u/plushta

Here is why:

1. When you shoot slugs/buck in either gun a300/1301 Your gas cylinder get slowly or rapidly filled up with lead.

2. The speed in which the lead will build up depends of course at how much you shoot, and what ammo you use. But as sure as taxes - the lead is building up there.This may sound trivial and true for every gun - which would have made it OK but...

3. The lead build-up is extremely hard to remove. The gas cylinder is attached to the barrel gets caked, with hard lead that need to be scrapped off with a pick, even then it's hours long process. The area may seem accessible but in reality the cylinder (not the piston) postion, makes it difficult to access for the pronologed cleaning session

4. Beretta response is clean after 200 rounds (sometimes support says after 50 rounds of cheap ammo). That was fine if the cleaning process was not a few hours ordeal.

5. To add to that - this is not just the difficulty of cleaning - its what you clean. Your are dealing with hardened lead - one of the most toxic material to deal with.

6. The alternative here is ignore the build up and just shoot it like many people do. But your work only gets harder as you shoot.

7. Another issue - the so called self clean system needs to be kept dry - but you need ample of solvent to get this crap lead broken - you end up flooding it with solvent then having to dry the cylinder and ideally blow air though the gas ports to the back which are not accessible at all and hope that no liquid remains which will make your next cleaning session worse

My conclusion:

If you want to deal with constant or prolonged (hours long) toxic lead clean up go ahead and purchase this gun. Otherwise save the trouble, pump some iron and buy the M4, or pump and buy the 590a1

Why is it happening?

This is a design "disadvantage" of the "self cleaning" gas system.

Large gas holes, close to the end of the barrel are essentially a cheese grater for the lead slug.

If you are not running a 5$ per round copper coated slug, yeah.

After 150 shots of NSI slugs the gas cylinder is caked with lead. It's not excessive and the gun still runs but I don't want the lead to build up over time and usage - how would you go about removing the lead?

To remind - I'm talking about the cylinder which is attached to the barrel not the piston that goes in it.

Best luck I had is with a small pick that came in a gun cleaning kit but obviously this is an extremely slow process. I tried a bronze brush, hops 9 to break it down with little success.

Also to remind the "self cleaning" blink gas system is meant to be kept dry so pouring solvent into the cylinder does not seem like a good option.

As stated I did use Hops 9 and then had to excessively make sure it's all dried up before assembly.

Folks are saying that cleaning once in a while is not so bad - but how you clean is also a question.

Google gives me mixed responses, leaning towards no.