Do any of you have a 22 you DON'T clean?

I can hardly believe almost all the reply's.

Cleaning my weapons after range trips is half the fun.

I can completely detail strip and clean a 10/22 in less than a half hour. The barrel is patched twice with Shooter's Choice bore cleaner and let to set so the bore cleaner has time to work and when I'm ready to reassemble the bore snake's brush gets a shot of Shooter's Choice on the brush and then run through the barrel twice. Then a bore patch with Wilson Ultra Lube is run through twice.

My 20" Green Mountain SS fluted .22LR barrel runs like a top with the above care.

TK

I have or i should say my daughter has a .22 and all i do is run a bore snake thru it before and after range day and oil the barrel....And every so often i break it all down to do a detailed cleaning.
I have yet to have any issues doing it this way.

So, I can quit cleaning my .22s. Fantastic!

I have a Ruger Single Six that I shot for about 30 years before I decided to clean it. Now it's very pretty!

If you can`t take the time to clean a .22 I`ll bet your car is dirty as well.

I've got two rifles and one pistol in 22. the two rifles I cleaned as I bought them used. My pistol is a browning Buckmark. I've fully disassembled and cleaned once in the 12 years I've had it, last year. Never had a problem with it before that.

They do get dirty quickly, as most know that 22 ammo is very dirty. Usually un-burned powder. But I have not had an issue with barrel fouling and loss of accuacy due to lead bullets.
I do recomend cleaning actions and moving parts once a season or so, depending on how much you fire, and the breands of ammo you use. Some are dirtier than others.

And a note to the subject. I bought my son a Marlin 60 last year. The last shot bolt hold open was not working then. I striped it and clean the internal mechanics and lubed every thing. It was very dirty. It works fine now.

Clean and lube bolt, clean receiver and trigger groups if needed. Bore? Eh,,Not usually.

I've cleaned the bore of my Ruger 10/22 once.

Probably fired 10,000+ rounds through it.

Otherwise, I clean it's guts after every range trip. Old habits.

Radium said:

i never clean my barrel
but I HATE the loaded chamber indicator on my Ruger mk3!

Click to expand...

Radium, that LCI comes out quite easily, and I've had zero trouble since I yanked both of my mkIII's LCIs right out.

Next time you have the upper off, locate the LCI pin on the underside, stick a small strong magnet to it, and wiggle the LCI as you pull on the magnet. Re-install after you get the LCI and slot 100% clean, or bag 'em up and ignore the hole, it doesn't hurt anything.

As to the OP:
Rimfire guns come in two varieties, semiauto guns with blowback action and non-semiauto guns that don't do blowback.
The semiautomatic will of course get more unburned powder and mung into the action, the non-semiauto ones won't because all the burning occurs in the casing, everything is all over by the time you open the action up.

I clean the action of every semi-auto .22 about every other range trip, and the bores get an Otis patch hauled through them until I get bored, never a metal brush, sometimes a plastic one.

I only own two .22 guns that aren't semiautomatic, a Henry lever carbine and a NAA mini-revolver.

The Henry gets the bore wiped out (Otis) after a range trip, and the action blown out with compressed air. I blow some oil through with air once in a while ... one of these days I'll open that thing up and clean it up completely ... maybe.

The NAA gets cleaned of the cylinder gap's escaped mung until it looks shiny again, and then shoved into the safe because cleaning it is a pain ... after a month or two it comes back out for mousegun fun and the cycle repeats, I could probably just shoot it until it is a black gun instead of a stainless one, there's nothing that needs more than an oily rag wipe in there, really.

To answer the OP's question; No. I clean all my guns after every one or two sessions, I doubt any of them has gone over 200 rounds before a good tear down and cleaning. By the way, I've never had a failure of any kind related to a a dirty or fouled weapon.

Why? Because I like it

.22 rifle crowns and leading rifling are extremely easy to damage with a cleaning rod: use a bore guide, clean from the breach and be very very careful. I clean the mechanism on semi-autos regularly.

On my more accurate bolt rifles, I stick with one ammo that works best. I keep the bore seasoned with the same lube. It takes a solid 50 rounds or more to properly season a bore. I won't clean the bore until accuracy falls off. It really falls of a cliff when I clean it. It takes a couple boxes to get it back. 5000 rounds between bore cleanings is about right.

I clean my actions when they need it. I never clean the bores.

If you're using cast bullets in your centerfires of the proper size and hardness, a similar cleaning regimen can be used. I only clean mine when they're leaded, which indicates something is wrong anyway.