How do you clean your rifle?

Answer 1

I would recommend a bore snake. they come in various sizes and look like a fat shoelace. Running this through the barrel a couple times with a little gun oil is pretty much all you need to do.

Otherwise i usually clean mine to some extent after every firing. If you are just shooting off a few rounds, you can probably just run the appropriate brush size through the barrel about 2-3 times. I go out quite frequently so I don't bother with a full cleaning.

If your doing any extensive firing or haven't fired it in a while, I would remove the bolt if it is a bolt action and brush down the barrel quite a bit more to dislodge any possible lead/carbon built up. This is more common in the non-chrome lined barrels. After that I tend to run a patches with outers tri-care oil (my preferred brand since it cleans, and lubricates in one solution) until the patch appears to have gotten most of the junk out. After cleaning the barrel i usually try to wipe down most of the moving parts as well as any metal parts with the same solution on a paper towel. Brake cleaner is an excellent cleaner if the gun is extremely dirty, just don't get it on the stock or any other none metal parts.

If the rifle is semi/automatic like the AK, you should look at the gas tube as well as the piston for any build up and remove that with a low grade steel brush or the barrel brush (if you can get the gun back together). Don't do that if you don't know what is going on. I remember taking apart my ruger mark II pistol, not having the schematic. It was awesome trying to put that back together.