Firearm Maintenance

[archosman]

Trying to get a definitive answer to settle an argument. When I strip down my guns for cleaning the last thing I usually do is take a clean patch, put a little oil on it and run it down the bore. Have done this all of my life. A friend of mine said (and he's only gotten into shooting in the last year) that having a coat of oil in the barrel is a bad idea.

Anyone have an opinion on this? I would find it hard to believe it would be an issue... let alone I imagine after the first shot quite a bit of it is burned off. Is there some newfangled thought process I haven't heard of?

Probably a good question for Old Pa.

[swt61]

My Dad and Brothers always did the same, and as far as I know my Brothers still do.

They're the great White hunters of the North, so they should be well versed on gun maintenance.

[morphsci]

Yep, been doing the same thing for almost 40 years and no problems that can be traced to that procedure.

[grawk]

ditto, per my army training

[n_maher]

The theory I was taught was that a slightly oily barrel was better than a slightly rusty one.

[naamanf]

ditto, per my army training

Same. Mil-Tec FTW.

[Aimless1]

A friend of mine said (and he's only gotten into shooting in the last year) that having a coat of oil in the barrel is a bad idea.

I'm wondering what the "bad idea" is? I can't see how a light coating of oil hurts anything. At worst it's a waste of money and resources. I was taught it protects the bore and have been doing so for 35+ years with no ill effects.

[archosman]

I'm wondering what the "bad idea" is? I can't see how a light coating of oil hurts anything. At worst it's a waste of money and resources. I was taught it protects the bore and have been doing so for 35+ years with no ill effects.

Me too. Never heard such a thing.

[randerson3024]

I have done this since I was a kid and my father taught me to do so. I have lots of nice guns, and I have never had a problem.

[Dusty Chalk]

Maybe he's put too much thought into it -- oil vapors/fire/etc.

[Iron_Dreamer]

I don't even own a gun, but I know that is a standard procedure. Don't know what he was thinking.

[Old Pa]

Trying to get a definitive answer to settle an argument. When I strip down my guns for cleaning the last thing I usually do is take a clean patch, put a little oil on it and run it down the bore. Have done this all of my life. A friend of mine said (and he's only gotten into shooting in the last year) that having a coat of oil in the barrel is a bad idea.

Anyone have an opinion on this? I would find it hard to believe it would be an issue... let alone I imagine after the first shot quite a bit of it is burned off. Is there some newfangled thought process I haven't heard of?

Can't see how it would hurt, especially if you regularly ran a dry patch back through the barrel before you shot the gun again. Never hurts to look for barrel obstructions. Oil does attract dust and dirt and tends to thicken and get stickier with time, but nothing that should stop a "lead patch" moving down the barrel at the speed of sound.

That said, I rarely use oil in the barrels of firearms using smokeless powder and noncorrosive primers. My barrel cleaning procedure is to work a solution of four parts Shooters Choice solvent and one part Kroil into the barrel with a stiff nylon brush sized to the bore. I put the solvent on the brush with a dropper bottle to avoid cross contaminating the rest of the solvent. Five strokes each way and then remove the brush and wipe it off. Wait a few minutes and then push a clean dry tight patch through.

Repeat with the solvent mix on the brush if the clean patch comes up with powder or metal fouling. After the powder fouling is out (dark black), then increase the soak times between brushing and dry patching until the rest of the metal fouling is out (copper shows blue in the dry patch). Once there's no more fouling, I'm done. I think there is still enough solvent left in the metal after the last dry patch to have a preservative anti-rust effect.

Heavy fouling and corrosion require a different bag of tricks, but that's my basic barrel cleaning procedure for whatever it's worth.

Probably a good question for Old Pa.

[krrm]

Oil in barrel while in storage, dry clean before shooting is standard procedure in my part of the old world as well.

If you skip the dry clean part, I have read that someone thinks that oil in barrel *may* increase the pressure and that this might be bad for your karma or something. Ok, I made up the last part because a modern firearm should handle a little increased pressure just fine and after the first shot most of the oil should be gone anyway.

[IceClass]

I always finish every gun cleaning by running an very lightly oiled patch over the whole thing, barrel included.

I could understand that it "may" be a bad idea to fire a gun that's still dripping in packing grease as that can be pretty thick stuff but I've never yet seen a civilian gun thus shipped.

[boomana]

I was taught same as others here.

[Old Pa]

And clean from the breech whenever possible.

[archosman]

When I got my SKS it took forever to get all of the cosmoline off of the rifle.

[IceClass]

When I got my SKS it took forever to get all of the cosmoline off of the rifle.

Cosmoline!

That's what that %$#@ing stuff is called!

[Old Pa]

When I got my SKS it took forever to get all of the cosmoline off of the rifle.

That's because it was applied by the Red Star Brigade of the People's Cosmoline Division.

After fifteen years my SKS still bleeds a little more cosmo after a rapid fire string.