I just saw a long thread in the Lounge section about the "best gun lubricant". That got me thinking. I've seen a million posts about gun lubricants and with the exception of WD40 and 3-in-One nobody has anything bad to say. Everybody loves their particular lubricant! (In the Lounge thread even 3-In-One and WD40 had some positives.) This leads me to believe that any lubricant will work if you use it.
Has any one personally had a bad experience with a gun lubricant, other than the 2 listed above?

Jeff

Smell has a lot to do with it. Go ahead and laugh...then clean your toys on the kitchen table. FP-10 had a nice Cinnamon smell that never bothered my wife. Ballistol stinks. I like the product but have to leave everything on the bench in the garage until the odors die down...

__________________
The American dream is alive

I've got 3/4's of a 40yr old bottle of Otters, still use it

i hate CLP haha absolutely hate it. bought a tweeny bottle for $2.99 at dicks once. lubed my glock up. next day she was bone dry. it also collected a ton of dirt, grit and lint *CC gun* in a 24 hour period.

i tend to use Rem oil alot. keeps it viscosity well

__________________
6906,6904,g23,g21,RIA1911,40c

Ballistol smell isn't really offensive. I don't think so anyway.

I think odor is important and the worst smelling oil I have used is aerosol Rem-Oil. This is the only brand I use that gets an immediate complaint from my wife. There are many others out there without the chemical smell of Rem-Oil, so it is banned from our house. I also no longer like 100% petroleum based oils, since they disappear with long term storage. Synthetics are my go to lubes.

i havnt really noticed the smell now my hopps 9 solvent haha that gets complaints lol

__________________
6906,6904,g23,g21,RIA1911,40c

My wife isn't a fan of how my mix of synthetic motor oil and atf smells.

It's best to blame my misspelled words on autocorrect.

Guess I've got a great wife. She says someone should have thought to market Hoppes #9 cologne. Whenever I have been cleaning guns or driving my 1940 Ford 9N, she can tell by the way I smell. She says it's sexy because they are manly smells.

Anything "ammoniated" can cause metal failure. Remember the Ruger's and Smith's that "sent their barrels downrange" stories? Apparently the failures were tied to use of certain lubricants used when the guns were first assembled.
Grant Cunningham references these lubes in his "Book of the Revolver"

Mike

okay if we are saying worst lubricants im going to throw KY Jelly in the mix. i've seen a couple numb skulls at the range try this out because its "slippery" ......i dont not recommend this haha

__________________
6906,6904,g23,g21,RIA1911,40c

Worst oil? Remoil. It invites rust in like a drunk Secret Service agent does ladies of the evening! The worst excuse of oil I've ever seen in nearly 50 years. My step-son loves the stuff. His weapons are rust buckets too! He often askes why my weapons are always spotless. I've told him, but he has this thing about Remoil....poor misguided lad...

Wade

Castor oil, not available commercially, isn't too good. Kinda smells like an old wet horse. Come to think of it, skunk oil probably wouldn't be too good either. Just a coupla benefits of runnin trap lines... or knowing someone who does!

HG

__________________
Isaiah 55:8-9
Phil. 4:13

I had a can of Brichwood-Casey Synthetic Gun Oil in the bottom of my cleaning box. One day I noticed something was leaking.
The can had rusted through just above the oil level.
This did not inspire confidence.

__________________
Field Researcher. IGC

You can buy castor oil in drug stores unless something has changed recently. I agree it smells horrid. Women use it to induce labor (tastes horrid too)

They've changed their formula within the last 20 years or so, but one of the worst gun lubes "back in the day" was 3-in-1 Oil.
It was a poor lubricant and offered NO rust preventing qualities.

Another bad lube was the older automotive motor oils. These offered no rust preventing abilities and some of them were noted for removing gun bluing.

Vaseline is not a metal lubricant and has poor rust prevention.

Cosmoline is great for rust but isn't a lubricant.

As astounding as it sounds, peanut butter is not a good emergency gun grease, nor is lard or butter.

I have to ask about the peanut butter, lard and butter.

How do you know this?

__________________
SWCA 1646

Peanut butter? Who would have even thought to do that? Especially the chunky kind

Insect repellent.
In basic training we had finished the night infiltration course and washed out our sandy/muddy M14s.
I was a company armorer (extra duty). The guys asked me what to use as there was no LSA available.
Only oily thing I could think of was GI bug juice. Oily.
At least we got our weapons turned in so we could turn in (finally).
BTW, no M14s were harmed by that experience!

__________________
-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

This wouldn't qualify to say it was bad, but I got some Ballistol and to evaluate it, I cleaned the ram on my Rockchucker press and used it as the lube. I hoped it would provide lube without collecting so much primer residue. I might not have used it in the correct application, but I felt it did poorly in that application.

When you've been a gunsmith long enough, you'll see some strange stuff.

The doer in the peanut butter case considered that there is peanut oil and if you open a jar of peanut butter you do see oil. Oil is oil.
Ergo; lacking a good grease, peanut butter could be used to temporarily lubricate a pistol.

Lard was sometimes used by old timers to lubricate a tap or die, so obviously it should lubricate a gun.

Crisco used to be used as a bullet lubricant and chamber sealer for black powder revolvers. It was okay unless it was hot weather then it melted and ran out. However, since it lubricated bullets, why not the guns action?

The butter I never learned the reason for. However, I can tell you that real butter smells bad after it's been in there for a while and turns rancid. Also, some real better is salted. Salt rusts guns.

Guess I'll have to try bacon fat...

..just imagine the aroma...

__________________
-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

My vote for the worst oil is for Lucas gun oil. That **** gummed up my gun so much the next day that it was inoperable. I had to completely disassemble, clean and oil it with something else.

I wonder if you got a "bad" bottle of CLP. Did you shake it well prior to use? I use it on all my firearms and it NEVER dries up

WD40 is absolutely the worst thing that can be applied to anything with moving parts. The carrier evaporates and leaves a brown varnish like coating. Took me years to figure out the brown hard coating I would find in customer guns was the result of years of WD40 being sprayed into them. I once tried to keep some flat steel stock I use for making parts from rusting. I put the stuff in a coffee can and covered it by pouring WD40 from a gallon can in until the stock was covered. Couple of months later I couldn't have gotten the individual pieces of stock apart with a sledge hammer. Only thing I have found that will more or less disolve it is soaking in the expensive Carburator cleaner found at auto parts stores. The stuff seems impervious to lacquer thinner, mineral spirits, various firearms solvents, oil, kerosene, gasoline, denatured alcohol, acetone, etc..

I have had Break Free clp gum up the action on Smith and Wesson revolvers and the worse gum up was in a 1911 Schmidt-Ruben K11. That stuff required a total dissasembly of the K11 action and bolt before it worked right. Now these guns were in storage and possibly thats why the break free gummed up.

It's been my experience that not one product is good for every application , so you need products for each different job and you need to use the right stuff for the job.

I have used both WD40 and 3 in 1 oil, but each has its place and use. I never noticed Remoil's objectional smell and thought it to be a good light oil... it has never shown a tendency to gum or harden. WD40 doesn't gum either but it evaporates... it is a good penetrating oil , its just not good for long term use .

I guess the search for that one magic product that does it all still goes on.... ....gary