Here is great advice for anyone who wants to know how a trained armorer cleans his pistols.
Do any shooting over the holiday? It’s the time of year for it and I recently engaged in a bit of cleaning. I’d done a ‘factory adjustment’ on three firearms, those meant to achieve some primary role as defense handguns. As I just ‘got on paper’ with a pair of them during annual recertification, I confirmed zero with fresh carry ammo and got them cleaned and lubed.
As I checked the guns at the range, I had cleaning gear on hand to do the job there. A good rule is to have a ventilated space to do gun cleaning. The outdoors is a good choice.
It doesn’t hurt to glove up before cleaning to keep the bad stuff from the gun off of your skin. Even using the new ‘safe’ cleaning chemicals, there is the matter of toxic metal residue and other junk. Also shown, the needle oiler – critical to put lube where you want — and hand cleansing wipes, along with a plastic shopping bag for trash.
For cleaning, I used nitrile gloves, some clear safety glasses, a crevice tool from Real Avid, a brush, a cleaning rod and patches, as well as some CLP from Breakfree (now a part of the Safariland Group).
The first thing to do is to positively clear the piece. A handy thing about a shooting range is having the bullet-absorbing backstop into which you can direct the muzzle. I had the clear safety glasses on – I’d been shooting. I gloved up and, keeping the muzzle in that safest direction, removed the magazine and stowed it. I locked the slide to the rear so I could look into the breech. The pistol, a GLOCK, is like most pistols with a barrel hood that throws a shadow across the chamber.
It was overcast anyway, but neither aspect mattered. I also checked the chamber physically, feeling for the presence of an unextracted round. It’s not common for the extractor to miss a live (or empty) round, but it has happened.
Better to be safe.
Armorer’s grip.
After the visual and physical inspection, I lowered the slide, aimed into the backstop and pressed the trigger. This is to put the striker at rest, required with this handgun for disassembly. I use the ‘armorer’s grip’ to disassemble the gun; hooking my thumb under the grip tang and encircling my hand over the top of the slide behind the ejection port, I can close my hand. This puts pressure on the slide, moving it back the requisite amount to pull the slide lock lever down on both sides of the frame – using the ‘wrong’ hand. Read more
