You need to clean your gun. Cleaning your gun keeps carbon from building up and causing malfunctions or decreased efficiency later down the line. It allows you to inspect the internals of your gun for damage. It allows you to familiarize yourself with how your gun functions. You need to clean your gun. Your personal anecdotal experiences with basic observations of your gun are severely lacking in meaningful data about its function beyond "runs" vs "doesnt run", so don't sit there and think "well it runs fine, why would I need to clean it?".
Use grease based lubricants (see the Lubricants section below) and keep the moving parts wet with it (see CherryBalmz' Lubrication Guide). You may need to clean past 5,000 rounds if you notice buildup, but grease based lubricants do a good job of keeping that under control. I would heavily suggest inspecting your guns regularly to keep an eye out for damage and buildup. If you do not use grease based lubricants, you should be cleaning closer to every 1,000-3,000 rounds. If you use steel case ammo you should be regularly cleaning your chamber to prevent stuck cases.
If you shoot with corrosive ammo: Stop that. And also clean your gun after literally every range day.
And to the AK owners out there who think they don't need to clean their guns: Shut up and clean your gun, dumbass.
This guide lists out the key components your cleaning kit should have, as well as a handful of suggestions for what to purchase. You don't have to buy these specific products. I'm forgoing the [FANCY TAGS] that were in the AR tool guide because the price range here is a lot smaller.
I'm working on another writeup on what a quick-clean and a deep-clean looks like. I should be done with that shortly.
LET US BEGIN
Yeah, you can use your dining room table. Whatever. Don't blame me if you end up with an AR-15-shaped dent in the surface. Generally what you're looking for in a work surface is something that provides cushion to the table/desk/workbench below, doesn't absorb the carbon, grease, oils, and chemicals involved in the cleaning process, and doesn't cover your gun in annoying fibers (dust bunnies in your gun are not fun).
Youve got a chunk of metal flying down your barrel pushed by exploding gases and all sorts of weird shit. You should probably clean that.
Back In The Day, the go-to was a metal cleaning rod with a solvent-soaked cleaning patch on the end, and you'd go through a bunch of patches. This is both annoying, takes a long time, and you can damage your barrel if your cleaning rod isn't made from a soft metal. Cleaning rods are still a good way to execute a deep clean or remove a stuck case, but they're excessive for your average clean. Fortunately we live in the future, so boresnakes are now an option. Boresnakes are woven tubes of fabric with a length of paracord on the end that your drop through the chamber, grab the end dangling out the end of the barrel, and yank through your gun. The fabric tube acts like a cleaning patch would, and picks up the fouling inside your barrel. Some boresnakes have bronze bristles or other soft abrasives embedded in them to enhance the cleaning power of the boresnake. A few passes through your barrel with a boresnake thats been sprinkled with solvent is ideal.
If you use a steel AK cleaning rod I swear to god you are dead to me. Have fun digging grooves into your barrel.
You need a good chemical cocktail that will strip off any of the buildup on your gun and clean off the schmutz. Confused why you don't see your favorite all-in-one product on this list? Check out the Lubrication section at the bottom of this document. I'd rather recommend a cleaning product that is designed for cleaning than a product that half-asses cleaning for the sake of being a lubricant too.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION - THE FOLLOWING ARE BETTER SUITED TO DEEP CLEANS RATHER THAN REGULAR CLEANING
Gotta apply the solvent to the gun somehow! Usually applying a small squirt of solvent on a towel, or a few drops of solvent on a swab, its good enough to do the trick
Sometimes a shop towel isn't enough and you need a little bit of abrasion to get at the buildup on your gun.
Well now you've gone and stripped all the lubricant off your gun with a solvent. Time to put it back. Woe betide the fuddlore of using straight motor oil or some shit like that. We live in the future and there are solutions that meaningfully address the problem of lubricating a firearm. Generally speaking, you want a grease-based lubricant, rather than an oil (Interested in why? check out CherryBalmz' writeup on the Science and History of Firearms Lubricants). 3-in-1 Clean-Lube-Protect combos function about as well as 3-in-1 Shampoo-Conditioner-Bodywash, which is to say, they work fine if you don't really care about what you're putting them on. CLP combos generally sacrifice functionality on some or all of those three fields to increase their broader effectiveness. You're better off buying separate and effective solvents and lubricants.
And before some boot sends me an email saying "Well The Military Uses CLP" buddy I don't give a shit. CLP was adopted because it was "well enough", to make the cleaning process fuck-simple, and reduce the necessary logistics of getting multiple products to people. CLP was never good, it's just better than firing dry. Read the damn article. Concerned this is a shill? Read an independent review and mix up a batch of SOTAR's DIY solution so you dont pay these folks any money.
Overhead lighting is nice, I'd get a good adjustable lamp if you can, but that ain't portable. A good small flashlight can help you inspect the weirder bits of your gun.