I posted this a couple of weeks ago, but I'll do it again. It might help. It's a bit long, so be warned.
What To Do When You Take Your New Gun Out Of The Box
I’ve been around guns all my life, and upon occasion, have even had the pleasure of buying and shooting a brand new in the box, never been fired before gun. I’ve also had the pleasure of unpacking and preparing for use a number of military weapons, which I am living testament to, are packed in the most obnoxious, gooey, sticky, slimy stuff you can imagine – cosmoline. But the latter is a story for a different paper.
I’ve spoken with friends and associates who have complained that their gun didn’t work as expected right out of the box. They experienced failure to fire, failure to eject, magazines failing to drop, slides not locking back after the last round and a host of other problems. Most of these problems can be narrowed down to the fact that the gun was not “treated” fairly prior to its first range session.
New guns come in a number of pre-fire conditions. Some are loaded down with oil, grease or other preservative “goo.” Others come packaged dryer than a popcorn fart. Most come in some condition between the two. Below are a few steps you can take to make sure that your first firing session is successful and you and your gun go home happy. Before you leave your gun shop or on the way home, stop and get a good cleaning kit. You should be able to purchase a kit for around $30. That kit is more important that even the ammo you will later purchase for the gun. In addition to the kit, get some solvent and some lube and some dry lube such as powdered graphite or Remington Dry Lube. Hoppe’s #9 is probably the most common. There are others; Gunzilla, CLP, and other stuff, but you can’t go wrong with Hoppe’s. And the smell is addicting. I think there might be some after shave or cologne which has the fragrance of Hoppe’s.
Get solvent and lube and the dry lube. They are
not interchangeable.
1) Take your new gun to a quiet place in your house. Open the gun case. Take the gun out and admire it. Pat yourself on the back for being a wise and astute consumer and making a wise and educated choice. Now put the gun back in the case and take out the owner’s manual. Don’t put the magazine (God forbid that you would call the thingy that holds the rounds a clip. It ain’t a clip. It has a spring and a follower. It is a magazine) into the magazine well. Don’t rack back the slide. Don’t mess with the trigger. READ THE OWNER’S MANUAL COVER TO COVER. Now, do it again. Read the parts that describe the operation, field stripping and cleaning several times. Do it again.
2) While some experts may tell you your new gun is ready to fire right out of the box, that’s a fallacy. It may be ready to fire from a mechanical standpoint, but unless you want to find out how efficient the Customer Service department is at your gun shop or at the home office of the manufacturer of your gun, you might want to follow the steps in this paper. Field strip your gun. Put it back together. Do it again. Do it again. Do it until it becomes second nature. Become one with the gun. Get real intimate with your new friend. Make sure you do this on a table in a small room if possible, with no hidden corners or carpets. Keep in mind that the famous Mr. Murphy is watching you constantly, and there are a couple of springs in your new gun which may or may not become airborne with great force, and have an innate ability to find the best hiding places when released from captivity.
3) Field strip the gun and follow the directions for cleaning in the owner’s manual. Most cleaning kits contain a toothbrush. It’s for your gun, not for your pearly white’s. Apply the solvent liberally and use the toothbrush to scrub every available surface on the slide and the frame. Your gun does not need heavy grease in order to operate. It does need light lubricant, but we’ll discuss that a little later. Take the brush which came in your kit, and is made for the bore of the caliber gun you bought. If you aren’t sure, the brush will be slight larger in diameter than the inside diameter of the barrel. Put a few drops of solvent on the brush and run the brush through the bore going from the chamber end to the muzzle end. (If you don’t know the difference, you haven’t read your owner’s manual enough times). Allow the brush to turn. It’s simply following the rifling in your barrel. This is good. Now, put the patch holder on the rod instead of the brush and put a couple of drops of solvent on the patch. Make sure the patch meets with a little resistance as you push it into the bore, again going from chamber to muzzle. Run the patch up and down the bore and make sure it emerges clean. Take a clean bore patch and spray a few drops of wet lube on it and run it up and down the bore. This will coat the bore and keep the rust away.
When you are cleaning the gun, make sure to get all of the packing grease and gunk off of the moving parts, off of the slide, off of the guide rod and springs, and pay particular attention to the firing pin hole. You can use a lint free cloth or bore patches to wipe the gun down. Once the rag or bore patch no longer picks up any grease, you should be ready to lube the gun.
DO NOT OVER LUBE!!!! Most good gun lubes come with a syringe which will enable you to accurately place a drop or two of lube in tight places. If not, you need to find a container in your gun shop which has such a device. Put a drop or two of lube on the slide guides, the guide rod and springs and any place where there is metal to metal or metal to polycarbonate contact. Wipe off any excess. You can now use the spry lube and lube the trigger assembly and put a little into the firing pin recess.
4) Reassemble your gun.
5) Disassemble and clean your magazine. The mag is an integral part of your weapon system. Make sure the spring and follower are clean and there are no burrs on the feed lips at the top of the mag. A little 200 grit emery cloth can be used to remove burrs.
6) Reassemble the mag.
You should now be ready for a range session. Some folks will tell you to shoot one round then clean then shoot two round then clean again before loading a full mag into the gun. I don’t really subscribe to that school because most modern semi-automatics are built with enough interlocks and safeties so that accidental fully automatic fire is about as common as a vegan at a Bar-B-Que. But it may not be a bad idea to load 2 or 3 rounds into the mag for the first couple of shooting cycles.
There are those who will tell you that you should only clean your gun when it fails to operate properly. My suggestion is that you clean your gun after every range session, and if you carry it, once a week. But then I’m pretty anal about having a clean firearm.
