so much lint and funk inside the gun that it was fouling the firing mechanism. We cleaned it thoroughly and it came right back to life. Even if you haven’t fired your gun in six months, if you’ve been carrying it daily, you need to clean it.
All firearms are simple machines. The basic premise of machines with moving parts is that they function the best when they’re clean and properly lubed. A light amount of lubrication, wiped on with a moistened rag, should be applied to parts made of steel. A light coat of lube should be put onto any steel parts that will be moving/sliding against other steel parts, you know, like your truck engine.
When it comes to how to disassemble for basic cleaning and maintenance, it’s always best to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations found in the manual that came with the gun. Don’t throw that out with the box.
Yes, carbon builds up on pistols and rifles. Less expensive training ammunition tends to be dirtier than premium gun food. The bolt of your AR is your primary focus for carbon removal. Nonetheless, if you start out with a clean and properly lubricated bolt, cleaning is much easier. A good, stiff cleaning brush should be taken to the extractor once in a while to get the latent carbon off of that part.
Addressing the steel parts on the modern variety of polymer-framed, striker-fired pistols should take you all of ten minutes or so if you are diligent. Pass the borebrush that came with your pistol through the barrel a few times.
The moral of the story is that you don’t have to be psychotic about gun cleaning, but it is something that you should do after an extended range session or a training class. Keep the moving parts properly lubricated and you should be a happy camper.
Paul G. Markel is a combat decorated United States Marine veteran. He is also the founder of Student of the Gun University and has been teaching Small Arms & Tactics to military personnel, police officers, and citizens for over three decades.
last pic in article, looks like a spot of rust on the flash suppressor.
i thought the other main reason for the plastic rifles was that the ‘wiz kids’ of the pentagon decided that it was too expensive to chrome the bolt and other parts of the rifle.