I doubt there’s any one, best way of doing it. Here’s how I do it.
First, if I didn’t wear glasses (which I do) I would put on eye protection!
I scrub the bore with either a bronze bore brush with lubricant and/or a nylon brush with solvent (Shooter’s Choice - though Hoppes would do). I use pipettes to put solvent on the patches and brushes to avoid contaminating the entire bottle of solvent. I then use patches with solvent till the bore is clean, then dry patches to remove all traces of the solvent.
I then scrub the various pistol parts with solvent, patches, and a M16 toothbrush. I dry it off with more patches.
I coat the steel parts of the pistol lightly with lubricant using a shaving brush (old army trick!) and put a light coat of lubricant in the bore. For a while I used Militec-1, but it’s recently been suggested that while it is a good lubricant, it is a poor protectant. I now use Break-Free CLP.
However, I’m getting ready to switch over to Break-Free LP. In theory it should be a little less runny and more effective than CLP – and obviously I don’t need the cleaner anyway.
As I reassemble the pistol, I put additional lubricant on friction areas (slide rails and such). I then work the pistol a bit, plus do a function check. This spreads the lubricant and tends to force any excess out, which I then remove with a patch. The function check lets me know if something is amiss.
Every once in a while, I also disassemble and clean the magazines and put a light film of lubricant on the spring. If the magazine body is of a rustable steel (like a Sig mag), I apply a light coat of lubricant both inside and out, and then wipe most of it off – basically I’m just trying to darken the mag body with lubricant, nothing more.
Check any screws for looseness, hit the nightsights with a dry Q-tip to make sure they’re clean (they’ve got little windows, you know), make sure there are no leftover parts on the kitchen table
, and you’re good to go.
I never use sprays of any sort, or WD-40, except when doing a flush during a detail (total) strip.
ken_mays: great site! You really do need to try out a Birchwood Casey Lead Cleaning Cloth for cleaning stainless steel revolvers – it’s almost magic!