When the shooting season comes to an end, it is often seen as the time to put your shotgun back in the cabinet and await for the season to come around again. But it’s not time to put your gun away just yet.
A service at end of season is vital in ensuring your gun is as safe and functioning as best as possible, ready for next year.
Servicing Is Essential
Nearly every gun owner knows how to clean their gun for day-to-day use. Which is essential for maintain the shotgun throughout the shooting season. But a service at end of season goes deeper than this. It is important to have your shotgun serviced soon after the seasons concludes so there is plenty of time to fix and repair any issues.
Common Issues
After seeing a full season of use, a gun can present many issues, all of which affect performance and safety. The sheer force of repetitive shooting is enough to bring things like worn safety catches and faulty triggers to the fore.
Worn or broken mainsprings are a common fault that develops over time. A broken firing pin – which is a rarer but still very troublesome issue – can come as a surprise and it’s better to find out a firing pin is on it’s way out during a service than during a shoot.
You may also find small – or major, depending on how robust you are with your gun -cracks in your stock. It’s vital to address this before you get out and about shooting in the new season. Not only does a cracked stock affect aesthetics, it can also have a real impact on comfort.
Small Cost Now, Or Bigger Cost Later
Shooting is not an inexpensive hobby. We spend a great deal on the best guns because we want the superior performance the outlay affords us. Failing to service a quality gun is akin to failing to maintain a car – you can spend a little now and maintain the value or wait for something disastrous to go wrong and spend a great deal more later.
The frequency of your gun service depends on how old your gun is, how much you use it and when you use it. Shooting in bad weather or if you enjoy game shooting in watery, salty environments will increase the frequency at which your gun requires servicing.
Either way, small, continuous servicing is much cheaper than replacing major components and will help maintain the value of your gun.
If you need a comprehensive and expert gun servicing service, contact AW Rule & Son today. We offer total gun servicing, with years of family experience behind everything we do.