Find someone that has Military experience, they will show you the proper way to clean an AR. Also, is best practice to clean soon after you shoot, cause carbon is not good for a any weapon. Unless of course you have paid good money for either chromeed or titanium nitride or nickel boron treated parts? Anyhow with experience at cleaning an AR, you can get done in under 2 hours. Compressed air cans work great to get sand and grit out out of the trigger well and a Bore Snake is very handy and very quick.