The Importance of Taking Care of Your Gear [2024]

I’d like to paint a picture. It’s a nice, hot, Spring day here in Utah. I’ve driven the 40 miles to the public land that I like to practice on, and I’ve set up targets. I’m loading my range magazines, planning for all the drills that I’ll shoot on this trip. I load up 10 rounds for a Vicker’s Test, and cram the gun into my holster to shoot the drill. I set up the camera to record, and begin the drill. What happens? Well, I have a malfunction midway through the drill. I still complete it, but I had that malfunction. What caused it? Well, it a failure on my behalf to maintain my gear. Dust from the land had gotten into my range magazines since my last cleaning, and it was significant enough to cause issues.

I think it is important to maintain your gear, and I’ll make the practical case for that here.

The Fetishization of Keeping Your Gear Unkempt

Since I got into shooting back in the late 2000s, I’ve seen a growing pattern of people failing to maintain their gear. To a point, I see people bragging about it. Claims that “I haven’t cleaned my gun in X rounds”, etc. Now, I get this. People want to see what the failure point of their gear is. However, I think that this has lead to fairly poor expectations.

We need to maintain our gear if we expect it to work, especially when we need it. Does this mean that our gun needs to be spotless to function? No, but we do need to take certain avenues to keep them working. For autoloading handguns and long guns, this generally means lubrication. I’ve seen plenty of Glocks with thousands and thousands of rounds between cleanings, but they have been lubricated so that they still work. On top of this, I’ve seen plenty of people try to emulate this “high round count with no cleaning” mentality, but then act surprised when the gun fails because they didn’t lube it.

As someone who tests guns, I get wanting the high round count. For some folks, it is a badge of honor. However, I know that it will shorten the reliability window if we don’t provide maintenance to our guns. On top of reliability, we want to avoid corrosion, in the form of rust, erosion of polymers & rubbers, and destruction of fabrics and organic materials.

So how what does maintenance look like?

Practical Maintenance

Obviously, maintenance varies from tool to tool. What you do to maintain your car is different than a pistol, and is different than a backpack. However, if we want things to work for the long term, and to be reliable during that time, we do need to maintain them.

For autoloading handguns, rifles, and shotguns, lubrication is key. Aside from many small guns (like those I cover in my pocket gun series), being clean isn’t nearly as important as being well lubricated. When it comes to cleaning these guns, there are specific times that it becomes apparent that it needs to be done. For most autoloading platforms, shooters tend to clean these once they start to incur malfunctions. I’d say that we should try to be a little more diligent than that, but I’ll touch on that later.

Some things do need to be clean. As the example at the start of the article showed, I needed to better maintain my range magazines. Revolvers also generally need to be fairly clean to work well too. A lot of “gear-gear”, like backpacks, clothing, and electronics need to be kept clean too. It’s a simple as wiping mud off of your backpack before it has time to dry, or getting the bug spray off of your watch strap before it eats through. Waxing canvas, and treating leather come into play too.

I won’t just preach about maintenance. What do I do to maintain my gear?

My Maintenance Schedule

I do my damndest to maintain my gear, as to keep it functional for as long as possible. We’ll lead in with guns, and move from there.

Autoloading Handguns: I keep them fairly well lubed all of the time. For cleaning interval, it depends on the gun. For things like the LCP 22, Glock 42, and LCP Max, I clean them after every range session. With these small carry guns, they just have a shorter reliability window, and as such, need to be cleaner for longer term reliability. On my midsize guns (Glock 48), I tend to clean the gun every 300-400 rounds. Now, I tend to keep this gun pretty clean, as I hate to have a dirty gun on my body, especially since I’m carrying all day. For larger pistols (Glock 45, Glock 17), I tend to clean them every 500-1000 rounds. These guns have a pretty wide reliability window, and as such, don’t need to be as clean to work.

Revolvers: I clean my carry-oriented wheelguns after every range session. Unless I’m shooting a handful of rounds (less than 25), I’m cleaning the cylinder, frame, and barrel after the practice session. Revolvers like to be clean, especially rimfire ones. Some of my larger guns (Smith Model 15/19) can go for more rounds before needing a cleaning, but it’s not a very time intensive process, so I clean these guns before carrying them.

I keep a thin layer of lube on all of the exterior, rustable components on my handguns. I’ve had enough rust form over the years to prefer this rather than to deal with scrubbing rust off.

Autoloading Rifles/Shotguns: I keep them lubed. On things like the AR or most autoloading shotguns, lube will solve most reliability problems, and good ammo and mags will solve most other ones. I do clean when the guns start to get sludged up when lube mixes with the carbon fouling, but not really before that.

Magazines: I run a dry-lubed rag through the magazine bodies about every 6 months. On top of that, I wipe down the followers, and mag tube spring too.

Knives, Multitools, and other steel tools: Keep them lubed, keep them sharp. If they get dirty, try to wipe them down and relube when possible.

Watches: Wipe down straps and bracelets if they get covered in something nasty. I’ll take a toothbrush and use warm, lightly soapy water to clean the cases themselves if they get nasty. Professional service happens as necessary, generally once every 5-10 years.

Fabric/Canvas/Leather/Kydex: Keep the surfaces as clean as possible, and treat as necessary. This may mean waxing canvas, applying mink oil or conditioner to leather, or using nubuck suede coating on boots. For kydex, I lightly oil the screws, and make sure that I’ve not bent the kydex with use.

This was a lot of info, but it’s not meant to be all encompassing. The point is that well-maintained gear works better, and lasts longer.

The Verdict

I hope I didn’t sound like the old guy telling you that your guns need to be spotless. The goal was to impart the importance of maintaining your gear, as to keep it working reliably. Your stuff doesn’t need to be spotless (and it probably shouldn’t be), but it needs to be good enough to server you when you need it most.

Additional Reading & Patreon Link

If you’d like to check out more articles in my “importance of” series, look down below.

• The Importance of Taking Care of Your Shooting Spot [2024]
• Practicing With Realistic Gear [2023]
• Shooting in Bad Weather [2023]
• Testing Your Ammo [2022]

If you’d like to support me on Patreon, I’ve got the link for that here. Nearly everything that I do on Primer Peak is paid for out of my own pocket, and my content is not shilled or driven by manufacturers or companies. If you decide to donate, I’d really appreciate it, as it would allow for me to continue to bring you quality work.