I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point... we bought our first handgun--an M&P22- as a 'Black Friday' special... got a great deal on it, then began reading about the pistol here...
'Everyone' says "clean it first"... fine... We bought a Hoppes kit, read the directions and still are baffled by what "clean it" means...or how to go about it...
Maybe I'm just over-thinking this...
Looking at the cleaning patches, they appear to be just an old, cut-up t-shirt... I have access to a wealth of flannel rags... cut small enough, would they be a good cleaning patch? How many times to I run a patch through the bore? What (if anything) do I put on a patch first?
Looking down into the 'workings' inside the grip (after it's field stripped) there appears to be an over-abundance of oil in there... no way I can get a rag in there to wipe it all out... Do I use a spray cleaner (kinda like using brake cleaner on yer car...it gets 'everything' without much scrubbing and dries without residue)...
Do I need to clean the clips (I bought a second, 12 round from 44mag.com)? I've seen the directions on how to disassemble the clips but haven't done it yet.
As you can probably discern... I'm new at this... is there a proper place on the forum for questions such as this? Has this issue already been covered? (I haven't found much using the forum search)
Would I be best served finding a willing owner locally to 'show me the ropes' or is this something 'anyone' can do with a little internet coaching?