Gary Reeder
the solution to that is DON'T TAKE IT APART
Tuesday, March 03, 2020, 16:23

there is no reason to. We don't have corrosive powder, primers or ammo so why go thru all that. Cleaning should be a very minimum thing these days. If you drop it in the sand or it gets wet, then do a cleaning job but unless the gun "needs it", don't clean it. I have an AMT longslide 45 that I used in combat shooting for several years. I shot 200 rounds in practice every day rain or shine. I kept track of the rounds I loaded for the gun, all ball ammo, 5.5 grains of Red Dot, with a 230 ball. I shot a bit over 70,000 rounds thru that gun before I dropped out of combat shooting due to all the silly ass rules. The gun was customized by me and my gunsmith in 1978, a great fellow named Gary Case. We put a cone shaped bull barrel in it, no bushing, milled out ports in the barrel and slide, fit a beavertail to it, made from scratch an extended slide release and modified the safety and did a full action job on it and added some funky brown rubber grips made by a company I don't even remember. The barrel is a pain to take out due to the cone shaped barrel and full length guide rod so I don't. In all this time and all the rounds I have run thru it, I have taken it apart a total of 5 times for a full cleaning. All else was done with a silicone rag and a stiff brush down the barrel, a toothbrush to clean out the milled slots in the slide, plus a tiny bit of grease on the bottom of the slide. And the gun runs and shoots as good today as it did when new. What all this diatribe means is unless the gun needs it, don't clean it. I never run soft lead thru any of my guns, ever, so it simply doesn't need it.The barrel is blackened around the ports but that doesn't hurt a thing and I use a toothbrush to clean out the milled slots in the slide before or after each match. We have a combat match coming up in a few weeks and as always I will be using this gun. I am not as fast as I used to be nor am I am good a shot as I used to be and my main man Nate will probably kick my ass, but I will have fun and a little extra practice never hurts.