Hi fellow Hiveians,
I've had an awesome week at work where I've actually been able to breathe a bit. It's very refreshing but feels like the calm before the storm. So what better way to enjoy an hour to myself than pull out the old Smith & Wesson and give it a clean, as I was promising a few days ago in my previous post.
Dismantle
So thankfully, I have learned that dismantling the gun really isn't all that different across many models of the Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handguns. That made my job a whole lot easier! I looked for a few different videos on YouTube but couldn't necessarily find my exact model, which is what I remember from previous experience. I then just tried to watch any that I could find and it thankfully did apply to my model versus the one the guy was using.
So I've got my whole setup there, my cleaning kit and my unlocked gun.
The cleaning kit was a really nice investment, I grabbed it when I bought the gun in the first place so that I could maintain it properly, I know it's quite important to have the gun cleaned and oiled when using it. What I didn't realize, while I was watching a video on how to clean and maintain it, was that the solution there, CLP, was a cleaner, lubricant and preservative. It would really help to read the bottle lol oh well. I will get to that later.
So the interesting and easy way that the S&W company has to be able to disassemble it is to hold the slide back a little bit in the manner seen below, and pull it. This gives the lock, seen above the "908" there, space to move out of the slot it's sitting in.
With the slide held back, flipping the gun over reveals the little nub you use to push out the lock. It was actually very easy thankfully! I pushed on this a bit and it popped out on the other side.
Now that it popped out enough for your finger to grab it, you can pull it out so that you can then remove the top half of the gun; the slide, barrel and spring mechanism.
There she is all disassembled and ready for a cleaning. The spring and guide there need to be removed gently. Being a spring under load, it will shoot away and could hurt you or someone else so I had to gently put my finger ontop of the spring and then push it so that way I had it in my grip before trying to remove it.
I put the spring and guide mechanism aside, those don't really need to be cleaned from what I was reading and watching so I didn't really bother.
Kind of a cool look down the slide. The circle in the very back is the firing pin I believe. When the safety is engaged, there is a round component that sits in front of it so even if you press the trigger it hits the round piece instead of the pin, preventing discharge. You can also see the frame rail guides on either side. That keeps it going smoothly back and forth when operating.
A look down at the clip chamber and the seat that has the barrel in it. The spring and pin towards the middle are related to the trigger I think, they moved when I had it disassembled and pressed the trigger so that was cool to see.
Cleaning
So now it was time to give 'em a clean! I like the little kit I bought. You can see that it's designed for .38, .357 and a 9mm which was actually kind of surprising to me. A .357 has the same barrel diameter as a 9mm? Crazy!
So the first thing I did was maybe not the ideal first move but it was my first time in years, second ever, cleaning a gun so bear with me hehe. I also employed a method that I'm not sure is completely accurate so please let me know. I put the steel cleaning brush there at the beginning the barrel and brought the little pull mechanism up to it and connected it afterwards. I didn't think pushing the steel brush the opposite way the bullet leaves the gun was good for the rifling so I avoided that. When I watched the video of a guy cleaning it he went back and forth so is it that versatile? Or will it depend on the barrel? With the two pieces connected, I then pulled it the same path as a bullet, towards the end of the barrel. I dismantled the cleaning pole with the brush and repeated a few times, it did get a fair amount of stuff out!
Next up is cleaning the slide. I wanted to see how dirty it was and it wasn't that bad thankfully, but I don't know how often it has been fired. I've only sent 50 or so rounds through it I think.
One helpful thing I did was grab some Q-Tips, those helped me get in getting into those small grooves there and even afterwards, I did end up forgetting some but that's ok, it will get better the more I do it.
So one of the things the guy did that I liked was oiling the slide along the rails. Above I mentioned the rails in the view I had down the slide, here is it on the side. I put a drop of oil at the beginning of that rail there and let it trickle down to the bottom. I did both sides and stood it vertically so it could make its way down, which I thought was a nice trick he showed.
At this point, I had oiled the slide, the rails on the frame of the gun itself and the beginning of the barrel along contact points so it was pretty much good to go. I wiped down the excess oil so it wasn't going to be a mess but tried not to remove all of it so it still had some on there.
In putting it back together, reversing the process you end up finding out what are important pieces involved in the firing mechanism which was cool. These little pins are pointing upwards keeping pressure on the slide for various reasons but are important in putting it back together. I had to push this one down to get the first part clicked. There were 3 in total for this gun.
The second and third ones are below now. The first one is touching the back of the slide right now and the second one was a little tougher, it required more finesse to get it to sit in place to let the slide fully get into place.
Now that the slide was fully back into place, it was time to put that same pin back into place that keeps the locking mechanism there.
I don't know if it's just me but I feel like the barrel looks a lot cleaner after I cleaned and oiled it! I know the outside of the barrel here isn't as important as the inside but I think it looks nice. It still does brush against the slide which is why it's important to keep it cleaned and oiled, to prevent issues.
Was nice to get it cleaned up and ready to sit in the case again until I have a time to use it lol. More fun for me than anything!
I also gave the clip a little cleaning and some love. There wasn't that much carbon on it but it did still have some so I gave it a clean with my last Q-Tip and got it nice and new looking.
All in all, it was a pretty low volume of supplies used which was nice. I do like these little cotton cleaning pads, they work really well at getting the junk off it! I don't think that's a whole lot of dirt and carbon on the gun so I was pleased that I didn't have to use a bunch of applicators and have carbon everywhere. What I did realize unfortunately, that I alluded to in the beginning was the solution that I have, which I thought was just oil, was actually a cleaning solution, lubricant and preservative all in one. Meaning I should have put the stuff on the components in the beginning so it breaks it down then let it sit for a while to break through the junk before wiping it away. I will definitely keep that in mind when I pull it out to clean it next time though.
Feedback
So that was a lot of fun, cleaning my pistol! If you have any suggestions of supplies or methods to use please let me know, I would like to learn more about it. Thanks for checking it out, more posts to come in The Pew community!
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