Pistol Lubrication and YOUR MONEY

I bought a little $15 bottle of wonder lube, and two or three years later, I still have plenty left. If I used gun lube by the quart, I'd probably look for something else, but when I can lube my gun for a penny, how much cheaper do I have to go?
 
I have so many different cans of gun oil on the bench, I grab whichever, Rem oil, an old can of Browning, whatever. they all work fine. i will say that when all are lost or empty ,Kroil, EEzox, Corrosion X, and possibly Nanolube will be the only ones replaced.
 
Actually, I ended up saving more money by not buying WD-40 & other household lubricants and using RemOil and BreakFree for all my household lubricant needs... :D
 
On that note, my motocross bikes get silkolene as a waterproof bearing grease. Never tried it, but a really light coat on the rail would probably work pretty well.
 
NEWSFLASH: If your lubrication effects reliability of your weapon you don't know what you're doing no matter what you're using, and secondly, if your pistol wears out faster from using a lube you got from NAPA versus the gunshop then you either shoot more than Todd Jarett or you own a piece of poo-poo.

Concerning lubricatiion, why don't you tell us what we should all be using based on pour point, flash point, viscosity @100 deg. F and @212 deg. F, operational temp., and viscosity index. Price not considered.

Then tell us about your favorite cheap stuff's ability in the aforementioned areas.

That would be more useful than a condescending admonition.
 
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Actually, I ended up saving more money by not buying WD-40 & other household lubricants and using RemOil and BreakFree for all my household lubricant needs...


WD-40 is not a lubricant. It's water displacement formula that leaves behind a sticky residue that will eventually foul up a firearm. Use it only in the field when your firearm gets wet.
 
ATF, FP-10, MPro-7, CLP, Breakfree CLP, Mobil 1, Tetra-Oil, Mil-Tech, Hoppe's, Outers Gun Oil and others will lubricate your gun just fine. Pick the one that gives you the best results for corrosion protection and smooth running of your gun and stick with it.
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Bill, thanks for not including Eezox!!! My favorite is 100% Teflon grease.
 
As said, W-D 40 is a water displacement product. I know that they have now added some residual protection factors to it but after ruining a bank of firearms back in the '70's I'll never go back to it. Boeshield is a much better product IMHO and I spend a lot of time getting rained on.

ATF is merely a 5-10 wt. oil with additives and dye added (a friend of mine is a chemical engineer for a major oil co.)

Shear loads don't mean much unless you have an auto-loader, then they are crucial. I prefer a Teflon based lube such as SuperLube. Maybe that's one of the reasons that my 742 Rem. still performs flawlessly.

For day to day, I use RemOil in the spray can. It gets down into all of the nooks and crannies that you'll never reach with an oil rag.

I also wouldn't hesitate to use CorrosionBlock, it's a marine product with the primary use in protecting electronics from a salt enviroment. It's function is the same as W-D 40 but leaves a superior protective film. Read more here. http://www.nocorrosion.com/corrosion-control.htm
 
I'm not going to say I've tried them all, but I'm pretty sure I've tried most. If I showed a pic of the shelf with cleaning/lubricating/protecting products, you might ask "Why?"

I guess the answer is that I spend good money on my guns. I shoot them quite a bit, carry at least one of them every day and trust them to protect me and mine should it be necessary. I look at them as being valuable assets worthy of proper care and maintenance.

To look at it another way, my $2000 Toyotas get Castrol GTX, my Corvettes (when I owned them) got Mobil 1.
Look at these threads:
http://www.6mmbr.com/corrosiontest.html
http://www.thegunzone.com/rust.html

Yeah, I'll admit it, I'm hooked. Let's say I pay a buck an ounce for Eezox. If I had, hypothetically :) $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 or more worth of guns, should I worry about a couple of $10-$15 cans of CLP per year? ;)

For well under the cost of a box of ammo, I can have the best protection available. Anything less would be false economy.
 
Grant Cunningham has had an excellent article on lubrication, since 1999. I think...yes. Here is the article: Lubrication 101

I've been using his recommended oil since I originally read the article, way back when. It just works, in all weather.
 
My favorite .45 Smith swore by Marvel Mystery oil. I've used it on and off for years, never had a problem. He also told me he used STP on the hammer hooks.

Honestly, there are an awful lot of guns that are 20-30-50-75 years old that never saw anything more high tech than 3 in 1 oil. And, the vast majority of them seem to go bang with disturbing regularity. No rust and smooth action.

And still, if something "new" and "better" comes out, I will find myself buying a bottle and trying it. Sometimes the action feels a little smoother, the slide a little slicker, sometimes not.

Ballistol is another one of the old timers. I think its the German equivalent of our 3 in 1. I've seen alot of old Walthers that still run fine and I KNOW they have never seen anything more modern than Ballistol.

Heck, its kinda fun trying new products. But, I don't think there is an overwhelming NEED for the latest and greatest innovation in gun lubes.
 
Yes, a little bottle will go along way (generally). However, I do a lot of shooting...and I ALWAYS clean and lube after each session, even if I fire a single round, and I always do a clean/lube periodically on my carry arms even if they haven't been fired. For me, that "little bottle" ain't going to last long. In fact, I've gone through a "small little bottle" of lubricant in one month from lubricating new firearms I bought (and didn't get to shoot yet) just because I thought my gun room needed more friends. And no, I don't overlube my firearms.

I can't tell you exactly what viscosity, drop point, additives, temps for lubricant to use in YOUR gun because I don't know what YOUR gun is, it's action type, its material make-up, etc.

Every firearm I have uses a different lube per it's design and/or different application method. I also use a different combination between carry, and range practice.

For range practice, in general (not weapon specific here), metal surfaces and barrel, barrel hood & extension are coated with a light-weight machine oil known as Marvel Mystery Oil. During carry, I actually use BreakFree for this because it has a higher viscosity and less prone to run off. But this is only because I have it. I would not hesitate to use MMO for this application. Periodical coating of the bore with MMO removes all baked-on carbon. The MMO actually seems to keep the gun running clean longer. For non-rotating surfaces (I'll not include rifles here), such as slide rails and frame rails, I used to use an expensive graphite lubricant. Then I found a cheap alternative which is essentially the same thing with both graphite and copper based lubes - anti-seize compound. This stuff really stays in place. It does not get pushed up forward the slide or work its way backward. I cut this 50/50 sometimes with red-heavy grease to change the viscosity and to enhance lubrication properties with dry lubes and lithium soap properties. Both are rated for high temps and high pressures and prevent galling. MMO, anti-seize, and a tube of grease cost about as much as one of those syringes and will definitely last a tee-bit longer.

Can somebody please tell me how so, by using these such products, will my pistol not function as well or run as long or corrode faster then if I used a $15 5cc syringe of "x"?

* It's not that I don't have or want to spend the money...and yes, I do own some expensive firearms that surely I wouldn't want to "cheap out" on lube for them, BUT, why should I trust a product based on its price? And many product testings of these brands do not whoo me, and clearly do not outperform some of the above mentioned lubes for the same application purposes. I do not use these products because they are cheap, or readily available, but because I trust them to get the job done and not because I take someone else's word for it.
 
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Can somebody please tell me how so, by using these such products, will my pistol not function as well or run as long or corrode faster then if I used a $15 5cc syringe of "x"?
I doubt there's really all that much difference in lubrication (function), and if you really want to know the difference in corrosion protection you can easily test that yourself.

Get some identical pieces of iron or steel, mark them so you can tell them apart, then get a friend to apply identical amounts of the product to each piece so that they're coated as similarly as possible.

Then spray them with a salt solution and leave them overnight. Repeat the spray periodically and see which one rusts first. I haven't seen a test that includes MMO, but there are tests online that compare a number of the common gun lubes/protectants and even include some of the common expedient lubes/protectants such as Mobil 1 and motor oil.

http://www.thegunzone.com/rust.html
http://www.6mmbr.com/corrosiontest.html
http://www.accuratereloading.com/rustest.html
http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/GunTech/NewsletterArchive.aspx?p=0&t=1&i=503
BUT, why should I trust a product based on its price?
You shouldn't. But isn't that what you're doing now, if you really stop and think about it? ;)

You're thinking that a person shouldn't choose a lubricant just because it's expensive. But the same applies in reverse--a person shouldn't choose a lubricant just because it's cheap either. One should choose based on the properties, performance, and price not based purely on price.
 
I use the best ever produced in the known world:cool:

It's called "Gun Butter"...that's right...Billy Maze will tell you that it's best.

It not only butters your gun, but at the range when you get a hunger pain....well, just slap some on toasted bread and you got yourself a mighty good meal. Save money on eating and shootin.
 
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