Ballistol, my highly biased review.
Recently while I was away from my workshop at a trade show I was in need of some good machine oil, I spotted a display of Ballistol and remembered reading a fairly good amount of positive comments on the product, so I figured I give it a go. If I had seen some other brand that I recognized I would have bought it first, since Ballistol is the first thing I saw once I discovered the need for oil, it won the pick.
As a cleaner, I find it fair to poor, with heavy carbon it gets the big chunks off well enough, but does very little to the surface carbon, It seems to work OK on lead fouling after a good long soak, with no ammonia it probably is useless for copper fouling.
As oil it seems to work just fine I gets into everything well and feels slick and smooth to the touch. In my 40F degree shop after the aerosol vehicle evaporates it congeals into a Bore Butter like constancy. This could be problematic in arctic conditions where the oil can solidify enough to slow lock times to the point of failure. It looks like it would stay put for a few years though and may be good rust preventative for short term storage. Being all natural it should be dandy for BP guns and not tar up the way modern petroleum products do.
The smell is OK, not as pungent and aromatic as many. I think it smells like an industrial grade fish oil, it’s not what I would call good smelling stuff. My wife likes it better than the pungent Ed's Red.
Bottom line, and this is just opinion, well worth every penny.
In a pinch when nothing else is about, it will work, but Ballistal is not my first choice.
