Clean your own guns?

I wash my clothes when it's about time; they smell or look too dirty. I do about the same with my guns.

Varminterror said:

Does anyone have a local shop which is offering cleaning services?

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One of the indoor ranges I go to has a young lady clean their rental guns weekly. She will clean customer handguns for $25 and rifles for $35. I have her clean my Henry once a year. I clean all my other guns.

I own guns, I shoot guns, I clean guns. That's the way I roll. Don't particularly like cleaning guns but I like knowing my guns are well maintained and taken care of.

Varminterror said:

Does anyone have a local shop which is offering cleaning services? What’s the cost? I don’t think it’s common anywhere I have lived in the Midwest, but maybe somewhere there IS such a service?

Stores and shops offer basic optic mounting services because they sell optics, and often offer basic gunsmithing/repairs, but typically only on optics and/or firearms they sell. I’m not familiar with folks hanging flyers out for gun cleaning services.

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The last shop I worked at charged $50 for a disassembly, detail cleaning, function check & test fire. (If we had ammo for it) Ultrasonic cleaning doubled that. I actually enjoyed doing the regular cleanings more. We do have one local guy that advertises in the free papers for gun cleaning, no idea what he charges. Some that might be willing to do so probably balk at ITAR and or believe they have to have an FFL. I turn away request to clean guns all the time.

Me too:

jmr40 said:

I clean mine when they get dirty

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AK Hunter said:

My carry pistol gets cleaned every time I shoot it.

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Heir Kommt Die Sonne said:

Revolvers can be a pain because the cylinders have 6 holes. You can use a cleaning brush on a drill for this if you want to.

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This fun gun is a PITA to clean.

Found memories of cleaning guns with my Dad when I was a kid. My Mom rolled her eyes at the smell of HOPPES #9

I like cleaning guns.

I like getting them dirty too

I like cleaning dirty guns. Black patches are my thing.

I hate cleaning semi dirty guns. Waste of my time, doesn't produce enough black patches.

My guns get cleaned when it looks like i can harvest a good amount of black patches.

I kid. but really, I don't bother cleaning a gun until its either good and dirty, or as others have said, its going away for a while. I've had clean guns rust after weeks, and I've had dirty guns store for years without rust. It aint the (noncorrosive)primer, gunpowder, and lead residue that rusts guns.

sparkyv said:

Me too:

This fun gun is a PITA to clean.
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Yep .22lr is almost the dirtiest round to shoot. The brand doesn't matter they are all dirty.

There is simply no way in Hell that I would allow anyone other than me clean or work on my guns. I have seen too much weird (word for excrement).

You're supposed to clean them??? Damn.

I worked in a gun shop nearly 30yrs ago and a good bit of their gunsmithing services involved cleaning customer guns. Then they got their house slave to do it, me. I was young and dumb and loved it and at that point in my life, I had not yet figured out what a waste of time it was.

One thing I have learned over the years is that it's better to use and care for my own expensive equipment rather than to have someone else borrow, use, or handle it. I found that took me more time and money to return to return these items back to their original state than if I had just kept them to myself in the first place.

Walkalong said:

Somewhere in between, so none of the above.

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Same. And the first and last choices are the same. Need more/better choices in this poll, IMO.

Another none of the above vote for me.

I believe there is a lot of over hyped nonsense with gun cleaning but that doesn’t mean a bit of it is true. I haven’t cleaned my primary hunting rifle for 3 seasons and it would be more than that if I hadn’t just acquired it 3 years ago.

kidneyboy said:

….has a young lady clean their rental guns weekly. I have her clean my Henry once a year.

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Henry’s have a tendency to get dirty. I’d step that up to once per week.

Scout21 said:

I'm very surprised that I'm the only one so far that has said that they don't need cleaning. Granted, I don't shoot nearly as much as many others, but I've never had a gun stop working due to being dirty. I'm not an expert shot, but I've also never noticed any degradation in accuracy from unclean bores.

I wipe them down after each use with a lightly oiled rag to ward off rust, and maybe a pull through with a lightly oiled bore snake if they'll be sitting for a good while. Otherwise they're left alone.

The last time I cleaned a gun was actually somewhat recently. I cleaned up the bolt, breech face, and receiver of my 10-22, simply because I wanted to see what it looked like clean. Didn't touch the bore.

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Actually @Scout21 if you get into a good prairie dog town it's really easy to shoot a rifle to the point where it loses a lot of accuracy due to copper build up in the grooves. And I've shot enough 22s through my ruger mkII to have extraction issues due to powder residue on the bolt face. But that took years to happen.

Nasty Canasta said:

There’s a very nice indoor $hooting range nearby that along with getting your morning latte & retrieving your guns out of your personal gun vault, shoot, & then drop of you dirty filthy guns for cleaning on the way out.
https://www.libertyrange.com/
https://www.coloradoguncleaners.com/gun-cleaning/

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Where's the link for the guy who'll come out and do the shooting for you?

Cleaning guns isn't a chore or a ritual, it's just part of shooting and owning guns.

If I take a gun shooting I will swab the bore and the gun afterwards unless they are used heavily. I check the lube before shooting. Other than that, all of my guns get an annual cleaning. I cleaned guns to white glove in the USMC and do not see the point in that anymore. We used to overclean in the military. I remember that Jeep battery posts used to wear out due to overzealous cleaning.

I clean my guns after every range trip. By clean I mean that I pull a bore snake through twice and wipe down the outside with a rag and some CLP.

The old saying: "The sun should never set on a dirty gun." is adhered to here. I've been a professional gunsmith and always clean, or at least wipe-down any gun taken out of the house. Before that, I ruined a rifle many years ago, when I put my .22-250 varminter away in the walk-in closet in our apartment because I was too busy and left it leaning against a sanitary system roof vent, back in the 1960s. Back then, we didn't always clean our varmint rifle bores because we believed that it would change dirty-barrel POI if cleaned. Guns coming back from shooting these days are cleaned before being put away. NO EXCEPTIONS here.

illinoisburt said:

... I happen to know folks who not only use a gun store employee to sight their firearms, but also to clean them. ...

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Wow.

BJung said:

I wash my clothes when it's about time; they smell or look too dirty. I do about the same with my guns.

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I want to make one exception. If I'm shooting corrosive ammo, I clean my gun as soon as I return home.

There are significantly different levels of cleaning.
I have rifles that shoot better their first 25 rounds after cleaning, then accuracy dwindles. I have other rifles that shoot better “dirty.” I don’t remove trigger assemblies but every few years.

I don’t disassemble bolts unless I have a problem with the extractor.

That washing machine photo reminded me of how I used to clean the trigger assembly on my Browning B80s. In sub/zero weather I would run them “dry” goose hunting.

Shotgun bores??? I haven’t cleaned one in 25+ years, maybe I should? But I pattern each shotgun with whatever “new” load I shoot through it. If I’m not satisfied, I change loads.

Muzzleloader, religiously. Even though I use BH209 in my inlines.

revolvers? I clean the cylinders and bore pretty regular. I shoot a lot of .38 spl in my .357s. I don’t want buildup in the cylinders.

Semi auto handguns I clean a few times a year depending on usage. I’m not a high volume shooter, maybe 2,500 rounds a year with handguns so they usually get cleaned every 4-500 rounds.

I have one lever action rifle I’m afraid to disassemble because I’m not familiar with its inner workings so it gets carburetor cleaner occasionally.

Exteriors get cleaned and oiled every time they are in humid weather, or someone put their grimy hands on them. But I have recently been getting my guns Cerakoted to prevent rust on the exterior.

That’s what works for me. I live in a super dry climate. Our humidity is usually below 20% unless it’s raining/snowing so I don’t worry about rust like I would in the south.

The double rifle, shot guns and the combi get cleaned after every hunting trip. The Mauser M03 gets cleaned when I feel like it or it gets wet. The .22 lr never gets cleaned. If I had money I would get the man servant to clean my guns.

I have a lot of traditional blued firearms and at least wipe them down after using them and run a bore brush and mop through them. My cheap carry gun, a SIG Sauer P365 is only getting cleaned, oiled and inspected once a week.

The "cleaning" is more of a conservation and rust prevention and my guns are worth that to me.









A dirty Korth just does not look as nice.