By and large, gun cleaning products and lubes are a marketing gimmick.

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I agree with the OP that many of today's expensive cleaning products are a bit silly. Nearly anything will remove powder fouling, including soap and water.

Two issues I have with the thread:

1) Serious copper fouling needs to be removed with chemicals or abrasives.

2) Belittling WD-40 is the shooter's version of virtue signalling.
I’ve found that WD seems to attract dust and there is some evidence it may have or at one point had carcinogens
 
I’ve found that WD seems to attract dust and there is some evidence it may have or at one point had carcinogens

I live in California, so am used to the idea that everything on the planet causes cancer. Thankfully, coronavirus is going to kill me first.

The trick with WD-40 is to remember that A) it's not really any kind of lubricant, and B) it needs to be wiped off after you're done with it. If you are spritzing your gun full of it all the time, you may have troubles. If you're using it to remove fouling and related schmutz and then wiping it off afterward, you should be fine. Or at least I have been, over the past few decades.
 
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I think people want a product that makes it so they don’t have to actually do anything to clean.
Yep, bloody hate cleaning my firearms. Have to do it every time they are used too. I use a foaming bore cleaner, and clp for the most part, heavy rust preventative on the parts under the stock.
Ar and poly handguns get soaked in clp, an only "cleaned" when ive run out of all the other stuff i dont want to do.
 
Best use I found for WD40 on a gun was getting wad plastic out of shotgun barrels.
Souse it with WD40, scrub with a brush, and push through a wad of paper towel. ....

True stuff, this. I don't use it as a lube or rust preventative, but WD-40 does do very well on shotgun bores. Choke tubes, too.
 
I'm going to be slightly contrarian on this one, and I'm sure I'll get ragged for it, but I'm of the mind that as long as you're not paying goofy money -- and the definition of goofy money would vary by individual -- use whatever floats your boat.
I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, no garage and no basement. I made the larger of the 2 bedrooms my office/gun room. So, I'm cleaning literally one room away from where I sleep and eat.
Also, I've never dug the smell of Hoppes. Not when I was 12 and not now when I'm closer to 60 then 50.
Going to shamelessly admit I prefer a good-smelling (to me) product for a routine cleaner and metal protectant, and I often go with G96 or ClenzOil, whichever is around and cheaper when I'm looking. I don't use a lot, as I don't spray directly onto guns but prefer to apply and remove with patches or paper toweling, swabs, Q-tips. I also rarely use aerosols. So, I find when I don't slather, don't goop ... a 4 or 8 ounce bottle of liquid lasts quite a while. Matter of fact, I transfer from the store-bought container to a little pump bottle and a 2-ounce needle-tip bottle, both of 'em clear so I can see how much I'm going through.
For lubes, I lately go with Lubriplate SFL-0 grease from a syringe or Mobil 1 oil from a 1 needle-dropper bottle, depending on the application.Those two choices happen to be pretty economical, but I choose 'em 'cause they're really good at ... wait for it ... lubricating.
Guns are in primo shape, place smells dandy when I'm done cleaning ... I'm OK with it.
I mean, dunno, got some relatively serious coin tied up in guns and ammo and God knows how much in related gear ... so I don't get wound about if I drop a $50 bill a year on clean, lube and protect products.
 
Soap and water, are you shooting black powder? It's great for black powder fouling.

Since it was introduced in the mid-1970s I've used Breakfree CLP as a cleaner/lubricant. If I'm shooting corrosive ammo in my Nagant revolver I'll use Hoppe's no.9 first.
 
I was told by a Dupont tribologist that WD40 has a light evaporating oil that deposits silicone on the surface. Silicone will provide some rust resistance, but overall, WD40 is really not a good long term lube, or even rust preventative. But, it works well enough in the short term and is widely popular.

I found interesting, WD40 has never owned its own manufacturing facilities. It is a total marketeer. WD40 owns its formula, puts out bids for contract, and the low bidder makes the stuff. This has been a very viable model, WD40 does the promoting, sales, distribution, but does not have to be engaged in the hell of manufacturing.
 
I was told by a Dupont tribologist that WD40 has a light evaporating oil that deposits silicone on the surface. Silicone will provide some rust resistance, but overall, WD40 is really not a good long term lube, or even rust preventative. But, it works well enough in the short term and is widely popular.
I have found WD40 to be a great cleaner and short time lube. It's great for dissolving pine pitch off your hands and chainsaws.
 
I haven't used WD-40 for much of anything in 25 years. Use to wipe guns down with it when I was growing up. Now I use RIG grease on a piece of wool on the hide. Even in the shop I don't use WD-40 for much of anything. I have better lubrication products and better penetrating products. I think I have one can of WD-40 in the garage chemical cabinet but haven't used it for anything for years.
 
I've been using Lucas gun grease on the rails of my semiauto guns, along with a drop or two of Hoppe's. They all seem to like it and run pretty good. I'm sure some folks would consider it excessive for lubing rails, but it works for me.
 
For you guys using WD40 in shotgun bores, are you using the aerosol cans?
The reason being that, if so, it might be the volatile propellants helping to soften the wadding.
However, I've gotten away from the aerosol version. I got a gallon that will do everything you want WD40 to do better than the aerosol, depending on your choice of applicators, for the price of a pair of cans.

FWIW, I've found it great to break things loose (it's a great cosmoline cleaner) and get things moving (not as well as proper penetrating oils, but you don't have to be as careful where it goes), just not to keep them clean and moving.
And it actually works great as a rust preventative, provided it's used externally and on parts not under handling. A mill and lathe in an unconditioned Florida garage count as my proof, and after years the unsealed iron only had patina where I bled on them and didn't clean it for a while.
Sure there are better, longer-lasting products that don't hold dust. They also cost ten times as much.

I also won't lube a gun with WD. I did use my leftover 10-weight machine oil, though. Worked better than most gun oils.
 
For you guys using WD40 in shotgun bores, are you using the aerosol cans?
The reason being that, if so, it might be the volatile propellants helping to soften the wadding.
However, I've gotten away from the aerosol version. I got a gallon that will do everything you want WD40 to do better than the aerosol, depending on your choice of applicators, for the price of a pair of cans.

FWIW, I've found it great to break things loose (it's a great cosmoline cleaner) and get things moving (not as well as proper penetrating oils, but you don't have to be as careful where it goes), just not to keep them clean and moving.
And it actually works great as a rust preventative, provided it's used externally and on parts not under handling. A mill and lathe in an unconditioned Florida garage count as my proof, and after years the unsealed iron only had patina where I bled on them and didn't clean it for a while.
Sure there are better, longer-lasting products that don't hold dust. They also cost ten times as much.

I also won't lube a gun with WD. I did use my leftover 10-weight machine oil, though. Worked better than most gun oils.

Either the aerosol or the liquid works. I know guys running top-end O/Us who simply toss their choke tubes into a jar of WD-40 and let 'em soak and just him 'em the next day. One of 'em I know buys by the gallon, 'cause he brought me a quart jar full of the stuff at the club the other day. (Before the C-19 thing, of course; that club's fields are closed now :( )
Re WD-40 as a protectant, that's cool. Haven't really tried it on my firearms for any length of time 'cause I give the external metal a wipe with G96 before I put 'em back in the safe. Stuff's been doing real well for me for about 20 years, easily.
Also, while it's more expensive that WD-40, I can tell you Kroil makes a great shotgun bore cleaner. A soaked patch down the pipe and a 15 minute soak time really cuts the brushing necessary, IME. Matter of fact, Kroil's become my first step on all of my bores, including the AR.
 
For you guys using WD40 in shotgun bores, are you using the aerosol cans?
The reason being that, if so, it might be the volatile propellants helping to soften the wadding.
However, I've gotten away from the aerosol version. I got a gallon that will do everything you want WD40 to do better than the aerosol, depending on your choice of applicators, for the price of a pair of cans....

That's not a bad idea. I leave aerosols cans in the freezing shop over winter and have trouble with them spraying. End up letting them set in the sun to re-energize them. A couple of pump spray bottles would work just as well.
 
Ah, that totally bad, useleess, ruin anything it touches WD-40. Back in the day of distributor ignition vehicles a can or two of it was always in my work truck. Instant fix when you manged to drown out when fording deep mudholes. It's a pretty good drilling, tapping, threading lubricant. Also a frozen fastener loosing agent and a light lubricant in a pinch. That are my uses for it excluding drying out soaked vehicle ignition systems as I don't own anything with that problem now.

I look at most super duper, latest, greatest, do it all gun lotions as mostly hype contained in very expensive little bottles. Hoppe's #9, Mobil 1 because that's the brand of oil I purchase, a little synthetic grease, and Johnson's paste wax have done very well for me over the years and I see no need to change. I believe there is a tube of copper solvent somewhere on my shelf but I haven't needed it in a long time.
 
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Best use I found for WD40 on a gun was getting wad plastic out of shotgun barrels.
Souse it with WD40, scrub with a brush, and push through a wad of paper towel.
It would squeegee out a syrup of plastic in oil.
Exactly what I use it for; it is an excellent solvent for getting rid of plastic residue
 
I have been using the same two products to clean and lubricate my firearms since 1964...
• Hoppes® No 9 Solvent
• 3-in-One® Oil

All the other stuff is just marketing hype and snake soil IMHO.
 
I've been using WD-40 as a wipe-down rust protectant after cleaning, as I had ordered a gallon of it a while ago.

Question for those using motor oil as a lubricant: Do you prefer standard or synthetic? Also, what weight oil?
 
I've been using WD-40 as a wipe-down rust protectant after cleaning, as I had ordered a gallon of it a while ago.

Question for those using motor oil as a lubricant: Do you prefer standard or synthetic? Also, what weight oil?
I just started using 5w30, went with the Castrol version of Mobil 1; wife found me a set of small squeeze bottles with needle applicators for getting into those wee tiny nooks and crannies; works great!
 
How about whizzing down the barrel? I was on a Muzzloader hunt with two buddies and one had this same mentality that you don't need cleaners and soap and water worked fine. He then proceeds to get on google and finds out during the civil war they peed down the barrel to clean them because the ammonia helped clean. Well, I come back and one of the goof balls actually peed down his inline barrel and it leaked all over the stock and everything. I think I will spend $6 on a bottle of Hoppes.
 
"A marketing gimmick"--gosh.

I recounted some history of the first rifle cleaning solvents, which were developed by users of the first US Krag-Jorgensen rifles near the end of the nineteenth century. Experimentation with various mixtures was necessitated at that time by the use of high-pressure cartridges that used cupronickel bullet jackets.

Those were US Army personnel doing the development of those solvents. To characterize any part of their work as pertaining to "marketing gimmicks" would be ludicrous.

Many of today's commercial gun cleaning products trace their beginnings to that work, and to the later work of German chemists.

I hope we can agree that the purpose of gun cleaning agents is to help dissolve baked on unburned propellant material, and to dissolve lead and copper alloy residue from bullets. Fortunately, if we use modern American ammunition, we need not concern ourselves eith the heed to dissolve and remove corrosive salts from priming compounds.

Most of today's quality products are well suited for that, and with at least on notable exception that I know of, they well not damage the materials from which firearms are made.

Over they years there have been numerous tests, evaluations and comparisons. Some are perhaps a little better than others

Someone has opined that, because these products are commercially sold and promoted, they are "gimmicks", and the use of other things would therefore be advisable.

The use of "soap and water" has been suggested. The discussion confused soap (mixtures of fatty acids and metallic salts) and detergents (made from synthetic surfactant compounds). Either, when used with water, will cause dirt to go into a colloidal suspension with water and allow it to be washed away. Detergents--there are two distinct classes--are designed to dissolve grease (food grease, or oils from animal and plants); we don't need that.

Those who look into it will learn that the most effective detergents are, in fact, corrosive to ferrous metals.

They do not dissolve bullet material.

One poster has said that, because the main ingredient of one solvent is a middle distillate of petroleum, he uses that ingredient by itself to clean guns(!). That's like serving water to someone who asked for an Old Fashioned cocktail.

Others have suggested using products designed to displace water for lurbication.

One poster claims that he has only experienced rust on a gun when it got wet. Wow! Yes, it does take some water to allow the corrosive salts in perspiration to work, but the amount needed is not really noticeable without the use of instrumentation.

It has been a long time since I read any articles comparing the effectiveness of solvents, the effectiveness of anti-corrosion oils, or the tendency of different oils and other widely used petroleum products to gum.

It has been longer since I studied chemistry.

We use WD-40 for various things, including removing moisture from firearms that need it. We use Breakfree CLP to loosen bolts and to wipe down blued gunmetal to prevent rust. We use silicon lubes for household and automotive things.

For chamber and bore cleaning, I much prefer commercial preparations intended for the purpose.

By the way, if you use Ballistol, do keep it from contacting bright inlays.

There's a whole body of literature on this subject, for those who are interested.
 
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