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.