Sunday will be a sad day for me. Just like September 1st brings excitement for the adventures to come over the next several months, February 15th brings an end to another season and a few weeks of moderate depression. This evening I took several guns apart and cleaned them, a sad ritual. But I decided to make the best of it so I took some pictures to see if I could make an educational blog post…
First, we start with a dirty but otherwise healthy Browning BPS:
The first steps should be easy for anyone with any experience at all. Take the sling off, and then take off the barrel by unscrewing the magazine cap. Set them aside, we’ll get there.
Next find the pins above the trigger on the receiver:
Now you have two choices. If you knock both pins out you can remove everything. Or you can leave the smaller (or more dorsal pin) in. It holds the ejector in place and really isn’t especially critical to your cleaning mission. It’s really up to you but for today’s exercise I’ve removed them both.
Pull everything out and it should look like this:
So now you can wipe everything down and blow out the powder junk. I generally leave a very light coat of oil on the parts but I don’t know that it matters. I suspect you could coat the parts in tar and the BPS would still function flawlessly. I do suggest using some type of compressed air to clear the junk from the springs in the trigger. Once everything is clean it’s time to reassemble, the tough part.
Put the ejector in with the tips aimed down, or dorsal. Then drop the bolt in with the face forward and the round part down. Put the second half of the bolt, the square piece, with the smooth part facing you, or ventrally and the prongs pointing towards the stock. It should look like this with the ejector and bolt:
And then with the second piece of the bolt:
If you are having a hard time getting the second piece to sit right fiddle with the forearm. The notches in the forearm bars slide into the gaps of the square piece of the bolt. The square piece also slides forward and backwards along grooves in the receiver. It’s not hard to make it work. Once you’ve got that done slide the bolt forward so you can get your fingers on the ejector.
About now you’re regretting that you took out the second pin. It needs to go back in, and it has a sleeve that is loose. There is no great secret to this part. Line the pin up with the whole in the ejector and tap it in enough to hold the ejector. Then with your index finger try and curl the sleeve up under the ejector and hold it there while you tap the pin into place. It takes some practice but it’s not hard to understand.
Next you’re going to put the magazine catch rods (I’m making up the names for all these parts, “magazine catch rods” could legitimately be called, “those fucking things that never go back right”) back in:
They go along the edge of the receiver towards the upper end and up against the magazine tube. The notches face up or ventrally and they should bend into the middle like so:
The secret to the whole thing is right here: You must get these rods lined up equally with each other and all the way forward, up against the magazine. If one is even slightly farther forward or backward you’re screwed. They will try to fall out, fall out of alignment, and anything else they can think of to screw the whole thing up. They will conspire against you. Eventually, perhaps by blind luck, you’ll get them lined up right. Now slide the trigger into the grooves in the receiver. If it doesn’t go, check to make sure the half-moon shaped pins are lined up correctly (horizontally rather than vertically).
If all is well with your magazine catch rods your trigger will simply slide into place. If it does not slide on the first try (it rarely does) you need to line those rods up better and make sure the bolt release lever is out of the way (it works its way out and hits the edge of the receiver). This can be extremely frustrating. There were years when I had to walk away from it and come back with a fresh mind and a new reserve of patience. As I got better it became easier. It will always go eventually, but sometimes I’ve resorted to light tapping with the tack hammer. Today it slid right into place…
Put the remaining pin in, it will go easily.
Finally, don’t forget to clean the inside of the barrel and lightly oil the sling swivels. I use a bore snake product but I’m not sure it matters:
Let the hammer down, lightly wipe down the outside metal, and you’re ready for the safe.
Now the post-season depression is full blown…
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