How clean is clean for function, to overcleaning?

AR/M4 AR Technical Discussion
1

I just spent my weekend with my College’s Army ROTC for their FTX. Things I learned was I am a better squad leader on a force-on-force scenario (retaking a friendly van in an open field, and we won through violence of action and a lot of luck), I can get a very tight group out of a 100 round belt of 5.56 through a M249 SAW at 25 yards, and I can hit the long shots on the qualify course, but can’t hit the damn close in --100 yards and closer–targets. Needless to say I got a 21 out of 40, and they did not let us do a requal. Plus, it was my first time.

However, the night after, we got to cleaning…and from the courses and DVDs I have done and watched, including Pat Rogers that came with my two BCM uppers, as a tax payer, I am furious. We ran Q-tips, I am a ton of Q-tips over the BCG, the “star chamber,” through the gas key, saw many cadets letting the hammer fall right on the the receiver with the upper off, and smashing the bolt back into the bolt carrier–good bye gas rings. Furthermore they wanted these Colt M4s completely spotless for the Guards, who let us barrow the weapons, inspection. Yet, they only sprayed CLP in the chamber and on the BCG before turning them in. Our Cadre staff told me they would get them wet…more like giving them a mist.

Some of the my fellow “cadets” (actually I am a History Major doing this to get a ground point of view of how things are done and to put it in perspective when studying military history) questioned me how my rifles were functioning at all if I kept them “that dirty”, which when I got my M4 cleaned, it was far cleaner than most of my AR’s after a good cleaning session, which takes me 15 mins.

I have toured through the sticky’s, gone through a course, and watched the DVDs, and the cleaning methods vary, however there are quite consistent practices:

[ul]
[li]Give a good wipe down to view wear and possible defects and cracks with any of the major and minor components.
[/li][li]Clean off major particles like unspent powder, brass shavings, or serious carbon build up.
[/li][li]Re-lube all components that were cleaned off.
[/li][li]Lube the BCG heavily.
[/li][/ul]

With this said, what are the best methods and ways to clean, and run the AR/M4 platform? Just a wet bolt and run it dirty like Pat Rogers does (though he does say for those who shoot as a life or death profession not to), give a good wipe down and degreaser job to later reaply lube (what I do), or do what apparently the Military does, spotless cleaning for inspection?

And does this spotless inspection cleaning harm the weapon more than it helps it?

2

Welcome to the stupid, you cant change it just do as your told. When you get your bars and learn what stupid really is, this will be the last thing on your mind, but I see where your coming from.

I had to check my joe’s weapons all the time cause flat out most are lazy. I always felt they were better off with a clean freshly lubed weapons just for my sanity. Truth be told unless your in special something you are never going to fire as many rounds in training, as you do in one 2 day class. At least that’s my experience.

3

In my experience lube is the most important factor.

4

I know I go against the grain here, when it comes to cleaning, as I am not a proponent of the “clean less, shoot more” approach.

I don’t really see why proper maintenance and cleaning is such a big deal. I does not take a lot of time to wipe down the weapon, do a quick parts inspection and lube it properly.

I agree that white-glove type inspections are stupid, but that is not related to maintenance and cleaning or equal that following a proper regime is stupid; it is a result of poor training and a lack of understanding. This is what leads to stupid and damaging cleaning methods.

Also, most of the “don’t clean your gun” arguments are aimed at gun powder residue and how build up correlates to malfunctions. We all understand that, in the AR series, build up won’t cause a malfunction. Gun powder residue can absorb moisture, and cause corrosion.

Build up of gun powder residue is, for military personell, a very minor part of the factors affecting the weapon system. Weather and terrain factors are also capable of rendering a weapon system inoperable. During what part of your TLPs is the decision made that weapons inspections are not neccessary as part of PCC’s/PCI’s, just tell the soldiers to lube their weapons? What happens when this transfers over to neglecting field maintenance routines?

As a leader, you are responsible for ensuring that your unit is ready and capable of completing it’s mission. How far down the chain are you willing to delegate responsibility for weapons operability? The individual soldier? How can you ensure weapons operability if it’s dirty as fuck, and never inspected?
You are also responsible for the welfare of your men, and that includes enforcing standards for equipment readiness and maintenance.

5

Getting a weapon cleaner than necessary for function isn’t all that bad…

But what you’re seeing up there is imbeciles flat out damaging the weapon. I never thought of doing some of the stupid things they did.

6

I agree with Arctic1. My first concern is inspection of the parts, my second concern is that gunpowder is hygroscopic, as he mentioned, and my final concern is that brass shavings have gummed up my extractor before. I usually shoot carbine once per week and my procedure is very simple:

-Field Strip
-Hit all internal components/areas with a nylon toothbrush that has a drop or two of SLIP 2000 EWL on it
-Boresnake it once (also with a few drops of EWL on the brush area)
-Wipe off all areas
-Relube generously with EWL
-Reassemble

It only takes a few minutes and gives me peace of mind.

7

Way too much thinking going on here. I don’t advocate never cleaning your weapon. What I say is that it can go a long way as long as it is properly lubed and everything is on working order.

I actually do clean mine, just not to the moronic standard that many uninformed people advocate.

8

Alot of truth to this. One of my friends ponied up the cash to have a custom bolt rifle built up with a schilen barrel. After every single shooting session, even if it was only 10 rounds, he would ocd clean his rifle. After only 2000 rounds his accuracy went to shit so he contacted the mfg to have them look at it. The mfg thought he had put over 5K rounds and after they discussed his cleaning procedure they figured out that his excessive cleaning had actually accelerated the wear process.

I do like my guns clean but if i know i’m going to be throwing lead the next weekend usually the most i’ll do is run a boresnake and re-lube my rifle.

9

No combat ready unit has ever passed inspection. No inspection ready unit has ever passed combat.

While this may be an oversimplification, it does have a valid basis. I once saw a platoon remove their flash hiders and use SANDPAPER on the muzzles to remove carbon fouling before an IG inspection! :nono:

10

Yes well according to the Marine Corps, if the weapon still has its finish left on the barrel, it’s not clean enough. :wink:

11

If he wore out the bore that much, he must have done something pretty dumb. Running patches, wet or dry, and copper/bronze brushes through the bore shouldn’t damage it.

Using Q-tips to clean the barrel extension locking lugs is not harmful to the weapon.

12

The issue I see is that many people who are not knowledgeable take things out of context. There are many comments on this board, and others, to the effect of: “don’t clean your gun, just lube it”.

Proper cleaning and maintenance is not detrimental to the weapon system. Improper cleaning, and moronic methods brought on by the good idea fairy are. Steel wool, steel brushes, chamber brushes and cleaning rods used as bits on a drill.

For the ones who don’t have a lot of experience, the take-away is often that cleaning your weapon can damage it, so you should only clean it after 10000 rounds and only apply lube.

And while I do not advocate a white-glove inspection regime, for military units a certain standard has to be enforced as gun powder residue build up is not the only issue. For the hobby shooter, a different standard can apply.

One example of a stupid practice taken out of context is the following:

A few years ago, it was common practice during winter to mix our CLP with denatured alcohol in order to lower the freezing point of the lube. Nobody could say where this practice started, but everybody did it. The only problem with this practice is that adding denatured alcohol reduces the surface/interface tension between water and the lube, so instead of water beading up and running off the parts, much smaller beads would form and penetrate further in to the mechanism causing further problems.

After we did some checking, the only reference we found for this practice, was in the field manual for the .50 cal HMG, where it said to mix denatured alcohol to help thaw an already frozen weapon. After you fixed it, clean it properly and add lube.

13

That’s interesting.

I do like my guns clean but if i know i’m going to be throwing lead the next weekend usually the most i’ll do is run a boresnake and re-lube my rifle.

Same here. We shoot every weekend. So a gun I know I’m bringing back out will go at least a few weeks between cleanings… just add more froglube.

Depends on the gun too. My House gun is never left uncleaned, lubed, etc.

14

Not the inspection.

Artic and markm identified it. It’s the actions taken by those cleaning to ensure it’s clean enough to pass the white-glove inspections conducted by some ignoramus of an armory custodian (more common than an actual armorer) that lead to actual damage.

The amount of scraping/abrasive implements applied for purposes that are really nothing more than cosmetic and have zero to do with function…yeesh.

Related to glocktogo’s statement: There will come a day when some halfwit in the cage will look down the muzzle of your weapon, not see shiny material at the base of the interior of the A2 birdcage, and will advise you to take a cleaning rod section to scrape the carbon off of that.

He’s basically telling you to gouge up and otherwise thrash the crown of your barrel. Between an equally-ignorant lifer SNCO who’s only been taught by “mah dadd-eh” and insert branch here and who back up the custodian, and everybody else wanting to get the hell out of the armory…you’ll scrape.

^^^That. Stuff like that right there is only one example of the cleaning practices that can cumulatively destroy a weapon. It doesn’t need to be immediate to be bad.

15

So my question is, for us the tax payers and shooters who probably shoot more than the average military unit or secondary units, should be we tell congress to tell the Pentagon to change they way cleaning and maintenance are done, leave rifles specifically for Basic Training to get that spotless cleaning and attention to detail lessons in, and save us the tax payer a lot of money? How much money could the Pentagon and the U.S. save on better cleaning and maintenance practices?

The M4’s we were cleaning were beat all to hell: gas rings about 1,000-2,000 rounds close to being changed out, buffers needing replaced badly (mine I could not see the “H” on the buffer, and chrome line barrels with scratching and wear on the rifling.

16

My unit very recently implemented new cleaning techniques. We now clean fewer parts (we no longer are allowed to remove the extractor), and use less invasive techniques as well (using bore-snakes as opposed to cleaining rods). Also, we recently had a block of instruction on how to properly clean and lubricate, without damaging, our rifles. It is certainly a step in the right direction, but is not yet to the point where i believe it should be, but progress is slow in the mil. Although my unit is as POG as it gets (we don’t issue rifles to anyone, simply sign them out the one time per year that we shoot, we also only have M16A2s available). So we are making improvements, or at least someone higher up recognizes that we are destroying our equipment by over cleaning it.

17

I don’t know if this applies to you, or if you will have your own command in the end, but try to affect a change. Make solid arguments against current practices, and have a valid suggestion for an improved approach towards weapons maintenance ready. That would be my first step, as opposed to writing a congressman.

Now, I understand that different militaries do things differently, so bear with me. Our soldiers draw their weapons when they enter service, and keep them stored in squad weapon safes when they are not in use. Access is quite easy for them.

Also, we do not have armorers who inspect weapons integral to our companies; we usually only have a weapons repair section in the HHC. In short, platoons oversee 1st line maintenance themselves.

The only time our weapons see an armorer is if something breaks, and we send it to the shop, or during quarterly inspections. These are the only times we enforce a very strict cleaning regimen, trying to remove as much build up as possible, but still not scraping or using methods that will damage the weapon.

Still, the good idea fairy often roars it’s ugly head, and we see soldiers do stupid shit. And it’s not always possible to prevent this from happening. Just a few weeks ago a saw an upper that had a cleaning rod sticking out of it. I asked the platoon commander what happened, and he said the soldier did not realize he was trying to clean the barrel using a 7.62 rod, so after meeting some resistance when trying to insert the rod, he proceeded to drive it in with a hammer.

The key components to a good maintenance regimen, in my opinion, is:

-Proper training and knowledge on the weapon system in question

-Proper training on correct maintenance; function is key, cleanliness is not; different cleaning methods for different weapons

-Proper routines for weapons maintenance in both garrison and in the field, and for different climates and terrain

-Leadership at all levels, squad leaders, platoon sgt’s and platoon commanders; enforce the standard you have set; lead by example, maintain your weapon alongside your soldiers, show them you take it seriously

18

No, no further command from here on out. I am 29 and doing this for an educational experience since I do a lot of military history. it also helps to be a shooter too, I guess, noticing this “practice” during the FTX. I had a few question has to how my guns actually function if I don’t keep them spotlessly clean and don’t use CLP (told them I use SLP 2000 but that didn’t register).

19

…

20

I clean my rifle after every range session.(generally 500-700 rounds)

All I ever do is break down BCG, wipe it completely down and brush off whatever will come off, reassemble and relube.

Then get the chamber brush and lube it well, twirl it for about 10 seconds and then use one of those bushy chamber mop things to dry.

Then I wipe down the entire upper receiver and use my boresnake to clean the gas tube by looping it around it and wiping.

Then I lube the bore snake and give it 3-4 passes down the bore.

For the lower I just pull the action spring/buffer, wipe them down and get whatever I can in the trigger area with 2 patches around a sectional rod.

Finally reassemble. All in all takes about 10-15 minutes, no scraping or scrubbing required.

Also some times if i feel like it I will remove the lower handguard section and loop the tail end of the bore snake around the barrel and floss it to clean crud and what not off.