Cleaning reminder, FTF

[shibumiseeker]

I know many of you obsessively detail your guns every time you shoot and then pull them out of the safe and go over them every few weeks even if you haven't shot them. Kudos to you. My carry weapons get shot a couple of times a month to cycle the carry ammo, and lightly cleaned after. Once in a while (year or two?) they get detail stripped and cleaned. Never had one fail to go bang when pulled out of the holster, so it works for me. I shoot almost daily with a variety of pistols so I don't have time to clean every gun every time. Usually sometime in the winter I get the shooting shack nice and warm with a heater and go through a day of gun cleaning when the farm chores are caught up for that day. Some of my Buckmarks get soaked in solvent every few months when they start to get sludgy... (yes, I know that makes some of you cringe, I don't care)

I have an EAA Witness P Compact 10mm that I picked up used many years ago. I tested its functionality when I bought it, cleaned the barrel and rails, and then put it away. Got it out of the safe yesterday as I was working up a new 10mm load and wanted to see how it shot in all of my 10mms (ok, I have a -lot- of 10mms, so this is not a trivial task).

Click.

Hmm. No primer strike, not even a light one.

I can strip a Glock down to parts and reassemble in my sleep. I can troubleshoot the very few problems they might have. But this is my only EAA.

Fiddle with it and notice that the firing pin block on the slide is not springing back as usual after pressing it in. Reload and try again and same thing. Do this a few times and sure enough. Try cocking the hammer and restriking and get a few times when it would fire, a few times when it wouldn't.

Off to the internetz to see about an expanded parts diagram and it looks basically the same to disassemble as the Glock. Dismantle, squirt some solvent, q-tip in, reassemble (no oil), and viola! Problem solved.

Some reminders of things I knew:

Lubing the firing pin channel is not only not needed, but accelerates gunk accumulation. I never do this, but a lot of owners do. This is one of those religion things (people arguing endlessly over something that really only matters to them). If you want to do it and want to detail clean your gun frequently, go nuts. If you don't lube it, it'll go a lot longer without needing cleaning so if you're like me and don't have time to detail strip and clean several dozen guns frequently, then this may be a better strategy for you. The upshot of any of this though, over time oils will polymerize and oxidize and thicken, so if you put a gun away for many years and you've lubed it when you did, a detail strip and clean is not a bad idea. Most owners use way too much oil on their guns (I don't. Very sparing.) so even if you don't lube the firing pin channel, lube can get in there. I suspect the previous owner cleaned it up and lubed it up really good before selling to me :-). Some lubricants are MUCH better at long term resistance to going bad. Quality is worth the money.

 

[gregkl]

I used to clean my guns after every range visit or hunting trip. It was easy when I went to the range a few times per year. Now that I go every weekend, I do a field strip and quick clean when the black ooze starts getting me dirty. A detail strip and clean is very infrequent; maybe 1X per year or longer.

I do occasionally add a drop or two of lube at the range if a slide is running dry.

I have tried in the past to run guns without cleaning until I got a malfunction. With the exception of one of my autoloader shotguns, I just gave up waiting on a malfunction and cleaned them.

 

[Leadeye]

An issue I've always run into with old guns which usually prefer to be oily to function well. They get periodic cleaning with chlorinated brake cleaner and then a re-oil with Ballistol.

 

[Hkindiana]

Once a year (usually), every year, whether they have stopped working or not

 

[bwframe]

Oh the shame shibumieeker...

I clean as needed. With most modern guns, this ain't that much.

That said, a few years back I let my carry G19 go too far. I had shot a few matches over a couple years and done absolutely nothing to the gun. All the while, carrying the gun every day. Sweat and dirt in the summer, dead skin cells and clothing lint all the time.

I was shooting Coaches carry gun match with the gun and thinking I needed a sandwich or something. The trigger seemed to harder and harder to pull. Checked the trigger at home later, trigger pull was nine pounds.

I detail cleaned and lubed the gun, but in hindsight I wish that I'd just dripped some FP10 into the connector vicinity to see if that was the whole issue. I think it was.