Thread: Cleaning Firearms ..... What Are You Using ?

When you go to the range and you don't inhale the hoppes afterwards your adventure is incomplete.

Firearms have been a part of our life since the beginning, with an emphasis on keeping them clean & ready for service. Not having a shop or garage makes for some creativity . My current system consists of a cleaning cart & tool box. We have been shooting twice a week since a year ago, last June; preparing the son.

There are so many competitive lubricants on the market, that I like to try them all. Hoppe's stays in the rotation, lubricant & bore cleaner. A window cleaner , such as Windex,( the ammonia content needed) used in the barrel for high carbon cleaning on dirty military ammo, followed by a boiling water rinse. I use Sweet's , but currently out, I'll get some next month.

I have not bought swabs in over 25 years,,, all old t-shirts are re-purposed to swabs, while watching a good movie.

If you can get your hands on a Marsh Fountain Brush for final lubrication, they are worth their weight in gold.

Nice rig Hirlau. I have a similar set up going. Not a cart, but similar products and methods. I use old tshirts for patches as well. I have the awesome Marsh ink brush too. Those things are the best! I use a one piece coated rod to clean the long guns. I use MPro7 foaming cleaner and Kroil mostly. I have given up on Hoppes #9 over the years. Kroil works better. The formula changed in Hoppes as well back a while ago. It smells slightly different. I like CLP for lube. No Frog Lube or other gimmicky junk. CLP worked for all the machine guns in Battalion and it should work fine for my guns as well. I will here soon start to experiment with ATF for lube and Moly sulfide grease for frame rails. I want to try it for myself. I stay away from WD-40. I have seen too many guns (specially colder climates) where it turns to a shellac like consistency and is hard to remove.
For anyone that has never tried Kroil go get ya a can. You will be amazed! It is sold through Kano Labs here in TN. As a cleaner it is amazing. A few drops on the yoke/crane of a revolver will be magic. I use it inside Smith revolvers on the rebounding block and trigger/hammer mechanism.

For my semi-auto handguns it's pretty simple: Safety glasses, spray brake cleaner (cheapest I can find like O'Reilly brand), & CLP.

For my rifles, it gets a bit more intensive. #9 is old faithful, Gunzilla (stuff creeps like Kroil & that's good!), and Frog Lube. A little tub of that stuff goes a LONG ways.

I'll look into the Seal 1.

Edit: A Seal 1 Complete Gun Care Kit is on it's way...

#9 of course. It works for me, and like other said - you know you are cleaning guns by the smell.

Hoppes No. 9 for cleaning CLP for preserving. I used buckets of CLP when I was in the Marine Corps and I would use it on a slightly bigger gun than my Ruger 357 mag.

Hah... that reminded me of my old Ruger 357 SA that I worked up a metallic silhouette load for way back then. 200grain round nose Hornady rifle bullets, no idea what the powder was, but on the chrono it clocked 1350fps and it knocked those rams down with authority.

Then.... my buddy from the gunshop, who was heading home, offered to set up the silhouettes again just before leaving. I went through almost 100 rounds of that ammo, wondering why I could get the ram to rock back and forth, but never fall over any more. To make matters worse, I had put Pachmayr grips on that Ruger and it blistered my hand something fierce. It was only when I went up to the targets to put them away, that I saw that Phil had propped the ram up with a stick.

Ah the good old days.....

Now, I don't even own a 22cal rifle.

Regards

Christian

Originally Posted by EMC45

Nice rig Hirlau. I have a similar set up going. Not a cart, but similar products and methods. I use old tshirts for patches as well. I have the awesome Marsh ink brush too. Those things are the best! I use a one piece coated rod to clean the long guns. I use MPro7 foaming cleaner and Kroil mostly. I have given up on Hoppes #9 over the years. Kroil works better. The formula changed in Hoppes as well back a while ago. It smells slightly different. I like CLP for lube. No Frog Lube or other gimmicky junk. CLP worked for all the machine guns in Battalion and it should work fine for my guns as well. I will here soon start to experiment with ATF for lube and Moly sulfide grease for frame rails. I want to try it for myself. I stay away from WD-40. I have seen too many guns (specially colder climates) where it turns to a shellac like consistency and is hard to remove.
For anyone that has never tried Kroil go get ya a can. You will be amazed! It is sold through Kano Labs here in TN. As a cleaner it is amazing. A few drops on the yoke/crane of a revolver will be magic. I use it inside Smith revolvers on the rebounding block and trigger/hammer mechanism.

I use the WD-40 to flush out the bore & any use of it on the bolt is for scrubbing with a brush,,, then it is removed & a lubricant is applied to the surface.

Yepp..... in the cold, remove *any* lubricant in the important bits.... It may wear slightly more, but you're not going to fire that many shots at -40... 30+ years ago, most lubricants would gel or just get sticky, if not outright freeze up.

I also thought something was odd about Birchwood Casey Barricade... it *looked* like the stuff we used to use... but the name seemed odd (I just skimmed through the listings at Brownells where we used to order most of our stuff from). Then I went on Birchwood Casey's site as it was bugging me and ahah... I found it in a company reply..... Barricade was formerly called SHEATH which was the name of it when I used it. There are many newer protectants and lubes out there with new and improved properties, but back in the early 80s, Sheath was pretty darn good.

Yes Yes Yes!!! Love the artillery.

CLP is all I use to lubricate my weapons. Hoppes No.9 to clean the bores. I used to use LSA until I discovered CLP. I will sometimes coat the outside of my weapons with Frog Lube (Love the peppermint smell).

Originally Posted by razorjoe

Hoppes No. 9 for cleaning CLP for preserving. I used buckets of CLP when I was in the Marine Corps and I would use it on a slightly bigger gun than my Ruger 357 mag.