Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. The Care Of The Rifle. A i)ifle requires a large amount of care to keep it in perfect condition. More rifles in the hands of troops are injured by cleaning and by the lack of proper cleaning than in any other way. In the days of black powder all that was necessary was to wipe out the powder dirt with water and rags, dry the bore, and apply oil; but such treatment, or, rather, lack of treatment, would ruin one of our present rifles in about three days. The proper cleaning of a modern rifle is a complicated chemical process, and this must be realized if one wishes the good shooting qualities of his piece to last for more than a few days. I have seen many rifles which after a week's use on the range were absolutely useless for good shooting, being pitted, rusted, and filled with an accumulation of cupro-nickel; and I have also seen thousands of rifles which were bright, clean and free from rust, but which were absolutely useless for accurate work from having been cleaned from the muzzle. If a rifle is cleaned from the muzzle, it takes only a few days for the cleaning-rod to dull the muzzle, and then the gun begins to scatter. The reason for this has been given in the pfevious chapter. A "pull through" or thong, if used right (that is, inserted in the muzzle and pulled through to the breech), does not injure the muzzle ; but it is a very hard and tedious-process Lo clean a rifle thoroughly with a thong. Moreover, the thong is liable to break, and of all obstructions in the barrel a broken thong is the hardest to get out. The only safe way of cleaning is from the breech with a long cleaning-rod. This': rod should be 36 inches long and made of %-inch tool steel or brass, with a tip like the cut. The expert shot prefers a steel rod, because experience proves that dir...