Gun Maintenance:

Some duty guns never get fired (or even drawn) and just have to look nice on an officer’s belt. Others are used for training or in the field and get worked like a mule.

Therefore, gun cleaning and maintenance are more essential for some duty guns than for others. All the same, for any handgun, rifle or shotgun, basic gun cleaning and maintenance is one of the pivotal keys to fluid operation, and more importantly, to the reliability that keeps officers safe while in the field.

This short guide will break down some of the basic considerations for duty gun cleaning and maintenance.

Exactly how you need to clean a duty gun will depend on a variety of factors. These include how often the gun is fired, the sorts of operating conditions it experiences, how it is stored, and what sort of action it has.

For instance, you could pretty much get away without ever cleaning a break action shotgun - not that break actions are common in duty guns, but just for the purposes of illustration the example stands.

With a gas impingement rifle, that paradigm shifts. A dirty gas system, fouling accumulation around the bolt face and extractor, and more can also make a rifle jam or worse - and that can carry severe consequences in the line of duty.

Basic best-practices suggest that you should clean a duty gun within 24 hours of firing it, if not sooner - regardless of action type or gun caliber.

There are three main types of gun cleaning and maintenance agents that you can use to keep a gun clean. These are cleaning agents, lubricants and protectants.

Cleaning agents, such as bore solvents and degreasers, are used to dissolve powder fouling, copper fouling, lead fouling, grease and oil so that they can be stripped away.

Lubricants, like gun oil, grease, and choke lube, are applied to moving parts after they are cleaned in order to minimize friction between the gun parts. This helps prevent jams and lockups, reduces heat produced during operation, and helps prevent premature wear.

Protectants, like oil, grease, wax, sealant or bluing compounds, are applied to the hardware, furniture, and exposed metal and wooden parts of service guns so as to protect them against wear, corrosion, and other influences.

Most gun cleaning kits come with the main essential components or tools you will need to clean a duty gun. These include a cleaning rod, jags that can hold patches, patches themselves, and mops and bore brushes. In some instances you might need additional specific tools, like an armorer’s wrench (to remove or adjust parts), a bushing wrench, or a choke tube wrench, but these are secondary and many guns can be disassembled or at least partially disassembled for the purpose of cleaning without the need for special tools.

For basic gun cleaning of repeaters (like pump and bolt-action firearms) and semi-automatic actions (including gas and recoil-operated actions), the most basic cleaning protocols include cleaning the bore and action.

Prior to cleaning, partially disassemble the firearm so that the barrel may be cleaned from breech to muzzle. Use an appropriate bore solvent to remove whatever fouling is present (powder, copper, lead or otherwise) and use a combination of brass bore brushes and patches to clean the bore until it is spotless. Always clean from breech to muzzle to avoid damaging the muzzle crowning.

Equally important is to make sure that the action itself is clean and clear. You may need a combination of brass and nylon brushes along with an appropriate solvent to scrub away any fouling from the breech face/bolt face, the edges of the chamber, the bolt/bolt carrier body, and extractor and ejector.

Pay particular attention to the bolt face where the firing pin is housed; too much fouling in the channel that carries it can prevent the firing pin or striker from striking the primer with sufficient force, incapacitating the firearm. Also, pay close attention to the edge of the chamber and to the extractor claw; too much fouling here can prevent proper extraction, resulting in jams.

Once the action and bore are clean, you can apply an appropriate lubricant (as needed) to the bolt, bolt carrier, slide channel, and other moving parts of the firearm. Use enough to make sure that friction is minimized, but as little as needed, as liquid lubricant attracts dust, dirt and fouling.

For more thorough cleanings, you may want to drop the trigger group and magazine and clean these. A gritty trigger may result from an accumulation of fouling, and a dirty magazine will not seat or feed as reliably as one that has been properly maintained.

After cleaning and lubricating, reassemble the gun and work the action a few times to evenly spread whatever lubricant you’ve applied. This will help ensure an even coating.

This is also the point at which you will want to apply protectant (as needed) to the exposed metal or wood components of a firearm. Some coated steels do not require protectant and as a general rule, neither do synthetic or composite components like plastic grips, stocks, or forends.

This is, of course, only to serve as a general guide for duty gun cleaning. Different firearm actions may require special cleaning notes based on their unique features.

While duty gun cleaning is not exciting and is just “part of the job” it is an essential one.

Properly cleaned, lubricated and maintained service weapons will last longer, serve more reliably, and function more fluidly than those that are not routinely maintained.

Routine maintenance protocols can constitute the difference between a weapon that functions as intended or one that experiences issues with feeding, extracting, ejection, and cycling. Moreover, a clean, rifled firearm is more accurate than one that is laboring under loads of copper or lead fouling.

For duty weapons that are suppressed, it is important to note that elevated chamber pressures and a tendency to produce more fouling will require that these be maintained and cleaned more frequently than guns that are not.

Action components, like recoil springs and gas rings, on suppressed arms will wear out more quickly than on those that are not. Moreover, the bores of suppressed weapons will accumulate fouling at an accelerated rate. The suppressor itself will also become occluded by fouling fairly rapidly. These should be cleaned on the same schedule as the guns themselves, ideally after every live-fire session.

Keeping service weapons clean is one of the keys to reliability and longevity, and we have gun cleaning kits along with gun parts that are necessary to render a high level of proper maintenance, as well as to make repairs or upgrades as needed. If you have any questions about our parts, kits, or pricing, get in touch with our customer service representatives directly.