Some of you fellows really need to go read Grant Cunningham's blog post on gun lubricants. I know I've posted it here on the forum a few times, it's excellent info and he's spot on. It's linked back up there in post #23. Eh, I'll just link it here again....
Lubrication 101: Gun oil, snake oil, and how to tell the difference. - www.GrantCunningham.com www.GrantCunningham.com
Even more info on lubricants over at the Bob's the Oil Guy forum. I found this place years back while researching an alternatives for overpriced Harley Davidson engine oil. I run Shell Rotella in everything, bike, truck & tractor with no issues for many years now.
Bob Is The Oil Guy | The Internet's Number One Motor Oil Site
You know, oil is just oil. What I mean is what makes a lubricant good for a particular purpose is not the oil itself it's the additive package that's in the oil.
For example... Lubricants intended for use in an enclosed environment ie. engine crankcase, gear box, transmission, hydraulic systems et al. are generally poor choices for open air applications. They lack the additives to deal with oxidative breakdown of the base stock and are poor at corrosion prevention.
For firearms you want stuff that remains stable in open air thus contains anti oxidants, and also containing extreme pressure or anti wear additives and anti corrosion additives.
But but Bill... What about synthetic oil? Isn't that stuff super duper awesome better? Pffft naahh not for our purposes here. Synthetics are good for systems where there is a lot of heat & shearing action that tends to break the oil molecules into smaller and smaller pieces. Think gas turbine propulsion systems, high speed reduction gears, helicopter transmission and the like. For firearms it a waste of money. Even on engines it a waste of money IMO. Remember it's the additive package...whether you have synthetic oil or mineral oil in your engine it's going to get just as dirty just as fast either way and once the detergent additives (keeps dirt, wear metal and combustion products in suspension) are saturated or used up you begin to get gunk deposits, stuck lifters, clogged oil galleries and if you don't dump it and put clean oil in there you'll eventually be coughing engine parts out on the roadway somewhere.
But but Bill... What about all in one products, aren't CLP products just the cat's mewowww!??
OK, let me tell you what I think of CLP... Back around 1979 or so we (meaning us in Uncle Sam's Confused Group) had plenty of small arms and some not so small... M1911 and some M1911A1, M870, M16 & A1, M60, and M2 Browning. We happily went about cleaning our weapons with using these little GI tins of rifle bore cleaner. That stuff smelled great and did a fine job and even though it said
POISON
on the can, we were nominally smart enough not to drink any
. When it came time to lube and preserve our weapons we used some other GI stuff called LSA and some milspec rifle grease uhhh Lubriplate 130A as I recall. Never had any huge issues with corrosion despite the worn thin park on most of those old WW2 and earlier vintage 45s that were frequently splashed, sprayed and dunked in tropical seawater.
It wasn't too long after for reasons beyond my ken that some DoD directive came down that all that stuff that worked was now unauthorized. I don't know why... maybe some Army kid ate some bore cleaner
Anyway we were now under orders to perform all weapons maintenance with this new super duper all in one wonder product called Breakfree CLP. As I recall this was a published directive from HQ, all the old stuff that worked had to go to DRMO and you risked an Art. 92 problem if you used anything other than Breakfree for weapons maintenance. Well I suspect whomever invented that stuff had never heard of salt water. Rust and corrosion became a big issue right away. Weapons maintenance workload more than doubled. I swear you could take a M1911 coated with CLP, show it a picture of the ocean and it'd start to rust. I think it was all a plot to get rid of the M1911's and bring in the M9's. Oh yeah! that was a great idea
Have these people ever heard of electrolysis? You know, galvanic corrosion? Lets see here.... open top slide so all kinds of rubbish can get in there. Then, you have carbon a steel slide on aluminum frame with various bit of steel for screws pins & springs, brass cases with copper jacketed bullets... not to worry we have Breakfree. Dunk that thing in seawater and you have a battery. One can imagine the aluminum fizzing away like an alka-seltzer tablet. Crew served weapons had it even worse when stowed mounted. M60, M2 or the MK16 20mm, we'd drench 'em with breakfree, I mean literally dripping and by morning they'd be a rusty mess. That stuff is useless in my opinion except for maybe cleaning off dried up WD40 gunk.
There are all kinds of "all in one" products in all manner of industries or markets and none of them perform as well as single purpose products.
You want to lubricate something...use a lubricant.
You want to clean something... use a cleaner.
You want to preserve something... use a preservative.
Yeah yeah Ok Fine Bill... I get it, so what do you recommend?
For preservation? Boeshield T-9, nothing better plus it's a respectable lubricant.
For cleaning? The old standby Hoppe's No.9. that stuff has been getting the job done forever and it smells wonderful
What about copper fouling? Any good ammonia base copper solvent will get it done. Hoppe's is good as is Butches bore shine. Also handy for wiping off the brass punch marks from driving a sight home.
Ah uh Lubricant Bill...Focus... OK OK, You know, I'm not so big on these little tiny bottles and syringes containing minuscule amounts of some compound alleged to have heretofore unknown magical properties. Often in my minds eye I spy a little minimum wage fellow sitting on a stool surrounded by oil barrels and armed with a turkey baster filling thousands of these little tiny containers from bulk. Somebody is laughing all the way to the bank. Ahh but I digress, sorry.
Lubricants... Depends on what I'm lubricating:
Slide rails, A light wiping of lubriplate 130A or SFL-0. Just a light thin film of grease no gobs. You can get a pound of either of those greases for $10 or so and will probably last you a hundred years.
Guiderods, same treatment.
Barrel camming lugs on aluminum frames are especially vulnerable to wear so I like to use a grease at the upper end high in EP/AW additives also with some tackifiers so it's somewhat sticky and stays put without migrating. So a little tiny dab of an NLG-2 greas that's high in Molybdenum-disulfide is best here. CRC's Sta-Lube Moly-Graph, Dupont Krytox GPL217, and Jetlube's marine moly are just a couple examples and except for the Krytox are pretty cheap. In the end any Moly based grease will do to afford you the best long term protection against wear of the camming lugs.
Lockwork, ie hammers & sear engagement surfaces, rebound slides, Brownells action lube plus.
Spinamathingies. ie. hammer, sear and trigger pins, a good GP gun oil
General purpose gun oil. Something that's intended for use in the open air, has EP/AW and anti corrosion additives. Pretty much any quality machine tool oil. I have a bottle of Mobil Velocite #6. It's high speed spindle oil for milling machines. Has all the desired properties and you can get a gallon for about 30 bucs that will last forever. I've been nursing the same pint bottle for about seven years, still appears full
I think I'm gonna order a bottle of Velocite #10 for when I want a bit more viscosity. You can go to any industrial supply house, Mcmaster-Carr, Travers Tool, MSC Industrial and look up spindle oil regardless of brand you'll be good to go. Don't mix up way oil with spindle oil. Way oil is very high in tackifiers so it's sticky like honey, not desirable for a gun lube
In general, use these all sparingly. Excessive lube, whether grease or oil will migrate into areas where you don't want it. It will attract all manner of junk. That junk will stick to an mix with the lube forming a disgusting abrasive paste that's liable to jam up the works. Here's a hint... If your shooting glasses are spattered with lubricant, you put too much. And another, if you hand cycle the slide a bunch and now there's big gobs of grease coming out the back on either side of the hammer, you put too much. Ok I'm all done, gonna go take a nap now
Cheers
Bill