Originally Posted By45_Auto
What additional maintenance should I be doing?
There's a lot of things that need regular checking:
If you're preserving your guns with oil then the actions should be periodically broken down, taken apart, and wiped with kerosene. Why? Oil will eventually congeal; and congealed oil has a tendency to become acidic and attack metal.
If, over time, you've used several different oils, or CLP's to preserve your guns then cleaning off, both, the inside and the outside your guns becomes even more important. Why? Because not all gun cleaning chemicals get along well together.
If you use desiccant in order to keep the air dry, it has to be regularly checked, dried out, and changed. If you're using a heating rod I'd suggest touching it, at least, once a month in order to make sure it's still working. (Rods have a way of becoming unplugged, too; so this is another thing you have to watch out for.)
It's, also, a good idea to wipe out the bore, at least, once every two or three years, as well. Perhaps because used bores will slowly leach out firing residue, they benefit from being wiped out with a good solvent and then reoiled every three or four months during the first year they're placed in storage.
I'm getting older; and I OWNED far more guns than any one gunman should, perhaps, be entitled to. During the past 3 or 5 years I've been slowly selling them off. Know what? I've been getting really excellent prices for guns that are as old as thirty years! Several buyers have, also, remarked about the extraordinary good condition of the guns I've sold them.
I have to think the prices I've received are, at least, a partial result of the constant attention I always paid to my guns and, especially, during those periods of time when they were in storage. I'll only leave a gun (or knife) pretty much alone AFTER it's been repeatedly cleaned during the first year that I put it away; AND after the exterior has been treated with either Carnauba wax, or (nowadays) FrogLube paste.
Just because a gun has been cleaned after firing, oiled down, and put away doesn't mean that it's going to, indefinitely, stay that way. Rust and a sluggish action can be insidious. People seem to love getting their hands on one of my guns; well, there are reasons. Reasons that I find myself willing to pay less and less attention to as the years continue to pass.
Now, because I'm not checking, wiping down, and, 'purging' the actions as often as I used to, I find myself using: waxes, FrogLube, desiccants, dry rods, and (lately) silicone-treated, 'gun socks' to help me ignore what's left of my formerly large collection of guns and knives for longer periods of time.
(I'm, now, down to the last couple of dozen really nice pieces; and I've got a lifetime of experience behind me in, both, gunsmithing and gun maintenance that says guns never take COMPLETE care of themselves. Two or three years of, 'just sitting there' are sure to turn up something that you really don't want to either see or feel.)
