cleaning a airlight S&W
Hello,
My buddy has a S&W model 37 (Airlight) that needs a good cleaning. It is caked with dried oil and dust everwhere and has some cloth stuck to it that it sat on for 15 years or more. I don't know what kind of finish was put on the alloy frame and don't want to ruin it. Will gun scrubber hurt the finish? Is there a better cleaner to remove old dried up oil and gunk?
Edit: Thanks for the tips, btw, it looks like Crimson Trace only makes laser sights for J frames with round butts, this one happens to be a square butt[:(]
Thanks Nunn, I have square butt and round butt model 36 and figured that might be the case. I advised my buddy to leave well enough alone an trade for or buy a different lightwieght handgun that a CTC product will fit.
My buddy has a S&W model 37 (Airlight) that needs a good cleaning. It is caked with dried oil and dust everwhere and has some cloth stuck to it that it sat on for 15 years or more. I don't know what kind of finish was put on the alloy frame and don't want to ruin it. Will gun scrubber hurt the finish? Is there a better cleaner to remove old dried up oil and gunk?
Edit: Thanks for the tips, btw, it looks like Crimson Trace only makes laser sights for J frames with round butts, this one happens to be a square butt[:(]
Thanks Nunn, I have square butt and round butt model 36 and figured that might be the case. I advised my buddy to leave well enough alone an trade for or buy a different lightwieght handgun that a CTC product will fit.
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The frame is anodyzed aluminum alloy. Remove the grips, & clean the gun the same way you would any other. Gun Scrubber will be fine; just don't touch the finish with any abrasive.
Neal0 -
Don't put in ultrasonic cleaner. I would use Kroil to remove dried oil . 0 -
quote:Originally posted by Robin
Hello,
My buddy has a S&W model 37 (Airlight) that needs a good cleaning. It is caked with dried oil and dust everwhere and has some cloth stuck to it that it sat on for 15 years or more. I don't know what kind of finish was put on the alloy frame and don't want to ruin it. Will gun scrubber hurt the finish? Is there a better cleaner to remove old dried up oil and gunk?
Edit: Thanks for the tips, btw, it looks like Crimson Trace only makes laser sights for J frames with round butts, this one happens to be a square butt[:(]
The advice already given is good. Clean this gun like you would clean any other, just avoid anything abrasive on the frame, since it may scratch or wear off the anodized finish.
Gun scrubber or any other standard gun cleaning solution (eg Hoppes, CLP, etc) should be fine.
FYI, if you have your heart set on Crimson Trace laser grips, its possible to have a gunsmith convert a square butt to a round butt configuration. Edit. . .OK, not for J-frame. . .thanks.0 -
Square butt to round butt is an easy conversion on a K-FRAME or larger Smith & Wesson, but it WILL NOT WORK ON A J-FRAME. If you want to see why, take a pair of standard round butt grips and slap them on your square butt frame, and you will see that rounding the butt will open up a large gap in the backstrap. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by Robin
Hello,
My buddy has a S&W model 37 (Airlight) that needs a good cleaning. It is caked with dried oil and dust everwhere and has some cloth stuck to it that it sat on for 15 years or more. I don't know what kind of finish was put on the alloy frame and don't want to ruin it. Will gun scrubber hurt the finish? Is there a better cleaner to remove old dried up oil and gunk?
Edit: Thanks for the tips, btw, it looks like Crimson Trace only makes laser sights for J frames with round butts, this one happens to be a square butt[:(]
I bet it is actually a round butt. To me round butts look like square butts but are not as defined by S&W. Course, I could be way wrong, but that is one guess.0 -
quote:Originally posted by tr fox
I bet it is actually a round butt. To me round butts look like square butts but are not as defined by S&W. Course, I could be way wrong, but that is one guess.
I know for sure that Smith does not CURRENTLY make any airweight guns in square butt configuration. In fact, I'm pretty sure Smith doesn't currently make ANY J-frame guns AT ALL in the square butt configuration.
But Smith *DID* make square butt model 37 "Airweights" in the past, as recently as the early 1980s, and its possible that this is one of them.
To be absolutely clear, this is what the two look like:
For Nunn, I stand corrected.
Personally, I'd never convert a square butt to a round butt anyway (the square butts have their own "charm"), but I offer one caveat:
Even if you tried this anyway, having a gap in the grips over the backstrap isn't necessarily the end of the world. Lets say you have a gap? So what. . your gun is a little uglier? [}:)]
A set of closed backstrap grips for a round butt would probably still fit, and with the gap being covered, you'd never even know it was there.
For example, there are Smith J-frame grips that will fit EITHER a round butt OR a square butt, with the same general principle applying.
Now that said, it probably doesn't make any sense to mangle a gun with a half-butted [;)] grip conversion that ruins its resale value. Again, from a cost-effectiveness standpoint, you're probably just better off swapping the square butt gun for one that will take the grips you like.
I say "probably" because the gun in question may already be so mangled that it has negligible resale value, or because obtaining a replacement gun might be problematic, etc.
Lastly, I'm not exactly a stranger to square butt J-frames; here's my "go to" gun, at least before I touched it up and added some nice walnut Herrett's stocks:0
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