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Old 09-17-2017, 06:37 PM
Sylvaticus Sylvaticus is offline
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Default Old thread on current topic

This seems to be an archetypical thread on a topic that keeps re-surfacing. Several comments caught my eye.

The household friend, 3-in-1 oil came and comes in several formulations; today's are pretty good household lubes. Without a doubt, the chemical makeup has been much improved over the years. The one for electric motors us actually a 20-weight engine oil. Detergent-free, it is excellent for air guns.

But I can recall several gunsmiths swearing at (not by) 3-in-1 in the 70s when I started shooting seriously. All had seen actions gummed up when the oil was applied and allowed to sit for several years. It turned to gum and varnish, and was h*ll to remove!

As for WD-40 . . . Well, they are your guns. Abuse them as you wish. I think the stuff is great for rinsing grit off of tools, bicycle chains, and guns. It will prevent rust under damp conditions for about 36 - 48-hours. But it is neither a good lube, cleaner, or longer-term rust preventative. You can find independent testing done on WD-40 and other products on the Brownells website. Really, the stuff isn't much more sophisticated than a sort of kerosene with a couple of additives. Google aroound, check the MSDS, and you'll see. Yes, I have a can at hand, but mainly to displace moisture and rinse away sand and other grit. (I did know one gunsmith who stored his many go-no-go chamber rifle gauges in tubes filled with WD-40, an inventive and apt use.)

There is some strange sentiment expressed here that the "old-timers" were not fussy about what oils, greases, and cleaners they used on their firearms. This is total bosh. I know this from my own maternal grandfather who lumberjacked in Maine prior to WWI (he lived to 98). He carefully instructed me to use products marketed by the big gun companies, but that sperm whale oil had been long considered the best lubricant for actions when available. Years later, a fine shooter who was a watchmaker (not "repairman") said the same about sperm whale oil to me.

Curiously enough, Ed Harris (the "Ed" of "Ed's Red") noted that modern auto transmission fluid was developed as a substitute for sperm whale oil, because the latter had excellent qualities as a lubricant but had become unavailable due to WWII. In the 1970s, Jojoba oil was in vogue in some cicles; plant-based, it shares many properties with sperm whale oil. I wonder if it is used in any products today. One can purchase a highly purified product at Trader Joe's, where it is marketed as a skin oil. (Might be worth a try?). It is very light, resembling RemOil in this respect.

Ned Roberts also documents the care with which serious hunters and shooters chose their lubes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Roberts was uniquely placed, as he was raised on muzzle loaders, but of course helped usher in the era of high velocity rifles with his development of the excellent .257 Roberts. (This is still a fine cartridge, albeit one overshadowed by the champion .25-'06.). In his book, The Muzzle-loading, Caplock Rifle, Roberts explains how black bear fat, carefully rendered until it yielded a water-white oil, was universally prized among skilled shooters as a non-gumming lubricant. I am sure he mentions sperm whale oil somewhere as well. Read this fine volume, and among the many things you'll take away is a knowledge that those shooters argued about lubricants back then, too.

The advent if CLP-type, teflon-bearing products in the 70s was a game changer, but people forget products such as Dri-Slide (with moly-D) were also coming onto the market. They were excellent as well.

Just because gun oil and greases are repackaged and repurposed products actuálly made in volume for other uses, it does not mean they have not been chosen for specific properties. So while I have been using Mobil 1 in my auto, motorcycle and lawnmower engines since 1975, I haven't used a drop on a firearm. Mobil 1 contains many additives of absolutely no value on firearms, ones which potentially could be detrimental; it also lacks some which are need (mainly those to prevent rust). A transmission product actually comes closer to filling the bill. However, when I need moly-d, I buy an auto product at NAPA. A little goes for the guns; most goes into the crankcase.

Oils DO have shelf-lives, by the way. This is no surprise (I am a university chemist). For engine oils, it is about three years or so if storage is in a cool place (this is according to Valvoline, as I recall). After that, the additive package and oil base start to break down.

One surprise in this thread is that no-one burnishes metal parts with moly-D powder! I have much more enthusiasm for this lubricant than for telflon (ptfe, etc), for several mechanical and chemical reasons. Brownells offers a number of fine moly-d products. The cost per use is trivial. You can also mix a bit of their moly-bearing grease into another grease; the same can be done with moly-d auto greases.

Lest anyone think shooters face a bewildering range of lubricant issues, consider those used in fine instruments. I re-build and sell older fine microscopes. Perhaps the best I personally own is a Swiss-made M20 Wild compound microscope from the late 1950s. It is considered by many to be the finest microscope ever built. While parts are interchangable, the final assembly included hand-fitting, and over 25 different greases and oils were used. 25+! This may explain why such a 'scope cost $7000 (and up) back then (before my time!).

One of my main problems is finding the right lubricant when bringing an old, but still potentially fully-functional world-class instrument back into service. Usually a large part of the job is re-lubrication, and not actual repair (and yes, the manufacturers recommend using today's best lubricants!). One grease I use - a "must" with no substitutes- costs over $55 per ounce. Believe me, you instantly know when you employ the wrong lube!

My microscope experience (I am an elected member of the Royal Microscopical Society) has given me immense respect for the opinions of Grant Cunningham on firearms lubrication. If you have not read his essay, google it. Then buy the products. Use what ever cleaner you want, then use the lubricants recommended by this top Colt gunsmith.
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