Keeping Your M14 Barrel Clean

You either love or hate the M14. If you’re looking up how to clean an M14 barrel, our guess is that you love them. Why else would you have one - and more importantly, if you didn’t care about it, why would you clean it?

Anyway, cleaning an M14 barrel is essential not only to the continued operability and accuracy of the rifle, but also of the longevity of the barrel, as a heavily fouled barrel will wear more quickly and will be more conducive to corrosive damage.

With that said, here are some high-level pointers on getting that bore to shine like a mirror.

The Procedure

You can actually clean your M14’s barrel without removing the whole barreled action from the stock, and in fact, for quick cleaning it is advisable not to remove it anyway. This is because every time you remove the barreled action, you incur wear on the stock. The result is the stock doesn’t “hold” the barrel as effectively after it’s been removed so many times.

So, for a quick cleaning, all you need to do is lock back the bolt. You’ll also need a bore light and a bore snake since the rear of the receiver and the bolt will be in the way (no rod needed for this quick cleaning tutorial).

The first step is to drop the mag and rack back the bolt until it’s locked open. Visually inspect the M14 chamber to make sure it isn’t loaded before proceeding.

Once you’ve verified that the M14 is unloaded, you can flip the rifle upside down so you’re looking up through the magazine well. You can place the rifle inverted into a gun vise if you like to make this easier.

Cleaning upside down helps prevent oil and grease from getting inside the gas system, keeping that cleaner, since we won’t be looking at how to clean those components (they do need to be cleaned, though, we just won’t be covering that here).

The first step is to apply some bore solvent to the chamber and barrel. You can either use a dropper for this and drop the solvent into the chamber and barrel directly, or apply the solvent to a patch and run that through the barrel a few times to let it soak in. (Hoppe’s No. 9 works well for this, if you have any around.)

Give the solvent about a minute to soak into the fouling inside your M14 barrel, then use a bore snake or a bent bore brush to scrub out that residue that you’ve just softened up. Run the snake/brush through the barrel a few times, always going from the chamber to the muzzle. You should be getting flecks and bits of powder residue and fouling coming out from the muzzle each time the brush comes through.

After you’ve gotten rid of most of the fouling, run patches through your M14 barrel, again from the chamber to the muzzle, until the patches come out clean and white.

Once you’re done with that, you might want to consider using a copper solvent to get rid of any copper fouling that’s inside the barrel. Copper fouling that accumulates over time can make the rifle less accurate. If you choose to follow this step, repeat the process as described above, except use a solvent that’s specifically designed to remove copper fouling.

The next step, and the last one we’ll be covering here, is to clean your M14’s chamber. The chamber is where most of the fouling will accumulate, and since it’s substantially wider than the barrel’s bore, you might need to give it a second, special cleaning cause the brush you used in the bore probably didn’t get the chamber very clean.

Anyway, what you’ll need for this is a special tool called a chamber brush. You can use our M1 Garand chamber brushes in a pinch because, even though the .30-06 is a bigger cartridge than the 7.62 NATO, the two are fairly similar in width.

Apply a little bit of solvent to the chamber brush, then scrub out your chamber really well. You can also use a nylon or a brass brush and some solvent to clean the breech end of the barrel as well as the breech face of the bolt. This will help eliminate any gaps and help prevent premature wear while also helping to ensure smooth extraction.

Once you’re done, clean and dry your M14 barrel, chamber and bolt, and with the bolt still locked open, take a look down the barrel using the bore light. It should be bright and shiny like a mirror if you did this right.

After that, you’re good to go. Although, if you want to take one more step to protect your M14 barrel, give it a very light coat of gun oil, one drop is enough for the entire bore; all you’re doing is sealing it off to atmospheric moisture to help prevent corrosion.

How Often Should You Clean an M14 Barrel?

Opinions here vary, but we recommend cleaning your M14 barrel after every time you fire the gun.

As for deep cleanings, you should do that after, say, every 1000 rounds or so. However, for a deep cleaning you will want to drop the trigger group, remove the barreled action from the stock and take out the bolt so you can also clean the gas system, too.

Why Keeping an M14 Barrel Clean Matters

The two main reasons you should keep your M14 barrel (and the whole gun) clean are reliability and longevity.

A barrel that is not heavily fouled will be more accurate, and clean chambers and bolt faces feed and extract more consistently than those that are heavily fouled.

As for longevity, heavy copper fouling can increase chamber/bore pressures and accelerate wear, whereas heavy powder fouling can accelerate corrosion, causing your M14 barrel to rust.

Here For a New M14 Barrel?

In the event you’re here for a new M14 barrel, we carry new production barrels for M14 rifles. Take a look at our catalog and if you have questions about specifications or compatibility, get in touch with us at 610-250-3960.