Grease vs. Oil

I use it in my pistols and rifles most notably with my Garand.

I apply it in my Garand anyplace metal contacts or slides against basically. In Garands they used Lubriplate grease as a fix to stop actions freezing shut in cold weather, it retains a slickness better then oil in areas of high frequency movement such as in a combat autoloader. I use it as well in on my Rolling Block pivot pins, places like that, places that are not somethin i disassemble regularly. Some guns were kinda designed for it to be used and some are not really in my opinion im kinda selective what i use grease on. I use teflon spray lubricants on a lot of things now like AR bolts etc instead of regular oil. My perspective anyways.

For me... I use shooter choice oil and grease.

If it pivots oil it. If it slides grease it.

Thats my pistols BTW.

As far as the grease use it the same as oil a few drops and work the action.

I grease my slide and slide rails and the barrel lugs on my 1911 as well as the barrel bushing.
I grease the bottoms of my bolt on my bolt action rifles.

Oil goes internally in my bolt in the bolt action rifles and pretty much any exposed internal metal of any gun.
CLP which dries gets put in all my guns bores after cleaning.

If its a pretty dirty gun by nature as most .22lr pistols are i tend to use CLP more than oil so the crude doesn't collect as much.

I use generic white lithium grease from home depot.
CLP from Break-Free
Oil i use anything from Mobil 1 synthetic motor oil, But i just found some M-Pro7 at a good price so ill be using that until i run out.

On military rifles like the M-14, Garand, and M-1 Carbine, there are actually directions for where to grease and where to oil.

Grease for sliding parts oil for everything else.

oldbear said:

Grease for sliding parts oil for everything else.

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That's what I do too!

+1 on grease for sliding parts; oil for everything else.

... or just oil for everything.

I'll use oil on anything that I need to "soak into" to lubricate.

Example: on my 1911 I pretty much just field strip it. So the mag release isn't coming out of there. The mag release slides, but I don't put grease on it. I work in a drop or two of oil.

Grease where manufacturer recommended, like Granads, M1A's and a shotgun I have, and a Sig X-Five.

Other than the above, Mobil-1 (or any fully synthetic of the lightest weight (0w...) for everything else.

I use oil almost exclusively. It is the oil in grease that does the lubricating,the consistancy of grease just keeps it in place longer.

I always use grease on the slide to frame portions of alloy framed pistols.

I use a combination of grease and oil. The oil I use is Militec-1 and I also use Wilson Combat ultima-lube grease. I use a drop of militec on the slide rails, and put a tiny dab of grease on the barrel hood and front of the barrel where the slide touches during recoil. That's just me.

Am I the only one who uses Hoppes gun oil? Any reason why most of you prefer other oils? Just curious.

What about Ballistol?

I use both oil and grease.

Any where I have metal to metal contact I use Inox MX-6 grease. For general lube and protection I use Inox MX-3 spray lubricant.

Absolutely amazing stuff.

I use a home-made mix of one part sewing machine oil, four parts aircraft grease, five parts Molybdenum Disulphide powder. If I need it thinner, I add more oil, and it seeps into fine places quite well.

It's had interesting results, too--in the places where the thinner solution is used, the oil evaporates off at high temp, leaving a good coat of MoS2 that would have been difficult to get in there otherwise. The thicker solution stays primarily in grease form, with fantastic lubricity and cushioning properties, and stays in place (except of course for the excess).

I've also had good results from using Ballistol, Mobil 1, and regular Hoppes (orange bottle), too, and lithium grease, Shooter's Choice High-Tech, and axle grease.

The key is to neither over-do nor under-do it, and use each where it should go. The only reason I use a fancy home-brew mix is that I had the stuff laying around for about a year or so, and figured I'd put it to some use.

Zoidberg523 said:

Am I the only one who uses Hoppes gun oil? Any reason why most of you prefer other oils? Just curious.

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I use Inox products because they've just flat out impressed me. The grease doesn't melt. The oil doesn't stain, doesn't gum up or anything and doesn't rinse off with water. The Australian Army has been using it for a while and it's starting to make it's way to the States. Plus it's all food grade stuff AND kosher certified.

To give you an idea how well the spray lube works a buddy of mine is a professional fisherman, both a charter captain and a tournament redfish fisherman. He puts his boat into saltwater every day. He coated his trailer with Inox MX3 spray lube a couple months ago and the water STILL beads off the trailer. It doesn't evaporate even in the hot Florida sun.

I work in a bait shop and we've started carrying Inox because it's becoming very popular with the fisherman for lubricating their reels, and the spray lube is also a great fly line conditioner it turns out. We have several salt water tanks that are areated to hold our bait shrimp, crabs and whitebait. Needless to say, everything in the vicinity of the bait tanks rusts. We have a metal safe that we sprayed a small spot with the spray lube 4 months ago because it's right next to the bait tanks. Every square inch of that safe that wasn't sprayed has heavy surface rust.

I've been using it on all my guns and I'm just flat out impressed with it. I've had the chance to talk to reps from the company about it's use in guns and with Australia and other NATO countries using it, I figured I might as well give it a try.

The only drawback is that if you use grease and oil on your guns, or anything else like fishing reels, you need to use both Inox oil and grease. If you mix either with other brands of petroleum based greases or oils they WILL break each other down.

Thank you very much for that informative post FLAvalanche! I now intend to try some of their products for myself.

Not a problem. Their website is www.inox-mx3.com and they have a list of dealers that carry it. I don't know if they have any Michigan dealers or not. I'd suggest checking out their page anyways because they have other stuff too. Their battery conditioner and heavy duty bearing grease are both good stuff too.

If you don't have any local dealers you can always get it from www.fishingfranks.com/store. It's under Accessories.