CLEANING AND CARE OF THE PISTOL

In the black powder days cleaning was, comparatively, a simple matter. Now, with the smokeless powders, especially cordite, incessant care has to be taken to avoid the pistol spoiling by corrosion, pitting, and rust.

Even if you have cleaned the bore most carefully after using—the next morning you may find it in an awful state.

The only remedy is to go over the pistol at intervals, after use, and even when it appears perfectly right it should be looked after every few days, to make sure.

Practice with a single-shot pistol entails less time spent in cleaning; if you shoot frequently with an automatic pistol it will keep you busy all your time taking it to pieces and looking after it.

A single-shot pistol is easy to clean. There is only the inside of the barrel to look to, and it is easily got at without taking it to pieces; whereas the moving parts of an automatic all need seeing to. The big bore duelling pistol is much easier kept clean than a .22 bore.A man practising with an automatic, unless he is very enthusiastic, soon gets tired of the labour and the time it takes to keep it in working order.

I shot with an automatic which had been at the front in the war over two years. It shot extremely well, the owner having taken great care of it during all its rough experiences, but it constantly failed to completely close.

It did not actually jam, but what came to the same thing, it occasionally did not quite close and could not be fired unless it had been closed by hand.

This shows that in the actual work of war there is a tendency for an automatic pistol to become weak in the closing spring, and there ought to be some simple device for increasing the tension of the spring, when necessary.

There may have been some such device on the pistol in question, which its owner and I did not discover.

To really know your automatic pistol, it is best to have a few hours with a gunmaker, taking it to pieces, and learning the use of each part, and how to correct any failure of the pistol to function properly. Otherwise you may, when in an out-of-the-way place, be rendered helpless by a simple fault which could be corrected in a few moments without the use of tools by someone who understands its mechanism.

I saw a man who actually buried a loaded automatic pistol deep in the ground, because it had a jam and he was afraid of it.