Proper Cleaning Method For Magazines

When it comes to cleaning your firearms, magazines are the most overlooked, and according to the U.S. military, they’re the most neglected part of cleaning.

 

So today we’re going to take a look at the proper way to be able to clean your magazines to keep them running, because most of your malfunctions come from improper magazines. Now we’re going to be using Otis dry lube because this is really the best way to keep your magazines lubricated and yet keep them from attracting dirt and powder and residue.

We’re going to be looking at how to clean polymer and metal magazines because there are a couple of differences, and we really appreciate Otis for sending the dry lube and being one of our sponsors. But the Otis dry lube is really top-notch, and their sister company, Otis Defense, supplies cleaning equipment for the U.S. military. We’re going to kind of start out with a regular polymer pistol mag.

Again, this is from Glock. The polymer body is different than your metal body, obviously, but there’s some different care considerations. One of the things about a polymer mag is that it’s somewhat self-lubricating.

You really don’t need to put any kind of oil on the outside of the polymer. And first thing we do is disassemble, and if you’ve ever taken apart Glock mags, you can put a punch down here to overcome the tabs on either side, but I really like these type tools. And this is from Otis, and it’s one of their Glock takedown tools.

So we’re going to push it down in there and then just pull forward like that. And what it does is it overcomes these little areas right here that are lodged into these teeth. Now I just dropped the retainer.

This is your base plate retainer. You want to make sure you have it, and then we’re going to pull our spring out. And note how you have your follower set in here.

It’s actually fit into the follower. And some magazines don’t, and some do, so just make sure that when you take it apart, just don’t be quick. But see, this just fits down in there, and you want to make sure it snaps into place when you reassemble it.

Now the first thing you want to do when it comes to your magazine is you’re going to be inspecting this magazine as well, and that’s very important. With the polymer mags, typically there is a metal casing inside, so it has a stainless steel base. And you can see it coming through right here with the witness holes, and then here at the top with the follower or the feed lips.

You want to check that, do a good inspection, look to make sure that it’s in good shape. Right here is the seam that runs right down the back of the metal on the mag. And so that is what they call the zipper, and it can come loose, it can break.

You want to make sure your feed lips are in good shape, that here at the front of the mag as well, that there’s not any burrs or anything that’s going to catch hold of a round while it’s coming through. Again, magazines are the number one failure point for your firearm typically. First thing we want to do is to clean the inside, and I just take a my brush and I just go through and I just clean it up.

I mean it’s not a big deal. One thing you can do is take your rag and push it through, and kind of gets a lot of that out. But you’ll be tempted to put lubrication on here, do not.

It just is not good for it, it binds it up. So we’re going to take our cloth and we’re going to just get it into our with our brush so we can push it up through there, and then we’re just going to pull it all the way out. And this is going to get a lot of that debris out of there.

Just take a couple of passes, whatever it takes to get this thing clean. Now with this Glock Gen 5 mag, it has a little bit of a different color on the inside, and so you know at first I thought that was debris, but it’s actually just part of the magazine. Just go ahead and inspect it, look through there, make sure that everything looks good.

And it doesn’t hurt to put a light down there and just to double check it. And you want to also check out where the points are that hold on your base plate. If the base plate comes off, spring will come flying out and it won’t be any good.

But you want to examine all of your parts. There’s no part that’s unnecessary. Every part is important.

Now there’s already some self-lubricating on the springs typically. The base retainer plate looks good. Now with the follower, you know it’s dirty.

And this is not, I have magazines that are a lot more dirty than this. Looks like we need to get a little bit of cleaning in there and these stiff brush bristles will really help out. And some of this stuff doesn’t matter as much, but it can build up.

So it’s good to go ahead and keep it clean. So everything looks good. Now what we’re going to do is put a little dry lube on here.

And you can use the little applicator or you can just spray it. Now one thing too is guys, if you want to use gloves, when you’re using solvents and different type cleaning material, there are some hazards with that. And they’re hazards when you’re messing around with your magazine because it has lead deposits.

And so typically I’ll just wash up afterwards. I have some lead-free wipes. Honestly by Otis, I mean they produce any kind of cleaning that you can imagine.

And so what I’m going to do is I’m just going to spray this down. Give it a good just once over. And again this is going to dry within 20 seconds.

So guys that’s pretty much it for this magazine. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to drop on our follower. We’re going to place it in there.

Let it snap into place. There we go. We’ve got it retained.

Go ahead and put it up into the magazine. Make sure that it’s angled forward when it goes into your mag. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be designed.

And it fits really nicely. Then we’re going to take our retainer pin or retainer plate. This is under spring tension so be careful.

And then take your base plate, put it over it. It’s a little tough getting over the lip but there it goes. Make sure that this little pin comes through that hole.

And guys that’s it. I mean it’s really simple. You don’t need to do anything to the outside.

Now with your standard metal magazine, it’s just a little bit different but not a whole lot. First off you don’t need a special tool. You can just take a punch, press down on the base plate retainer plate.

There we go and hold it with your finger. And we’ll just pull this right out and then drop your follower. The follower on this, it just fits just up in here and it’s secured.

But your retainer plate, you got to make sure that you just get it lined up again. Go ahead and inspect it. Again you want to inspect the lips.

Make sure that they’re not deformed. Make sure they’re not bent. If you’re dropping these on the range they can get that way pretty easily.

Also with your mag catch, make sure that it’s not deformed or there’s something wrong. And then check your lips to make sure they’re good and kissable. Spring looks good.

Follower, I’m going to check it out. Base plate’s pretty simple. And your retainer pin or retainer plate.

So that’s all for inspection. Now let’s go ahead, we’re going to run our brush up through here. Just make sure we get any kind of debris or anything out of there that could possibly be there.

Now we’re going to take our follower, same thing. We’re just going to brush it, give it a good cleaning. Most of your magazines are going to be similar to this other than Glock as far as disassembly.

Some will have retention on your follower. Again guys, just watch it when you take it apart. Just make sure.

This magazine’s pretty clean. I pulled it out of a box and it may have not ever been used, but it makes a good demonstration. Your spring, same thing.

You may want to just wipe it down good, which you know, helps because you know, there is some debris on here. So obviously this one has been shot some. You don’t have to clean your magazines with every cleaning, but I would do so after about three times at your range.

Again, it is one of the most neglected parts of gun cleaning. All right, now we’re going to take our dry lube and we’re going to kind of keep everything else to the side, and we’re just going to spray it. And in about 20 seconds this thing is ready, but we’re going to go ahead and get things rolling.

First thing we’re going to do is put on our follower, get our magazine body, go ahead and put it in. Make sure it’s facing the right direction. When we get to here, we’re going to take our retainer plate and we’re going to bring it down and we’re going to hold it into place.

Again, it’s under spring tension. I’ve already had one to fly. There we go.

Then just get your base plate started. And then as you come up, it should be a good snap.

 

Making sure that that is flush with the base plate. It’s very important and you want to push on it, just to make sure.

I have had them where I thought they were set. I pushed on the base plate and they went flying off, which you’ll see at the end of this video. But great thing to check.

Now the big difference with the metal mag is I do put a little bit of CLP on the outside of the magazine. I don’t want to get it in the magazine. So it’s very little and we’re using the FP10 CLP.

This is from Shooter’s Choice, which is a sister company to Otis. And so I’m going to put it on this little cleaning cloth. Again, I’m not going to get too crazy with it.

I’m just going to lubricate it up. Again, trying not to get anything on the follower or any part of the inside of the magazine. Now once I get this done, I’m going to wipe it off.

So I just want a little bit. This actually impregnates the metal, and so it’s going to leave a little bit of a residue without the wetness. And again, that’s what you don’t want because you don’t want to attract anything inside.

And then also your magazine well on your gun. You don’t want to lube it up and just, you’re already going to get some lubrication because some people over lube their guns and it can drip down into your magazine. And that’s another reason why you want to keep it clean.

But once we dry it off good, I mean, we’re good to go. This is going to service you for a long time. So here we have the AR magazines or rifle magazines, and this will apply to AK mags and anything else that is a rifle magazine.

We’re going to start out with the PMAG. This is again about a 20 rounder. And so what we do is right here at the bottom, you’ll see this little gray button.

And this is actually the retainer plate. So we take it and then we just push the plate or the base plate out. Now you want to keep your finger over that to keep that from flying out.

And so here we have the base plate retaining plate. And then we have our follower and we have our recoil spring. Now the retainer plate has two tabs that hold the spring in.

And so when we pull that out, we’ve got to pull it loose and you just want to kind of turn it and it’ll pull right out. But just make sure that when you’re returning that you’re doing it in the same configuration. Here on the follower, you’ll notice this hole and you had the spring captured in that hole.

And so we’re going to just pull it out and you just finagle it around until it pops out, just like that. But you want to remember how that fits because it’s important to put it back together the same way. So first thing I do is take the spring and I just wipe it down with a cloth because it’s going to have a lot of carbon and just dirt and other things in here.

And really these are self-lubricating followers. And so that’s really what goes against the body of the magazine. So the spring itself is going to be corrosion resistant.

But as we’re moving this out, I mean, it does take a lot of that dirt off and you just want to get rid of it. Next, we’ll take the followers. You can see it has a lot of buildup here and there.

Just go ahead and just brush it off. And that’s where the nylon brush really comes in handy. But anywhere that you see any kind of debris, you just want to get rid of it.

You want to inspect it, make sure there are no cracks, there’s no stress points, there’s nothing damaged. And again, keep the CLP off of this because it gets in your ammunition, it gets in your chamber, and it attracts a lot of debris. And here we have the base plate.

It’s not as bad because it’s toward the bottom of the magazine. But just go ahead again, inspect it, make sure everything’s working. And then just take the body of the magazine and just clean it.

It’s not really rocket science, it just works. You can see there was a little bit of dirt right there. It just cleans it right off.

These bodies do not need to be lubricated. And then most importantly, go ahead and check to make sure there’s no cracks in your feed lips, any kind of damage around the front here. You want this to be pristine.

And guys, if you start having damage and I’ve seen them where they split, you just want to toss them. Not so much with PMAGs. PMAGs really hold up well, but definitely one of those things.

And guys, the US military has gone to using PMAGs and I know why, because I use these, I count on PMAGs more than any other. All right, we’ve got everything wiped down, everything clean. Again, you can take your cloth, go ahead and just do a final rub down.

Just make sure that it’s good and clean, no debris. The brush can leave a little bit. And especially the followers.

The followers are the things that really get kind of gummed up if you’re not careful. Now we’re going to go ahead and take our spring and we’re going to give it some dry lube. Just spray it down, turn it over.

No reason to go too crazy. That stuff will penetrate and it’ll dry in 20 seconds and we’ll be good to go. The spring’s dried.

We’re going to go ahead and replace it. And really it’s a lot easier to put back together because you can kind of lock in that loop and bring it around. There we go.

Make sure your follower is in the correct orientation and we’re just going to put it back over those little tabs, snap it into place and take your magazine body, put it up through there. We’re going to depress this and we’re going to hold the retention and then put the mag right over it until it snaps like that. And when this is solid, you’re good to go.

Now we have one of the old USGI mags. There is one with a hole in it right here and you can just pull it out. This one has the small indention.

These are the older type and where this lip comes down is the direction you’re wanting to pull this out. There you go. Man, we lifted it out.

It came right out and you can see the retainer plate here on the back that clips right into there. This is not necessarily on the 30 rounders. This is an older design and thank goodness these lips caught the spring, but typically this would fly out.

We’ve got to pull it out just as we can. Now your follower is going to be hung up. We’re going to go ahead and get our spring out of the way.

It’s hooked into that little section and there it comes out. Now you can drop your follower down because it’s not going to come over those tabs. And so you just turn it, wiggle it out and it’ll come out.

Guys, again, this is different than the 30 round magazines, but it’s pretty much the same principle. Let’s go ahead and inspect, making sure that everything looks good, that these aren’t bent, that they’re not cracked in any way. The front looks good.

Everything, seams are good. Of course, we’ve checked this out. The bottom looks good as well.

And the follower, these are old type followers, old originals, and we have some lubricant that was on here before and it’s kind of sticky and that’s the kind of stuff we want to avoid. But look to make sure there’s no damage. I mean, obviously this has been well used.

The base plate looks good. And of course your spring, just check it out. This really needs a good cleaning.

It’s been a while. So first thing I’m going to do is go inside the magazine, just clean it out, any kind of debris that’s in there. And right around this area where the feed lips are, there is some discoloration and some residue.

All right, once you get that done, let’s take our follower and we may have to put something on here to get some of this stuff off. In fact, we’re going to go ahead and put on some Shooter’s Choice CLP just to be able to get rid of that. Now what we don’t want to do is to use this same brush if we’re cleaning everything else.

Today we’re going to use our blue brush, kind of break that up a little bit and that way we can wipe it down. But that was some really old lubrication and it was sticky and that can affect your rounds going through. You want it to be very smooth.

I’m going to take our cloth and we’ll just wipe that down and clean it up. We want to remove as much of that CLP as we can. Again, you do not want this on your rounds.

You don’t want it to go into your chamber. So now we have a little bit of wear, but it’s doing pretty good. Base plate, we’re just going to clean it off and we’re going to wipe down our spring.

And guys, if you start having feeding issues, a lot of times it can be the spring is just worn out. These springs seem to be holding up very well. We’ve used these magazines a lot even lately.

Especially when I’m sitting at the bench, I like to have a shorter magazine. The 30 rounders just are too long. Get the outside of the body, making sure that there’s no debris on there.

I love these old mags. Once we have everything wiped down, we’re going to go ahead and take our dry lube. We’re going to let it set.

Okay, we’re going to put our 20 round magazine together. We’ve got to go ahead and put it in that little hole. Okay, we’re going to put this crook of the spring into that little hole.

I needed a pair of needle nose pliers to be able to help out. We’re going to see if we can just put that up in there and hopefully I can get it on camera. There we go.

Well, that was a little tricky. So now we’ve got it into place. Okay, now we got to get the follower into the magazine body.

(18:04) And you really want to put these front tabs in first because they go under that plate. So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to kind of get it started. Just wiggle it until it gets in there and then make sure that your spring is in the right configuration.

I’ll tell you what, this makes me love PMAGs even more, but honestly, a lot of the aluminum GI mags are not this difficult. This is really an older design. There we go.

Now, as we hold the spring into place, bring your base plate over. Remember, this little lip underneath corresponds with this. And then just bring it over.

Then you want to depress this little lip here. Now we’ve got to push this little retaining plate down far enough to give us some room to be able to slide past. But we don’t want to go past our lips right here.

So once you do that, pop it in and it should lock in right here. The big thing is, guys, however you take them apart, I mean, you know, they’re pretty much different, but you can figure it out. And this is one of the toughest.

And there we go. We got it back together. Of course, on the metal mags, you can put a little bit of CLP on there, just a little, and then just wipe that in.

But you really want to get as much of the CLP off. You just want a very light coat. And really with these aluminum mags, you don’t necessarily need to do that.

And you don’t want to get any of that CLP inside the magazine body. All right, guys, we have everything put back together. Dry lube keeps your magazines cleaner.

It doesn’t attract all the dirt or it doesn’t adhere to all the grease, the dust, the dirt, the lube, everything that goes on with your rifle. And again, very important part is to inspect them as you’re doing it. Lead cleaning hand wipes, excellent, a great way to keep yourself clean, especially if you’re not using gloves and it just pulls right out.

But you know, the thing is, the stuff that works the best typically is the worst for you. So you want to make sure you keep yourself in good shape. So guys, keep your magazines clean, keep them maintained, and keep them inspected.

And dry lube really is the best option to keep it from really gumming up. And again, we really appreciate Otis for sponsoring the video.

 

Be strong, be of good courage. God bless America. Long live the Republic.

 

-Don