Detail Cleaning Shortcut

Perhaps you’re not impressed with the idea of a quick detail cleaning procedure. Not if you own a sonic parts cleaner with a combination circulation/filtration/agitation system sitting on your bench. Not all gunsmiths can afford such luxury. One old gunsmith who couldn’t passed along this means of avoiding the expense. The needed components are inexpensive and readily available.

A rubber squeeze syringe is the central piece of equipment in preparation to remove any handgun, rifle or shotgun firing mechanism crud without initial detailed disassembly. Securing a squeeze bulb for this operation will call for a visit to your neighborhood pharmacy. I caution you against using the household poultry baster as a substitute. The reaction of the resident kitchen master to that happening is too terrible to speak of here. A short commentary about detail cleaning a gun.

I’m among the majority believing the only perfect means of going about it is to begin by breaking the piece down into all its components. All of them. These can be placed in a compartmentalized tray or on a series of clean paper towels. One by one, they will be inspected for obvious signs of wear or damage, scrubbed with good solvent and a brush, reinspected, and set aside to dry if no need for replacement is apparent or suspected.

Polishing may be called for, such as with pivot pins, ejector rods, the inside surfaces of firing pin assembly tunnels, and the side surfaces other parts that see frequent action, hammers and triggers being notable among the latter. After the polishing has been done and all remnant The age of the items shown reflects their mutually long service lives. The obvious exception is the newly purchased gallon of paint thinner.

Unseen but whose use is all important is a rubber squeeze syringe, wood blocks, and cloth stored within the pan. of the polishing compound flushed away, the part still has to dry. A hair dryer is recommended. A paint remover heat gun is not. Afterwards, the part should be very lightly lubricated by wiping it down with a high quality, pre-treated gun cloth. However, long experience has proven what follows to be true of entirely too many gun owners.

If the weapon is a hunting rifle or shotgun it was probably stashed in a closet immediately after returning from afield last year. There it has sat congealing the unburned powder, hastily applied lubricants (if any) and assorted granules of dirt into a solid, action-slowing mass. Until today. Today is the day before the hunting whistle blows tomorrow to get the season started this year.

In comes the gun from last year asking for a detail cleaning and you, the gunsmith, are near overload with guns promised to be finished. Also tomorrow. Worse, the scattergun is brought in with a target pistol. If both guns have to be done in time for a scheduled pick-up it’s best to start with the target gun. Just as likely as the hunting scattergun, it has been stashed since it last was fired. That could have been months ago. Maybe it had its barrel swabbed before reentering the gun box. Maybe.

Now, like the shotgun, it awaits your at-

Any trimmed down bronze bore brush can be added as more aggressive than those pictured. tention in its assigned storage space with action untouched. There’s another problem. Your reputation. Over the years you’ve become known for doing good work and delivering it on time at a fair price. As a result, there’s a pretty fair assemblage of guns locked up in your secure area that came into the shop before the newly arrived pistol and shotgun.

All have deadlines, not as critical as the new duo, but deadlines nevertheless. Delivery dates have been assured. Missing any wouldn’t be best business. You run a mental check of the coming day’s schedule and how to best serve of all customers concerned. The next match looms 35 miles away with first relay at 8:30 AM sharp. That’s OK. You can begin clean up of both weapons as soon as they get dropped off. That would happen about five minutes before you close up.

Said owner will pick up both about 7:00 AM, box the pistol, secure the shotgun in the car for transport, make the first relay, fire the match, box the pistol again, and be able to enter awaiting duck blind before the season starting horn sounds. Piece of cake? No way. But this particular gun owner happens to be a frequent and good customer; a keeper for sure. Plan Of Action So, what’s the plan of action?

What you can see in the basic setup is a covered aluminum pan (plastic also works), a gallon jug of hardware storevariety mineral spirits (Varsol can be substituted for mineral spirits if necessary), a can of silicone lubricant, a pair of rubber gloves, a rubber squeeze bulb (inside the pictured pan), and some other low investment items you’ll have purchased ahead of time because you’re going to find out how well they perform. What you can’t see inside the 16" x 16" pan are four 2" x 2" x 3/8" plywood squares.

Resting atop the squares is a 14-inch square piece of hardware cloth with 1/4" holes. What about the funnel? Make a cone filter for it from a paper towel, insert the filter, pour the dirtied fluid into the filtering funnel and back into its original container. You may have to filter the fluid more than one time to determine if it’s clear of residue. No sense dumping dirty solvent into the leftover clean stuff. Keep it clean and the solvent is good as new next time it’s needed.

Remove the grip panels from the field stripped pistol and the firing mechanism from the shotgun. Place them and the two pistol magazines on the hardware cloth. All components must be completely submerged in fluid. Put the cover on the pan to reduce evaporation. This setup takes ten minutes, probably less. You make it to your home-cooked dinner with time to spare for enjoying it.

It’s still early evening when you return to the bench, uncover the pan, suck up a bulb full of fluid and expel it forcefully into the firing system of the pistol. Don’t suck up the fluid from the extreme bottom of the pan. That’s where the fouling you’re flushing out will be settling. The wooden blocks supporting the hardware cloth and components will keep them above it all. Residue will pass through the 1/4" squares and all components will be spared sharing a dip in the dirt.

Repeat the flushing several times, then address the magazines the same number of times. Scrubbing the inside surface of the magazine bodies with a toothbrush between flushings will rid them of any built-up fouling that could interfere with the spring or follower. If a toothbrush is too large to worm its way into the pistol, use small diameter interdental brushes such as those available from Den Tek and other makers. One of them can perform amazing feats of residue removal in cleaning up any firing mechanism.

Pipe cleaners run a close second, but the small bristle nylon brushes can handle sterner stuff. The most aggressive cleaning tool can be fabricated from a phosphor bronze bristle tip normally attached to a cleaning rod. Detach the tip from the rod. Clip the bristles of the brush down to whisker length. Something equal to a threeday growth works just fine. Cut six inches off a cleaning rod threaded to accept the tip, reattach the altered

tip to the shortened rod and store the combination where it won’t get lost. Cover the pan and go to bed. What about barreled actions? Admittedly, there is a limit to how much gun will fit into a 16" x 16" pan. There are a couple of ways around the limitation. One may exist at a local building supply dealer in the form of long (about 36 inches) open top, four-inch deep trays commonly applied in the wall-papering process. A more permanent solution might be contracting a custom pan from a sheet metal fabricator.

If that is the decision, he could build you a tank long and deep enough to accommodate the lengthiest black powder rifle. I personally took another course and made a deal with a local provider of rain gutters. They cut me a five foot length of seamless, extruded, pre-coated stock, permanently capped both ends, and delivered the finished product for 20 bucks. You’re dang right I still have and use it.

The only alterations I made was cutting apiece of hardware cloth to almost span the gutter width. "Almost" was important to assure the cloth can’t slip to the bottom of the gutter. I guaranteed zero slippage with up to three eight-inch long, one-inch wide, 3/4-inch thick hardwood blocks slid under the hardware cloth. The resulting rig will accommodate most barreled rifle and carbine actions. Always remove the action from the stock and forend before immersion.

Wood finishes can be irreparably ruined as a result of being drenched repeatedly with mineral spirits or Varsol. Wooden grip panels might survive but they’d make better fireplace kindling than serve further as grip panels after the dousing. Deliverance Day Overnight, all the fouling flushed from the subject components will have settled to the bottom of the pan. Transfer the components to clean paper towels to rest for three or four minutes, then blow dry each one with a hair dryer.

Do not ever use a high heat unit like those applied to scrape off blistered old paint. Those heat guns can get things so hot it’ll take the temper clear out of springs and have a weakening effect on tempered barrels and receivers. Once you feel certain the interiors are bone dry, apply two or three quick squirts of the silicone lube into the pistol action and one or two squirts inside the firing mechanism by injecting it through the holes in the mechanism housing.

I prefer the silicone spray to an oil spray because it attracts, holds on to, and allows the build up of considerably less fouling compared to oil. The results of this procedure? Two differing guns deep cleaned overnight, one fired and won a second in a sanctioned match, the other downed two mallards for serving up at Thanksgiving dinner, plus one frequent and satisfied customer who steered a dozen more seeking great service to the same old gunsmith who told me his secret.

Make good use of this cleaning procedure with the understanding that this short cut will excavate 85 to 90 percent of the dirt that makes a trigger feel rough but it is no absolute substitute for a traditional, far more time-consuming detailed disassembly, individual part clean up, inspection, polishing, lubricating, reassembly, and test firing. It may not be perfect in totally clearing hardened deposits of fouling you were unable to affect with the small tools suggested here.

I can tell you when the heat is on and the pressure is building, this old gunsmith’s plan of action can make any gun feel and act a whole lot cleaner while leaving a good reputation untouched. As a bonus input, though not a recommended practice, if a gun comes in that is a perfect stranger to you it can still be given what can pass as a detailed cleaning. But you have to be as good as an old gunsmith at doing it. AG American Gunsmith Reader Services 1.