Cleaning with alcohol

4

40Cal@earthlink.net

Inactive
I was voicing my concern over using strong solvents on my polymer frame pistols and another shooter at the range recommended that I use cheap rubbing alcohol to clean it.

I tried it when I got home and the patches came out clean very quickly. Everything appeared to be super clean.

However, I'm still paranoid about my guns. Does anyone have any experience with alcohol as a bore and general gun cleaner? :confused:
 
Well, first off, WELCOME TO TFL! Glad to have you aboard!


Rubbing alchohol is mostly water. A few have some kind of oil in them as a lubricant. I don't know what it will do to a polymer, but make sure you get the metal parts very dry.



BTW, I hope your username is not a real email address. If it is, you just volunteered for mass quantities of spam. There are programs called "spambots" that search out email addresses posted on websites. Spammers run them continuously. If you really must post an email address on a website, it's best to disguise it. Do something like:


myusername <AT> myISPname. com

Spambots won't recognize that as an email address, but any human can figure it out.
 
Actually, soap and water is probably a much better solvent/cleaner than alcohol. Depending on the construction of the gun and the care you take, you could do the whole thing that way (some have been know to put a Glock in the dishwasher).

But really, the dirtiest part of your gun is the bore and chamber, and bore cleaner works the best. Since no one makes a polymer barrel or slide, I'd clean those parts with that kind of chemical, and find something mild for the polymer frame.

I do 90% of firearms cleaning with straight gun oil. It dissolves most grime and doesn't wash away the lube that should be there. And if oil destroys polymer, we're all in trouble.
 
Thanks!

I appreciate the responses. I think I'll go shop for bore cleaner. :-)

Quartus, I was shocked to discover that my user name here was my email address. I have no idea how I did that and I have been unable to find a way to change it. I can't even find a place to delete the account and start over. Any ideas?
 
Ya did a boo-boo when you signed up, somehow, I'd guess. PM one of the mods - they can fix you up. I used to be captainhoek here before TFL went down. Had it changed when it came back up again. Lots of us changed our usernames then. The mods were very helpful about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top