Do you lube your chamber?

S

saands

New member
I have always cleaned my guns with a solvent and then lightly lubed the barrel/chamber before storage. It always seemed reasonable. I just got a Sig 225 (Someone here pointed me towards Precision Armory ... Excellent tip ... Great buy ... thanks!) and was thumbing through the manual and ran across a Warning: "Keep your cartridges free of oil. Wipe the chamber clean of any oil or preservative before you shoot. Oil in the chamber creates dangerous stresses. Always apply any lubricant sparingly." At first, I was thinking: Yeah, idiots, get the gooey layer of cosmoline out of the chamber and barrel before you use the gun. But then I flashed back to a comment in one of my reloading manuals that said to make sure that all the lube was cleaned off of rifle cartridges because lube reduces the friction between the expanded brass (during detonation) and the chamber wall. Less friction there means more force and stress on the bolt and action. Now I'm questioning my practice of lubing the barrel and chamber after cleaning. As I write this, I am thinking that the final operation in my new procedure will be to dry patch the chamber.
Any comments?
Thanks,
Saands
 
Do not lube case or chamber. They are right when they tell you that in the books and manuals. Yes it increases the load on the breech/bolt face if the cartridge case doesn't stick a little during firing. After peak pressure the case springs back to normal dimension.

Sam.....if it ain't LOUD how you know iffen it went off?
 
You guys do put a light coat of oil in the bore after you clean though, right? Then, do you wipe the oil out of the chamber? On a pistol barrel, I can't see any way of avoiding oil in the chamber unless you insert the cleaning rod and oiled patch from the muzzle end, which I don't do.

Do you lightly oil the cylinders in a revolver after you clean them?



[This message has been edited by Guyon (edited September 10, 2000).]
 
I oil the barrels and chambers of revolvers, autos, single shot, and bolt action firearms. I won't have it dripping out but a light coating never hurt me.
 
I've never let it bother me and treat the bore the same way I treat the chamber. If it really bothers you, use a Q-Tip damp with Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol to clean out the oil. Make sure you don't use too much, just soak it and squeeze it with a paper towel before you clean.
 
You don't need to fire a rifle or pistol with oil in either the barrel or the chamber. Just run a dry patch through an oiled bore, prior to firing. Has nothing to do with friction; has to do with hydraulics' lack of compressability.
 
I always scrub those puppies down and store them pretty lubed up. However, I always run a dry patch through the barrel a few times before use.. as you should. The barrel should not be oiled/lubed at all during use.

Consider that dangerous.

------------------
God, Guns and Guts made this country a great country!

oberkommando sez:
"We lost the first and third and now they are after the Second!(no pun intended)"
 
After cleaning I pass a patch dampened (but not dripping wet) with a quality lubricant and rust preventative down the barrel (including the chamber), and do the same for each cylinder of a revolver. I then dry patch the barrel's chamber (and I do the same for cylinders).

I have never had had a problem with this approach on my carry guns.

On guns going into storage I will omit the dry patch step until they come out of storage and are going to be fired.

[This message has been edited by LIProgun (edited September 11, 2000).]
 
I only lube my guns' bores and chambers if they're going to be stored and unused for a while. Since all my babies go to the range with me at least once a month, that means no lube. :)

Like Ledbetter said, run a dry patch through your gun before firing if you've oiled the bore, to get the crud out of it.
 
I think we're being somewhat confusing in our terminology. Running a patch, with a few drops of preservative on it, through the chamber and down the bore does not really constitute "lubing" it. Some guns, notably poorly-designed machine guns, require actually applying a coating of lubricating oil to the cartridges to get the gun to work. I have always run an "oily" patch down the bores of my guns as the final cleaning step, and unless the gun has been exposed to a dusty environment before shooting next, I have never run a patch through the bore before shooting - I doubt that a single dry patch would do much to remove the trace of oil anyway. I think it's proper to protect the chamber, as the bore, but there is no reason to lubricate the chamber of a modern handgun.
 
The subject of oils and rust preventatives always seems to come up here. Am I the only one who uses Bianchi blue bags? I've got guns that have been in those bags for five years, and there's no sign of any kind of corrosion. On the other hand, a magazine I'd handled and didn't put in a bag in the same location as the bagged gun developed some surface rust. That tells me those bags really work.

Dick
Want to send a message to Bush? Sign the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/monk/petition.html and forward the link to every gun owner you know.
 
Stored gun: run oiled patch through chamber & barrel.
When you take said gun out to shoot, run a dry patch through.

Carry gun: chamber & barrel dry. After cleaning, there's no need to keep any layer of oil in the barrel unless you;
never take care of your guns
work in a damp or salty environment.
Reasonable care will keep the chamber & barrel from rusting in the former case, and you don't want oil attracting lint and other crud in the bore.
In the latter case, it might be good to treat the barrel regularly with something like Sentry Solutions Smooth Kote, or Tuf Kote, both of which are non-oily, but protect the bore.
For those who WANT an oiled bore without an oiled chamber, use double or triple layers of clean dry patches on your (non-slotted) cleaning jag, and you'll only be able to push as far as the end of the chamber-start of the bore, which will effectively wipe the chamber clean.
Best.

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"Potius sero quam nunquam."
 
I run a patch of Hoppes through the bore when I am done cleaning. It preserves just as well as oil and it doesn't stick.
 
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