I broke down today and stripped down the Rock Ranch for the first time since the beginning of October. I figure that's pretty close to 3,000 rounds. Shot a bit in October, took most of November off, a bit in December and somewhere in the 700-800 round range this month so far. Getting ready to start picking it back up with lots more rounds downrange in the near future; hopefully starting tomorrow! I'll probably get about 1500 rounds downrange this month (depending on how much practice time I can squeeze in tomorrow after the match) and start hitting at least 2,000 rounds a month in February.
Anyway, at my practice session last weekend the gun was starting to get sluggish and with the cold weather hanging around I needed to pull the slide glide off the pistol and put something a little lighter on for lube.
As you can see, the gun was pretty grungy.
Here's the inside of slide - icky!
You can see just how grungy the top and bottom halves are. This is part of the beauty of slide glide. Whatever magic it works, it keeps the weapon lubed while pushing the dirt and gunk away from the parts of the gun that are rubbin' together.
Wanna see something really nasty? Check out the barrel.
Since it's been a while since I've cleaned the pistol, I broke out the extractor, firing pin, and firing pin stop.
I then proceeded to wipe down and get rid of all the gunk throughout the weapon, and used some Q-tips and a squirt of WD-40 to clean out the extractor and firing pin channels. I don't use any solvent, nor do I clean the inside of the barrel at all. There have been several studies done that have proven to me that practical shooting can heat up the barrel to extreme levels and that the best thing to do is just leave the barrel alone in order to not damage the riflings. As a result, I rarely, if ever, clean out the inside of the barrel. If it starts getting really really bad, then there's a solvent that I can dip the barrel in, partially made up of peroxide that will clean any gunk out of the barrel without damaging it.
Here's the two halves all nice and clean and ready to go back together.
Before putting the pistol together, I lubed up the halves with a combination of some heavy motorcycle racing oil and a little bit of FP-10 and slide the gun back together. Probably the next time I take the gun apart to clean it - in March most likely - I'll put some more slide glide back on it and be ready to rock and roll.
Final picture - looking all sparkly clean - for the moment anyway. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the opportunity to dirty the gun up some more.
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