Those who really enjoy their guns, enjoy taking them apart and cleaning them. Im sure your father was the same.

Hoppes #9 has a wonderful fragrance to me, but others don't always think so.

LOL...Lees, its my personal experience that people clean their guns far too frequently. Maybe its from exposure to the military where weapon's cleaning is a sort of ritual that must be regularly observed whether necessary or not.

Unless you are using corrosive ammo, you really do not need to clean that often. You might need to pay attention to lead fouling is you are using unjacketed ammo but thats not the norm either. With personal firearms, I suggest a wipe down very few months and the application of a light coat of lube to protect from rust. If you live in an area with an especially humid environment you might want to apply something like CLP mroe frequently to protect against rust. There is no need for a detailed cleaning after every use though.

I guess one caveat I should mention is, if you are a regualr carrier you need to clean your weapon regularly. The primary reason is to keep sweat from damaging the finish and to keep lint from gumming up the action.

I clean my SKS religiously. Rumor has it that they're prone to slam firing due to the fact they have a free floating firing pin. If the firing pin gets stuck in the forward position, and you let the bolt slam home when chambering a round, it could go full auto on you and end up emptying your magazine into something you don't want it to.

This can be remedied by picking up a spring loaded firing pin for like $30. I'm not sure how common it is though, I asked around on some SKS forums and only one person experienced a double fire when pulling the trigger so maybe my fears are a little unfounded.

Aside from that fear, I have no worries about the SKS firing even if it is extremely dirty. I was reading how a guy was at an outside range, he dropped his SKS in the dirt, with the bolt open, got all kinds of sand and dirt in it, and the thing still fired with no problems whatsoever. They are very hardy weapons.

Another issue with picking up SKS's is that many are caked in cosmoline. The stuffs a bitch to clean out of the weapon and people have come up with some pretty creative means of removing it.

With my pistol, the most rounds I've ever run through it at one time was probably close to five hundred without one stovepipe. Not too long ago, I put about a hundred rounds through it and didn't clean it afterwards. Shortly after, my buddy took it to the indoor range in town and complained that after a couple magazines, the thing started stove piping every few rounds. Upon inspection, where the slide ran along the polymer lower, I noticed it was pretty dirty, though I've seen it worse. Perhaps it was a combination of dirt and him limp wristing but who knows. I clean it nearly every time I take it out now.

I would not worry so much about cleaning it. The stove piping was probably operator error induced. If he was limp wristing it it would almost certainly do that.

Before anyone gets upset and suggests Stone and I are engaging in some sort of homophobic smear, stop! When we mention limp wristing, we mean exactly that. The firer is holding the weapon with a limp wrist. The weapon operates via recoil. The force generated by the firing of a round propels the slide backward along the slide rails in the frame. This rearward motion ejects the spent cartridge and compresses the spring. The spring then forces the slide forward and in the process strips a round from the magazine and inserts it into the chamber. If the firer holds the weapon with a limp wrist, the entire weapon and hand move backward rather than just the slide and in the process absorb the energy from recoil that is supposed to be doing the work mentioned. The end result is a failure of the weapon to properly feed the round into the chanber...the stove piping Stone mentioned.

Dirty slide rails could cause the problem as well since the extra effort necessary to overcome the added friction would sap energy and impair the ability to do the work mentioned. However, the weapon would have to be pretty darn dirty to generate that much friction and Stone already mentioned he had seen it function reliably while dirtier.

Im sure I am guilty of over cleaning more than under. As you say, once ingrained, difficult to change. But I do enjoy it also.

I do use some corrosive ammo also, and have got to where I dont always trust some of the other ammo if foreign made even though it says, non-corrosive. So I clean as though it is. The corrosive is cheaper, though not always availablle. But there is no problem as long as you clean after use. Windex.

I am not big on auto pistols. I like the revolvers. And even then, I prefer the long gun to hand guns.

I am slowly getting interested in black powder, but haven't made the move yet. One better enjoy cleaning if you take that up. Thanks for the tips.

No. In 50-ss and 60-ss our Tula plant produced perfect rifles. They are still considered as very good. But now the quality is bad. My husband is going to purchase a rifle, which is made in Italy.

Thank you for clearing that up for me, Law.

I believe the Saiga is made in Izhevsk, at Izhmash factory. Thats what I read. Overall I read good reviews on it.

Tula used to produce Russias military rifles. Do they still. Surely not if the quality is bad.

Lees, you are absolutely correct. The best rifles were made in Izhevsk.
Sorry, it is impossible to insert Russian letters here, so I kind specify what labels are produced in Izhevsk and Tula. I just want to say that in Tula are produced the best of the contemporary Russian hunting rifles (MTS, as it sounds), but they are very specific. So to say, they are very good, but one has to learn how to use this very rifle.

And Im sure they would be very expensive.

I was curious, at this time there are an over abundance of WW2 Russian rifles in the US. The Mosin Nagant 91/30 and M44. I have owned some. They are a stout claibre. 7.62X54 Still very operable. And cheap at this time.

Are these equally available in Russia to buy?