Function Testing
After cleaning a carry or home-defense gun, I always suffer just a touch of worry. A decent cleaning involves field stripping, and in most cases, it’s nothing particularly risky in terms of potentially breaking something or reassembling parts incorrectly. So, the odds of a gun working properly after cleaning and reassembly after a standard field strip are pretty good. In most cases, there’s not much to go wrong. Most cases…
Maybe it’s just a result of the nature of my job, using different pistols all the time, but I always find myself giving the gun a thorough check after reassembly.
Rack the slide. Several times. Does everything look and feel normal?
I’m assuming you’ve already safely cleared all ammo from the area to clean, so, after double-checking that, dry fire your pistol. Then rack and dry fire again. Everything still seem normal?
Check safety functions. There are too many possible configurations to document here, but make sure a trigger leaf is blocking trigger movement. If you have a manual safety, make sure it’s working as intended. You get the idea.
Check things like slide locks and magazine releases. Some pistols, and as much as I love you, I’m looking at you, Beretta PX4s, lend themselves to letting go of slide lock springs and such.
You get the idea. Before reloading, make sure everything works properly.
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