More service rifles are ruined (accuracy-wise) by cleaning, than are left unfunctional by insufficient cleaning. Cleaning rods, especially USGI sectional rods in dirty dusty field conditions, do nasty things to rifle bores, especially at the crown and chamber lede.macktruckturner wrote:On the cleanliness bit, I never once subscribed to the white-glove nonsense (and never once saw a rifle that was spotless).
I wasn't a direct witness to this act, but the story spread through my training battalion when I was in the Army: an instructor berated a trainee about his M16 bolt being dirty, and told him to make it shine. Being a rather simple and literal sort of fellow, he did exactly that. The story said it looked like it had been chromed, although I doubt that. At any rate, it was shiny bare metal when he took it back up for inspection.
If you didn't already know, military M16 bolts are Parkerized. I have no idea how he got that finish off, but it took a lot of scrubbing!