A Cautionary Tale

 

Now look here, you lot. It's all very well to get out in the field with a rigful of weaponry, well done, but here's the thing. After the shoot you have to clean the guns because if you don't they don't work, and if they don't work what use are they?

Caveat in mind I set to work on the front porch, starting with shotguns. Some people think shotguns don't need to be cleaned and that's an error, they do have to be cleaned otherwise they turn into  filthy, rusty, seized up, malfunctioning beasts. 

Dirty

Perhaps you've been there. You're out in the country on a shoot and guess what, your friend's miserable gun, typically a pump which someone's been too idle to look after, won't feed or eject. Utterly useless except as some kind of club.

Still, some weapons are easier to keep in good order than others. The AR 15, for example, is annoyingly fixy, there's all these little bits which get filthy dirty because of the wretched thing's direct impingement system, annoying.

Filthy

On the other hand, the gas piston system of, say, a ChiCom SKS is simpler, runs cleaner and I seem to remember the same held true with the FN. Mind you, we had to polish those things to the extent of harming the rifle itself, same with gas masks. You can bull a gas mask? you ask in bemused consternation. Yes, yes you can. I tell you, they shone like glass.

Ole Rascal

Other people think the lowly .22, pronounced "Tutu" or "Desmond" in the Sceptred Isle, doesn't need cleaning. This too is a mistake and I congratulated myself this evening on sticking to bolt action rimfire, Ruger American.

Clean

Some say they're more accurate than their semi brethren, and that's as maybe. But one thing's for sure, they're easy to look after. Remove bolt. Clean bolt. Run rods and patches through the barrel, replace bolt, oil the whole thing up and there you go, easy.

Then, job well done, sit back on the porch and watch lightning flash across the sky. Draw the moral of this cautionary tale as you will.

#2A,

LSP