New gun - Clean before shooting?

[The Lone Haranguer]

Another vote here for field stripping, cleaning, inspection and reading of the instruction manual before shooting a new gun the first time. The last handgun I bought, far from being greasy, was bone dry.

 

[Donut]

Here's a problem... I got it home, and went to take it down. It comes with a hex key for removing the sight rail, and then says to turn the barrel screw 3.5 turns counterclockwise. The illustration shows a screwdriver being used, but it's a hex screw in there. Bigger than the supplied hex. SO I went into my tool chest and pulled out every hex key I had (standard and metric) and none fit.

***? To say that I'm frustrated would be an understatement. I'm going to ask at the range tomorrow, maybe its missing a hex key. But I figure they probably have the right size and then I can go buy one. near as I can tell, it's 3/32, but all my keys were 1/16 and 1/8.

 

[New_geezer]

My Camper was made in 2000, I don't think they've changed Camper design too much. There is no real reason to remove the barrel unless you're going to replace it with say a specialty barrel. BTW, there are hex nut drivers that look like screwdrivers. In any event I wouldn't worry about taking the barrel off. Don't forget the blue lock-tite on the sight base screws.

You may have noticed by now that there's a tiny "c" clip that holds the recoil spring on the guide rod. That is real easy to lose so it might be wise to work inside a clear plastic bag when working with it. They're cheap so you might want to order a few along with one or two of the plastic recoil buffers, just to have them on-hand.

 

[MD_Willington]

I clean all my firearms right away...

 

[hemiram]

I've always taken them down as far as I easily can and clean them out as make sure everything is tight that should be, and it's not full of metal chips, etc. I've had a lot of guns with loose grips and sights. I did have one gun loaded with grease and metal chips everywhere inside it. I think that was my Colt Series 70 that I bought new. My second and last 1911. Might have been my AMT Hardballer Longslide. Both were totally unreliable, and were eventually sold off.