Best Lube???

aragorn1 said:
Asking on here about which lube to use, you will get as many answers as you have CGN members. I went through the same thing for two years, tried more things than I can recall, spent HUNDREDS OR MORE trying different lubes and cleaners. I have some guns I shoot several times a month and others several times a year. If youre asking..... Froglube and the other veggie based lubes work, gun cleans up easy, and smells nice, but only if the gun is cleaned after each use and re lubed. If it sits for weeks it gets thick and gummy and smells nasty, it rots... literally
I settled on Ballistol for EVERYTHING, it cleans and lubes. Doesn't smell nice but stays useable on the firearm for many many months. It's actually pretty cheap also. I am also of the belief that pretty much anything works, I did however find that synthetic motor oil really creeps all over the gun, annoyingly so. I reduced the amount I used but still it ends up all over the place after a couple hundred round match. The vegetable based oils thicken and rot. I use the ballistol on every gun for cleaning and lube....... never a problem. I apply sparingly with a tiny paint brush. Love it
I'm done experimenting
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I pretty much have done the same like most other have a cupboard full of different oils.. Balistol I find does everything I need it to do and shooters like Hickok45 who have eons more experience support it so I'm in for the long haul.
 
Some interesting comments here regarding the use of engine oils and transmission fluids. Here is where I put on my smarty-pants and wax philosophical regarding lubricants.

Engine oils and ATF are composed of a large additive content, in the case of engine oils sometimes as much 60%. These additives are such things as detergents, dispersants, VI improvers, etc. Slick 50 and STP are pure additives, mostly just VI (viscosity index) improvers. Not only should these never touch your gun but also please do not put them in your automobile. They are nothing more than snake oil, no matter what your buddies tell you.

So what you say? Most of these additives have an at least slightly corrosive nature and over time will affect the finish of your gun. The additives are also designed to work in a very different and much more hostile environment than what a gun lubricant experiences and so are wasted (although we do not use enough lubricant for the cost to really be a concern). I do not recommend the use of industrial lubricants for firearms.


A gun oil is nearly identical to a turbine oil in that it has very little additive. Some have only an R & O (rust & oxidation) additive and some even have none at all. A lubricants job is to support two bearing surfaces and be able to handle the load enough to keep the surface defects (asperities) apart. It is this contact that produces wear. What happens in a gun, despite the high SAAMI pressures present in a chamber, during cycling is a relatively light load and so a light viscosity oil with very little or no additive is all that is required.

Any wear seen during the life of the gun will be due to two factors: the oil used being unable to support the load resulting in the breaking down of the boundary layer between the surfaces and more commonly, contaminants mixing with the oil and abrading the surface of the metal.

Many use Brian Enos grease or something similar. This is a perfectly acceptable practice as grease is simply an oil suspended in a wax matrix. The oil is released when pressure is applied and in fact the oil in the grease is no different than the oils such as FP-10 and Break-free and offers the same protection. The danger with waxes is the false sense of security because you believe it is doing a marvellous job while you have left it on your gun for weeks when all it is really doing is collecting contaminants and suspending them in the matrix thus accelerating the wear of your gun components. The wax will provide protection on a long shooting day without re-application but you must still clean your gun and re-apply for the next session.

In conclusion: Use a reputable oil or wax and clean your gun often. We have the luxury in the shooting sports of being able to not mind if our guns slobber a bit so use enough and wipe off the excess. On dusty days re-oil the slide halfway through the match.

Thus concludes today’s lesson....
 
Yes, subjective for sure, considering the lubes sitting in most of the big gun manufacturing plants, for lubing the guns, is just motor oil. In great big drums. Sure they sell a branded oil for retail, but they sure don't use them in the back. And as far as motor oil damaging the finish on guns, in 35 years of shooting, 17 of which has been heavy competition shooting, I've never seen nor heard of this before.
 
Tried lots over 28 years of shooting.

Stuck with Weapshield for last 8 years.

Smells like cinnamon rolls.





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I've never specifically seen motor oil damage a finish but it is true there are a lot of additives to it to allow it to suspend the byproducts of combustion, and those byproducts are totally corrosive. Whether you'd see any of the byproducts in a gun, even after heavy use, I'm not sure. There's definitely a bunch of stuff in motor oil that you don't need in a gun, but the thing is, guns are so easy to lube it almost doesn't matter.

Yes, ideally I'd rather use something like air tool oil, or turbine oil. But in practise it won't make a ton of difference for 99.9% of users. If I didn't have 980 ml left of a litre of synthetic motor oil, I might well go buy a bit of air tool oil. But there just isn't enough performance benefit to bother.

But BUABS's advice is not at all off the mark, it's just more technical than most of us require.
 
Slavex said:
Yes, subjective for sure, considering the lubes sitting in most of the big gun manufacturing plants, for lubing the guns, is just motor oil. In great big drums. Sure they sell a branded oil for retail, but they sure don't use them in the back. And as far as motor oil damaging the finish on guns, in 35 years of shooting, 17 of which has been heavy competition shooting, I've never seen nor heard of this before.
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The fact the gun manufacturers have barrels of motor oil used to initially lubricate their products as they go out the door just means they get the barrels of oil cheaper than buying another type of lube. It certainly doesn't suggest it should or should not be used. Gun manufacturers are in the business of making money selling guns not worrying about amateur or professional gun owners ,and how their guns are lubed.

That said for most motor oil is better than no oil and for all the oil one uses in a lifetime of shooting what difference does it make? I bought two 16 oz bottles of FP 10 15 years ago and still have half a bottle around along with dozens of small bottles of this gun oil or that. They tend to accumulate from swag bags from shooting matches.

To the OP always ensure your guns are lubed with something and cleaned regularly. Set aside $200 for buying lube during your lifetime and make sure before you die someone you love gets what ever is left of the $200.

Take Care

Bob
 
It's also what they use when they test their guns, which means it does what they need to it do. Given the little amount of wear on a variety of gun I shoot, from my competition pistols to my AR or my sniper rifle and over to my shotguns, they are all lubed with the same oil, Militec 1, which I'm told is probably a motor oil as well (industry source), and some of those guns have seen hundreds of thousands of rounds through them, I'm fine with that. I don't see the need nor the benefit to spending a bunch of money on a name brand that is just a rebranded product used for something else. No one is investing tons of money into research and development to produce gun oils, the market, even in the USA is just not big enough to justify the money it would take to actually do it right. Grabbing an off the shelf product, some buddies and guns, hitting the range, doing some pseudo scientific research is about all you get from the various companies, and some not even that.
 
Slavex said:
It's also what they use when they test their guns, which means it does what they need to it do. Given the little amount of wear on a variety of gun I shoot, from my competition pistols to my AR or my sniper rifle and over to my shotguns, they are all lubed with the same oil, Militec 1, which I'm told is probably a motor oil as well (industry source), and some of those guns have seen hundreds of thousands of rounds through them, I'm fine with that. I don't see the need nor the benefit to spending a bunch of money on a name brand that is just a rebranded product used for something else. No one is investing tons of money into research and development to produce gun oils, the market, even in the USA is just not big enough to justify the money it would take to actually do it right. Grabbing an off the shelf product, some buddies and guns, hitting the range, doing some pseudo scientific research is about all you get from the various companies, and some not even that.
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Rob does it really matter? I wouldn't think the average person spends $100. on lubricant in their lifetime. As to what ever they use to test their guns again does it matter. I would suggest it is not a major topic with any of the gun manufacturers where bottom line profits are the Holly Grail and from what one reasons difficult to obtain. The guns are sold to the general public and from then on who knows what they get lubed with. A relative handful of competitors lube their guns frequently, the rest?????

Whar we do agree on in most of the stuff you read is just marketing.
 
I don't know about $100 dude, I know people with 5 or 6 times that sitting on their shelves in various brand names of lube if not more. But not everyone on here is simply a civie either. There are a number of agency guys here too. And I'd rather see my local PD spending money on training and ammo then on rebranded motor oil or vegetable oil. And it actually has been the topic of discussion at numerous manufacturers that I personally know of and I would suspect all of them.
 
Slavex said:
I don't know about $100 dude, I know people with 5 or 6 times that sitting on their shelves in various brand names of lube if not more. But not everyone on here is simply a civie either. There are a number of agency guys here too. And I'd rather see my local PD spending money on training and ammo then on rebranded motor oil or vegetable oil. And it actually has been the topic of discussion at numerous manufacturers that I personally know of and I would suspect all of them.
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Rob what he hell is your point Dude. I personally know the uncle of a friend of my first son's brother who thinks police would be better off learning how how to defuse situations and dealing with the public as opposed to learning how to spend their days playing with their guns that most will never ever have to use or even want to use. We all have life experiences and acquaintances. I would not think shooting people is high on their job descriptions. Helping those in need I suspect would be.

Most of us with IQ's over 60 recognize that refineries spend money to research their lubrication products for their intended end use. As been pointed out above the lubrication needs for guns is pretty low brow which accounts for the use of motor oil to be used as a lubricant. I am going to go out on the limb here and suggest the refineries don't spend a lot of time worrying about the requirements for guns when they are preparing their formulas for oils meant for today\s automotive engines. Too, those same IQ requirements allow us to recognize what is advertising and what isn't. Snake oil has been around for a long time.
 
I'm not talking about oil manufacturers I'm talking about gun manufacturers talking about oil, they have what they use in house and they have what they sell. They go through a lot in house. I also happen to know that some agencies have been talked into snakeoil, to their detriment, on numerous occasions, wasting thousands of dollars, risking lives, and ruining guns, all in the pursuit of the latest and greatest lube. Their budgets for the training department could have used that money much more effectively had they not bought into the stupidity, ammo and more time on the range. Which actually for some departments, is important, as it should be. Most modern muni forces in Canada actually have significant training budgets for firearms, and they are pushing for more, because that's the one area that has been lacking for years, and weapon maintenance is a part of that budget. To suggest that they are on the range "playing" with guns is idiotic and shows a complete lack of understanding of what their job entails, or why they are on the range training. But hey, what do I know, I've only done contract work for a bunch over the years and regularly consult with them still. But that is completely unrelated to the topic at hand, and as demonstrated in this thread alone, there are people buying into the snake oil too. Advocating for products that cost 100 times more than a bottle of motor oil at Cambodian tire.
 
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