Cleaned my Glock!

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I love cleaning my pistols.

On a weekend that I can't go to the range - for whatever reason, I'll sit down with a box of Q-Tips and some home made Ed's Red and clean my HK P7M8 from stem to stern, even though she's already clean. I'll get her nice n' dry and then lube her with Tri-Flow, wrap her in a nice oily cloth and tuck her back away in her case - all snug as a bug in a rug.

I'll detail strip my Glocks and clean each little part, get in every little cranny and crevice, even though they're already clean too. I clean every firearm when I come back from the range, and I clean them again 3 - 5 days later, and I clean them just for the fun of it.

It's relaxing.

And my Glocks really did fire perfectly well with all that grease in them. I've fired them gooped up with regular general purpose bearing grease - Walmart Super Tech Extreme Pressure Multi-Duty Complex Hi-Temp grease - which is NLGI #2 -the red stuff in the one picture, and I've fired them with lots of Lubriplate in them, and I've even gobbed on that copper anti-seize assembly compound / anti-seize thread grease that Glock ships their guns with.

I don't have them on the nightstand all goopped up on gop, but I'm just saying I smeared all that goo in there and they ran like champs.
 
Glock or not. Having a filthy gun on the nightstand to protect your family and home when you need it the most doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do. I'm not OCD about cleaning my pistols and rifles but when It comes to the guns that are to protect my family and home they get well taken care of while target pistols not so much.
 
IME if you overlubricate a semiautomatic pistol it will sling off what it doesn't need when fired, usually on your clothes or safety glasses :).

Yes it is fun to brag about x number of rounds between cleanings, but like some of the other guys I believe if you take care of your weapon, it will take care of you.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr
 
@C0untZer0 Re: "I love cleaning my pistols."

You know, I do too and I stop wondering about it a long time ago. The fact is it's one of those times it's just me and the gun and nobody else. Having the gun apart to clean is like doing preventive maintenance. Sort of the old saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." I get the chance to inspect the piece, make any adjustment that are needed and possible and just give it a general "whole-body" checkup. One of those checkups revealed damage to my Glock 23 as shown in the attached pic. The gun worked fine but something was a mite wrong. And since cleaning time involves a bottle of my favorite brew on most occasions (sometimes beer; sometimes coffee) it's doubly pleasurable. Almost a Zen sort of thing. I overheard my mom tell my uncle once that I treated them with "loving care". She was right.

I was taught to clean my guns after firing way back in 1959 when I was 13 and it stuck. None of my guns are display pieces and I firmly believe they're designed to be shot until they can't shoot any longer. But keeping them clean has meant I'm still trying to shoot the life out of my old 1967 vintage Blackhawk 357 Magnum and it's till looking like it's going to outlive me.
 
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its your gun. clean it as much as you want. Cleaning is the relaxing/bonding part of being a shooter. Love your guns and they love ya back.
 
I'm one of those who will never understand the pride some take in not cleaning a defensive firearm.

I guess it's cool to see if you can do it, but I'd be nervous letting a nightstand gun or my CCW gun get that bad. Is cleaning a firearm, especially a Glock, that big of a chore? I guess it becomes one after you put thousands upon thousands of rounds through it...

I know my attitude comes from my father, a soldier who religiously cleans his firearms every time he shoots them. Now I'm not that bad, but 7.5K+ rounds without cleaning would give me a heart attack.
 
It's like driving your car without ever changing the oil just to prove to people what a tough car you have.
 
boy some of you Glock guys have weird ideas about gun maintenance, my Siaga dosent really care if it gets cleaned but i still clean it same for my Glock.
you all can certainly treat you gun however you like, I shoot in a sand pit with cheep ammo and my guns always come back from the range Gritty and
I just cant stand for that. If not for the sand I might treat my Glock more like Trent, but the sand I can hear it and feel it just thinking about it now makes me wanna... :barf:
 
Seems to me that the only reason to go that long between cleanings is not because it's the smart thing to do, but rather because you have something to prove. I don't think you need to spend 30 minutes cleaning your Glock after shooting 100 rounds, but there's really no need to let it get that dirty.
 
How often I clean my firearms depends on how often they need it.

Glock gets a few drops of oil each range trip and a surface wipedown after (nose of the firearm gets pretty sooty after a few hundred rounds).

Taurus PT-92 sitting behind me on the coffee table right now gets cleaned after each shoot.

SCAR 17S? I've stripped it each time after shooting and can't FIND any grime to clean out. :) So I just run a boresnake through it and wipe the bolt face off with my thumb.

Something with corrosive ammo? Detail cleaning every single time, belt feds might take me for 4 or 5 nights after work, with weekly checkups after that for surface spotting to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The Glock has told me over the years what it needs. Some oil and a wipedown. Gotta keep the magwell clean or they won't drop free. Other than that, she's good to go, every time, any time. Which is why it stays on the nightstand. I trust that weapon to go boom every single time I pull the trigger.

Only work I've ever had to do to the Glock are periodic (every 3-4 years) recoil spring replacement. New trigger springs after 10 years. New Hogue grip wraparound every two or three years (I wear THROUGH the things).

Oh, and I need new sights; my original tritium sights are 15 years old and getting pretty dim. :)
 
BTW, I load Bullseye and shoot jacketed (not plated, or lead) bullets only. Bullseye burns pretty clean. Sooty on the front end of the slide but internally it stays pretty tidy. All this year I've been shooting .452 dia 230 gr jacketed semi wadcutters I got a good deal on. Bought 10,000 of them and I'm down to a box (2k per box) which is why I know where I'm at on the round count. (UPS lost the other ~500 of them due to a mishandled/abused/broken box.. long story)

Due to the deep seating depth on the heavy semiwadcutters it's a pretty light load that burns real clean.

If I was shooting 231, or something else really dirty, I'd probably need to give it a wipedown a LOT more often. :)
 
Oh, and I do change the oil in my cars regularly, thank you very much. :)

And... THEY DROPPED IT FROM A FRIGGING AIRPLANE?!

Jeez.
 
Cleaning your firearms is certainly a personal matter. My dad was old time military and cleaned his rifle after every range session. That was ingrained in me over 50 years ago and as we all know, old habits are hard to break. I clean my Glocks and what ever else I shoot after each outing to be sure they are properly lubed and ready to run what ever the need.
 
7500 rounds between cleaning? How was it shooting after 7000 rounds?

It was shooting fine, accuracy wise.

I only had one problem - empty magazines finally quit dropping free a few weekends ago around the 6500-6700 round mark. I hosed the inside of the magwell down with CLP and pulled a rag through it. Problem solved.

I also had my front sight get loose earlier this year, put some blue loctite on it and reseated it. Took almost 15 years for that thing to wiggle loose from heat & recoil. I'm over-due for new sights anyway, the tritium sights I had put on in early 1998 have gone through a half-life already, and are quite dim.

Before & after shooting I'd put a bit of oil on the rail slots in the slide, and where the trigger bar makes contact. The outside of the gun would get a bit of CLP and a wipedown after each shoot to keep my hands clean while handling.

For the annual cleaning I went beyond basic field strip, did a full teardown. It's really tough to get some places clean without a full teardown (especially the slide internals). I found bits of carbon and the occasional brass particle pretty much everywhere; the extractor was especially gunked up, and there was a layer of grime between the trigger bar and the frame. Oddly enough, this didn't affect the trigger feel whatsoever.

The handgun has received only minor servicing of wear parts over the years. I'm on my 3rd recoil spring. When the gun runs "sluggish" and brass doesn't eject to your ~3 O'Clock you know it's time for a new one. I don't have an exact count on how many round before I notice it wearing out but I'd have to guess at somewhere around 25,000-35,000 rounds. It's a very subtle difference in timing, and if you shoot a variety of ammo you might not even notice.

I've read about newer Glocks having timing problems with ejection, so waiting until you get bonked in the nose with brass might not be a reliable indicator for newer models.

I also replaced the entire trigger mechanism housing about 3 years ago, the original trigger pull had got too weak for my tastes.
 
boy some of you Glock guys have weird ideas about gun maintenance,
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world behaves like the squeakers.

I'm one of those [old] "Glock boys" but if you go by the numbers I'm more of a Ruger and Browning boy. :D I keep them clean too. Not white glove clean, but what I call "functionally" clean: no crud buildup, no lead in the bore, all corners and crevices free of stuff and all surfaces wiped. 'Bout once a year or so I do a detailed cleaning and inspection looking for wear and general condition 'cause that just makes sense to me.
 
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haha ya Ku4hx I understand that, I was just shocked by the contrast of the guy who never oils and the one who packs his gun with grease, mostly
but as I said be for your gun treat it how you like.
 
Wow, and to think I start to get anxious after my M&P or G21 has had a few hundred rounds with no cleaning! :p


By the way, this looks like as good a place to ask as any, and I've been wondering.


What is the failure mechanism from a too-dirty gun? Do the rounds not feed anymore due to a dirty chamber or feed ramp? Does the slide not cycle correctly due to gunk in the rails? I've been curious. Say you had a lot of rounds through the gun and didn't have any cleaning supplies on hand (except a dry rag), but you needed to do something right on the spot to help reduce the odds of a malfunction. What would you do?
 
Glocks truly are ridiculously resilient.

In competition, many are run very hard for long periods of time and countless rounds without 'ever' being cleaned and they still fail less than any other manufacturer, in my own personal first-hand experience. There were even guys who would swear by 'not' cleaning them EVER and never had any failures that I witnessed. The only time I ever heard of/saw a Glock failure it was directly related to 'tinkering' with the factory parts or issues with reloaded ammo. I did notice a subtle improvement in accuracy if I cleaned the barrel out with a little CLP, or the like, and a boresnake.

Ask around at your local gun ranges how often they clean the Glocks they rent out. The ranges I know of will discretely admit that they almost 'never' clean them and they are rented out daily. Never any issues.

Having said that, I do clean the Glocks that I designate for defense before I load, chamber and holster them for use as a life saving tool. And I only use minimal lube in the important areas.

But, if for any reason I didn't, I wouldn't lose a single second's sleep or drop of sweat over it.

They were designed for combat in the most extreme conditions with as close to zero maintenance tolerance as possible and have revolutionized the way firearms are designed and maintenanced to this day. That's why some, including myself, fondly refer to them as the AK-47 of handguns.

They are as reliable as corruption in congress.

So, for those who sweat it, you can pretty well rest assured, if they are factory/unaltered Glocks, they 'will' go bang every time.

And, for those who don't, maybe don't push your luck. ;)

Happy Glockin'!!
 
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