two words... brake cleaner...

u do all this in 20 minutes. please let me know if you ever plan to be a gunsmith and where you'll work so i won't come there.

i am not even sure if polishing stuffs with the electric drill is a neccessary thing. it probably will wear out the gun. detail cleaing of visual parts are good. it takes time for the chemical to settle and work their magic. this is why people like to clean many guns at the same time. it takes me 4 hours per day for 3 days to clean 7 guns. the ak47 and the ar15 are the hardest to clean. the handguns are easy and take no more than half an hour each. it takes me 10 minutes to clean a revolver because there isn't much to clean and no stripping require. i run a patch soak in oil through the barrel and let it sit while i clean other guns. then i come back in 1 minutes and run the bore brush through it. clean it out then use the bore brush with hoppe 9. then clean it out. then mobil 1 oil it up. the longest part is to clean the cylinder and the port section.

ak47 and ar15 require a lot of care to not scratch them up. these guns are built to last forever under proper maintenance. just because an afgan don't clean his gun and it still last longer than him doesn't mean shit. an afgan live an average of 3 years from the day he pick up his ak47. if he lives longer than that, he probably gone through 4 ak47. they usually throw or sell their guns once they pick up a better one. it is their cleaning method; get cleaner one when theirs is too nasty.

My AK's take me about 45 minutes. The AR, on the other hand, takes me between 60 to 90 minutes (usually closer to 90). This is for an obsessive-compulsive type cleaning, mind you! I try to imagine having to turn it in to my old unit armorer and his pickyness.

Typically 20-25 minutes including lubrication and function check. Once annually I do a complete anal-retentive type teardown and clean. The detail clean is just before winter because my local range becomes inaccesible due to deep snow.

After 22 years I finally took the handguards off of the gun.  (I bought a tool at Knob Creek Gun Range last month.)

I found two spots of brown corrosion or rust maybe a tenth of an inch in diameter.  I took a standard toothbrush with CLP and some Bore Cleaners and it came off with maybe 90 seconds of scrubbing.  Everything else was in great shape.  I sprayed it down with CLP and placed the handguards back together.  So much for having to clean under the handguards all the time.

I spend probably a 1/2 hour per rifle.

45 min to 1 hour for me to clean to near spotless.

I heartily concur.  When I clean any firearm it's to maintain function and extend useful life.  I generally soak out the bore with No. 9 after shooting.  Just a couple of wet patches every day or so to stay ahead of fouling.  The rest of the weapon mainly gets an oil change. Occasionally some area gets detail cleaning but not very often. In other words, the firearm may get cleaned three of four times after shooting, but only five minutes at a time. One of the most important things, I think, is to clean and lube the thing without doing any damange. In my military stint I saw a lot of criminal damage done to firearms on a routine basis due to the "white glove mentality" of military inspections.
I think military influence combined with pride of ownership causes folks to spend a lot of time scraping, brushing and flushing that's more detrimental than helpful to long term
usefullness of their firearms. It's just a machine folks, not a surgical applinace of something.

About 1/2 an hour.  Run patches til they are relatively clean, and go over everything with a rag an re-lube with CLP.  Damn thing runs like a champ, especially for a varmint/target rig.

I think this was a good topic and needs to be brought forward again.

There certainly was a lot of insight as to how everybody cleans their guns.

wipe down internals with rag
q-tips and clp in chamber area
Boresnake
lube

Like fight4yourrights, 556mm and Synister1 said:
Periodically a 15 min once over and once a year break her down.

Think about all the savings from not buying cleaning stuff, you can
buy more ammo.  Think about it!

Of course, now you guys got me feeling worried about my M16 sitting there with 4 months
and 2000 rds and only one oiling..........................

Maintenance sure seems different whether you are in the desert or a typhoon in Vietnam.

It sure seems like there is different things you need to do depending on your environment.