Pistol Cleaning
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.

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.

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








