It was almost 80 degrees here in Catonsville yesterday, so I pulled the Scout out of the garage after work, buttoned the sides of the soft top up, and pointed it north on the Beltway for her first drive of the year. I had a class scheduled after work up at a gun range north of the city: a free seminar on how to clean a shotgun.  The class was run by the armorer at the range, who is the son of my CCL instructor, and about 20 of us found seats at clean worktables, waiting to begin.

Around me, the other guys pulled fancy new shotguns from expensive cases: tactical models with pistol grips, camouflage-patterned hunting models, and military-style breaching models with flashlights and shell clips. I pulled Dad’s humble New Haven 600, a Mossberg 500 license-built for department stores in the 1970’s, from its simple bag and waited for our first instructions. I’ve known that it needed to be taken apart and cleaned ever since I brought it home: the action was caked with carbon and dirt, like it had been fired for several years, dragged through mud, and stored in a garage.

I also brought Dad’s cleaning supplies, so I started by polishing the crusty barrel to a mirror finish with a brass brush. The armorer walked over and I saw his eyebrows jump as he took in the condition of the rest of the gun. I explained where it came from and asked him not to judge me, and he chuckled as he broke it down so I could clean each part individually, assuring me he’d seen and heard worse. Over the course of an hour I was able to get the firing pin assembly, bolt, trigger group and receiver cleaned for the first time in decades, making a small mountain out of filthy cleaning wipes on the table next to me.

Seeing how the gun came apart was very helpful for me—I’m more than willing to disassemble almost anything, but where firearms are concerned, I want to know exactly how it comes apart and goes back together before I put a round in it and pull the trigger. Eventually I’d like to replace the original wooden forend on the gun with something lighter, and I knew before the class that removing it requires breaking the gun down almost completely. At the end of our time, he came back over and complimented me on the cleaning job I’d done, and then I watched as he expertly re-assembled the gun and racked the slide with a satisfying clack-clack, as opposed to the muffled whup-whup it made before.

I said my thanks, packed up my stuff, and enjoyed a twilight ride home with the warm wind in my hair.