The cleaning rituals surrounding the M4/M16s in the Army have baffled me since basic training. There’s a zealous obsession with cleaning the “star chamber” while actual parts that should be cleaned (under the extractor, bolt face, etc) are completely ignored during inspection. I always see soldiers go full bore with brass toothbrushes and dental picks on the stupid star chamber just because the unit armorer is being a huge PITA about that part, and that part only. Is it really wise to encourage such rigorous cleaning around the locking lugs?
From my personal perspective, and something I brought up to the armorer yesterday, it’s totally pointless to clean that area at all. I’ve had a Sig M400 for a little over two years, and have never once cleaned that part of it. I’ve fired thousands of rounds of mostly that dirty “melt your gun in 5 seconds” Wolf or Tula ammunition, and have never had any type of malfunction that could be attributed to the “star chamber” and its cleanliness or lack thereof. Here we have guys firing maybe 120 rounds at most at a range, and then the rifle is basically sandblasted with metal toothbrushes and dental picks.
What do you guys think? It is really necessary, or are we wasting a ton of time and ultimately a lot of taxpayers’ money?
Interesting observation. Some of the best advice I got (from the folks at White Oak Armament) in regards to barrel break in and cleaning was to not go crazy with harsh solvents and abrasive brushes…
Not sure this can really be quantified, but I was really happy when our new company CO had a formation and told us we were no longer required to keep our weapons white glove inspection ready. For a Marine, this sounds like blasphemy, but it makes sense. Clean your weapon, but don’t go stupid with it…
I would say it depends on the type of unit. Regular infantry, most likely through over cleaning. Some units that shoot a great deal wear them out the correct way.
The bigger problem is the combination of over cleaning and under lubricating. The M4 has a bad rep in the Big Army because most guys run them damn near bone dry and wonder why their rifle won’t function properly with blanks.
The worst thing I’ve seen are Soldiers using tools like dental picks and other scraping methods to clean critical parts like extractors, locking lugs, and cam pins. This abusive scraping causes small cracks in the metal, which when heated up, turn into big cracks and parts break.
I’ve seen it a few times with bolts. Guys will deep clean the shit out of a bolt and scrape the locking lugs to death, then when we do some training involving high rates of fire, they start running into malfunctions or worse will shear off a locking lug. Of course I can’t say for 100% that scraping the metal was the cause, but it makes sense to me.
I’ve run my personal rifles much harder than anything I’ve been issued in the Army and never had any of the problems that seem to plague the weapons in my Arms Room.
As an engineering student, I can say it’s highly unlikely that scraping will lead to cracks. Crack initiation is still not well understood, but it usually involves stresses well beyond what you could impose just by scraping. I suppose it’s possible you could introduce a stress concentrator that would eventually lead to the formation of cracks down the line but even that seems unlikely.
Id say scraping the finishes off, then leaving them bone dry in the armory, is the leading cause of weapons wear for regular line unit rifles. Machineguns on the other hand… we shot the shit out of those.
I inflicted more damage to the muzzle crown on a M-14 with the sectional steel cleaning rod than I did shooting the weapon. That was before a Gunner’s Mate chewed my ass and demonstrated the proper way to clean a rifle.
I’ve seen more than a few M4s so dry they had minor rust on them. One guy told me that CLP causes malfunctions. He put some CLP on it and it had a double feed. Now he teaches everyone not to use CLP. Army Strong , right.
I read some posts on the CMP forum where a test was conducted concerning barrel wear via cleaning. Apparently thousands of strokes were done with a cleaning rod purposely canted to contact the crown area. The results showed minimal wear and no appreciable change in accuracy.
So, if they are right, a muzzle cleaning device used to center the cleaning rod in the bore, is waste of money?
Putting aside examples of “The Parable of the LCpl/Specialist and the Three Bowling Balls,” how many of those dudes were, per directive, using the open end of cleaning rod sections (i.e., no eyelet or brush, ergo no stroke) as a scraping tool specifically and exclusively on the edges of the crown, because 3rd Derp-Herder Armory Custodian on the Right couldn’t look down the birdcage and see shiny metal at its base…? To the point that there were admittedly very shiny visible-without-special-tools gouges, chips, and lopsidedness…?
Fold in the guys with the right idea, trying to use stuff like brake cleaner as a labor-saving method…using chlorinated brake cleaner, vice non-chlorinated, because a specific kernel of info that’s easy to miss yet has relatively large implications when repeated many times over a long timeline, wasn’t passed along…?
…and other “A” for idea, “F” for execution instances derived of ignorance of physics/metallurgy/tribology/chemistry/etc. due to ignorance, deliberate or otherwise…?
Short answer remains, emphatically, “YES,” though more a matter of HOW than HOW OFTEN.
I’ve been told to run my M4 bone dry as well for similar reasons. Coming from the same guy who said that even a near-miss with a .50 BMG will liquefy someone’s brains, I didn’t take it too seriously. I’ve learned that trying to correct some of these people is just a waste of air and energy.
Exactly this. The majority of units will scrape and brush until the finish starts to wear off and the barrels/crowns are all screwed before anyone will ever shoot them out. Then afterwards they will be stored bone dry in an armory and heaven help the rifle if the armory doesn’t have good dehumidification. Rust! Then repeat cleaning to remove. A never ending cycle of weapon abuse.
They didn’t say, and just quoted what they read in a Garand collector magazine/book series a few years ago. I presume it would have been the military supplied rod.
Only time I have ever run my weapons system dry was when we were doing NWTC up in Alaska in the middle of winter. Now when I was in the 82nd we had AG and DRB inspections and our weapons had to be spotless for the inspection, but most of the time had a light coat of oil.
