How to Clean a Rifle

So you want to learn how to clean a rifle? We can help, read on for a step-by-step guide. If you prefer, the video also quickly walks you through the process.

I took a look through our AmmoMan Armory and found a Remington 700 that needed some maintenance. As long as your rifle functions similarly, you should be able to copy each step along with me unless you have a detachable box magazine.

Materials

Similarly to how to clean an AR-15, the supplies you’ll need are simple and smart to keep on hand.

• Gun cleaner
• Lubricant
• Nylon brush
• Bore snake in the correct caliber
• Wipes, patches, gloves

Today, I’m using the Hoppe’s products for oil and cleaner. Anything you choose will work fine, though.

5 Steps for Cleaning your Rifle

Now for cleaning. The first thing you need to do, whether it is obvious or not, is to clear your rifle of any ammunition and make sure there is no live ammo in your working space. Accidents happen all the time followed by “But it was unloaded!”

Remove your Bolt

Next, take your rifle and remove the bolt by unlocking it and pulling back while pressing the bolt release button. This is most often located on the left side of the action, but for this Remington 700, it is on the roof of the trigger guard.

After removing your bolt, take your rag or wipes and spray gun cleaner on the entire bolt and begin to do your first wipe down.

Scrub the Bolt

When you are done with your initial pass, you can take a brush and apply more cleaner and start scrubbing anything on the bolt that you missed with your wipes. Make sure to get all of the carbon fouling off of the lugs on the bolt, and the firing pin hole. When you are satisfied, you can put a light coat of gun oil on your bolt. (excluding the bolt throw)

You can set your bolt to the side until the very end when you need to reassemble.

How to Clean the Action

To clean your action, just repeat the process of spraying cleaner and scrubbing out as much fouling as you can from the inside of the action. Then take a lightly oiled wipe and do a pass through to finish. Don’t forget to wipe down your magazine well while you’re cleaning here.

We are almost finished!

Cleaning a Rifle Barrel

Now all you need to do is clean the rifle’s barrel, lubricate and reassemble.

Start by taking your preferred barrel cleaning tool, (both a rod or snake will work) and add cleaner to it’s brushes. Do your best to ensure that it passes through the barrel from the breech to the muzzle. This is the direction the bullet travels so we want to pull the debris the same way too.

As a side note: The cleaning brush “can” damage the bore over time if not pulled straight through so make sure you aren’t pulling hard against one side during this process.

After about 5 passes, you will have gotten most of the fouling, but feel free to do more if you see more fouling breaking down and coming out. Run a few clean patches through to the barrel. When the patches come out the same color as they went in, you can move on to lubricating and reassembly.

Don’t Forget to Lubricate your Rifle!

Lastly, it’s a good idea to do a final pass with a patch that has a light coat of gun oil to get any leftover cleaner out of your barrel. Feel free to send another dry patch if you want to remove excess oil.

Now you can reassemble your bolt into your action and do a functions test. Simply put the bolt back into the action the way you took it out. you should not have to press a button to reinstall.

Why Clean your Rifle?

Although some people put it up for debate, if your rifle could speak it would vouch for being kept wiped down and oiled. While our modern guns “can” function for quite a while without being maintained, that is not optimal. If you have a rifle in the first place, you want to be able to reliably and consistently shoot and hit your target, right?

Cleaning your gun is a very critical part of that process. A bolt will run better when it is cleaned of fouling, and oiled for a smoother moving action. The same goes for barrel performance! If your barrel has not been cleaned in hundreds of rounds, you may start to see accuracy shifts.

How Often Should you Clean a Rifle?

With that being said, everyone cleans their rifles at different points, and has their own opinion to support why. So today, I’ll offer something that is not, “up in the air”.

When it comes to a cleaning schedule, it really does depend how often you shoot your rifle, as well as how much fouling your caliber of choice presents! However, even if it’s just sitting in the corner of a safe, lubricant can still dry up and needs to be checked from time to time, regardless of inactivity.

I would say cleaning your bolt action rifle every hundred rounds or so will be fine, depending on what caliber you are shooting. The important thing is to make sure you are still shooting accurate groups, and that your bolt is easy to work back and forth between shots.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it! You are ready for your hunt or precision rifle range days!

Thanks for reading! Now that you have a clean rifle, you’ll probably want to confirm your zero. Check out this article on how to zero a rifle for more helpful content. Be safe, and I’ll see you in the next write-up!