Grease - What types and what for?

[bgr2014]

I have to agree with GS if the case doesn't grip the chamber wall it puts undo pressure on the bolt lugs. Check out (www.Varmit Al.com web site) he has done extensive research on this topic. He even polished the chamber with Flitz and shows the difference between polished and unpolished chambers and the effect it has on bolt lugs. A chamber may need some polishing if there are reamer marks that can cause hard extraction, this will show up on your brass. This guy is a retired engineer and does all kinds of interesting stuff related to guns.

 

[Maj Dad]

Varmint Al

bgr, you fat-fingered Al's url (my problem as well ):
http://varmintal.com/

 

[gamestalker]

You hit the nail on the head Bill of Rights! Radial expansion is what prevents lug set back and other damage to the action. Once the brass contracts the brass is easily extracted, providing the chamber is as smooth as it should be and doesn't have any developing issues. In truth, the better polished the chamber and the dryer it is the longer it will endure hot rod bench rest and varmit loads, in other words, my type of reloading.
When I was a youngster about 45 or 50 yrs. ago, I blew the bolt out of my 22 B.A. (bolt action) rifle and learned at that time it was becase I had a habbit of putting a light coat of gun oil on the chamber. That was only a 22 LR, I can't imagine how much impact a high powered bolt face and lugs would have to endure from such a foolish mistake. My best friend's Dad at the time was a ballistic and firearm expert and he took one look at it and said " you oil the chamber before firing it didn't you?" If you have any doubt I strongly suggest you speak to someone that is qualified in this area, beyond a forum opinion such as me, and I assure you they'll rectify this very important fact. One particular method that they use in the UK for proofing firearms is one round fired from a "wet" chamber (oil) and then an over pressure dry round. The wet round is to test the lugs for required tensile strength. This simular method is also used by some firearm manufacturer's to find limits to what the lugs or the actions in general can handle. Of course they also use transducer's to know the exact psi being generated while they are trying to blow the action apart.
Any doubt to the importance of shooting the chamber only when it is completely dry and free of anything that could interfere with case seize, can be easily varified with any of the reloading components manufacturer's or firearm manufacturer's, Speer, Sierra, Hornady, Hogdon, Remington, Winchester, Taurus, Sako, and so on.
Imagine a cartridge producing from 20,000 - 65,000 psi slaming into the bolt face with all of that impact time and time again and you'll discover head space issues and worse, sooner than later.
Anyway, there is nothing wrong with oiling the action and other moving parts and it is a deffinite preventive to excessive wear, just don't get any in the barrel or chamber.

 

[Bill_Rights]

Dry chamber walls - how to assure?

GS said:

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with oiling the action and other moving parts and it is a deffinite preventive to excessive wear, just don't get any in the barrel or chamber.

I don't see how to avoid getting some oil on the inside of the firing chamber. Almost any bore cleaning system I can think of will not only swab the bore but also swab the throat and chamber walls. The bore cleaners we use are often pretty dang oily. They all seem to be as least light weight (low molecular weight) oils or heavy solvents, maybe with some other cleaning additives.

So after you're done cleaning the bore, what? We hope the oil base of the cleaner evaporates? If the base for the cleaner is a solvent, it will evaporate fairly quickly (hours). If it's oil, it may never evaporate or take months.

BTW, I assume
a) oil in the bore is absolutely no problem - it'll burn off and turn to slippery graphite-like carbon lubricant after the first shot or two. Note that precision target shooters insist on shooting some "fouling" rounds before trying for real accuracy.
b) oil in the throat is also no problem - can't do anything but help the bullet get "engraved" into the rifling as far as I can see.

 

[Bill_Rights]

RUST relating to grease and oil?

John Henry,

You said

the wheel lever on my 442 keeps getting rusty as I lately am trying to pocket carry. Any experiences with cleaners damaging our very loved firearms? And is this question rude of me to divert this thread?

By all means, let's talk about this. As OP, I do not consider this diverting the thread.

One possible role of greases is as a better rust inhibitor than mere oil. Or, at least, the sides of the containers and advert copy of some of the oils and greases claim this.

I am also interested in what to do if you already have rust on the nice blued surface of a gun. I have that situation. This, however, really is another topic/thread.... You wanna start it? Anyone know old threads on rust repair?

 

[johned]

Stop using any lube that isn't SYNTHETIC base. Grease or oil. Petroleum products will migrate OFF the metal and allow rust.....Syn will not. Guns lubed with petro base oil must be serviced every 6 months or so. Use syn and a year or more will be sufficient. Mobil 1 Full Synthetic ATF will perform as well as the expensive Syn gun oils and will leave the petro stuff way behind.

Good luck,


John

 

[The Sarge]

Not true^
Mobil1 is a conventional base. Very few true "synthetics" PAO GRPIV exist. Some of the Amsoils are but most of the Amsoil line is GRP III conventional base just like Mobil1. Royal Purple/Shaffers lines have PAO based synthetics.

Bottom line is the GRPII+ conventionals are just as good.

Use whatever oil/grease you would like but do not perpetuate this myth.

 

[Fleet]

The Sarge said:
"Mobil1 is a conventional base. Very few true "synthetics" PAO GRPIV exist. Some of the Amsoils are but most of the Amsoil line is GRP III conventional base just like Mobil1. Royal Purple/Shaffers lines have PAO based synthetics.

Bottom line is the GRPII+ conventionals are just as good.

Use whatever oil/grease you would like but do not perpetuate this myth."

The myth here is that grp II and III oils don't contain synthetics, or that to be a synthetic it must be PAO. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you take the molecules in mineral oil, and rearrange them so that they do things that no unmodified mineral oil (and most off the shelf synthetics) can ever do, you have a synthetic oil both scientifically and legally.
Group II+ mineral oils are NOT just as good - in fact they aren't particularly close.

 

[The Sarge]

I think we are getting crossed up in base oils versus additives. Shaeffers uses GRP II+ with synthetic additives. UOA's are pristine after 15K miles.
I am talking base oils here and GRPII+ with modern additives is just as good.

 

[The Sarge]

You are also talking USA definition of synthetics. Rest of the world do not call our "synthetics" synthetics.

 

[Fleet]

I don't live in the rest of the world...I live here.

 

[Harry-0]

I'm new to weapons cleaning and I wanted to "get it right" the first time. In my quest for info I came across the attached website that might be of help to those in my predicament. I hope it answers some of your questions.

http://www.grantcunningham.com/lubricants101.html

 

[Fleet]

Good article. The only problem I found with it is this statement:

Different bases will show different degrees of water resistance, cold weather performance, stability (the ability to resist oil separation under shear and mechanical operations), oxidation, and "reversability" - the ability of the base to re-absorb any oil that might have been separated out.

Grease in use is supposed to separate, that's how it does what it does. The load squeezes the oil out of the thickeners, the oil does the lubricating, then the oil gets wicked back into the thickeners....just like water in a sponge (the reversability he mentions). Grease that separates from sitting too long, as in the oil bleeds out of it, has reached the end of its useful life.

 

[natman]

I have a problem with this statement:

WD-40: WD-40 was never meant to be a lubricant - it was designed as a moisture displacer. It's far too light for any load protection, has incredibly poor corrosion resistance, contains zero boundary lubricants, and rapidly oxidizes to form a sickly yellow varnish (hint: this is not good for delicate internal lockwork.)

This sounds like a collection of internet myths. Let's list them:

WD-40 was never meant to be a lubricant - it was designed as a moisture displacer

Yes, the WD stands for water displacing, but that doesn't mean that it can't do anything else.

It's far too light for any load protection.....contains zero boundary lubricants

WD40 is extremely light - right out of the can. Spray some WD-40 in a clean glass bowl and let the solvents evaporate. Then explain how the semisolid extremely slippery grease that remains is too light.

has incredibly poor corrosion resistance

Let's compare myth to an actual test:

Test plates show excellent moisture displacement. Minimal rust formation is present; almost no pitting is visible after degreasing.
http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/lid=...nic__Knowing_the_Limits_of_Rust_Preventatives

rapidly oxidizes to form a sickly yellow varnish

I've heard this often enough that there must be something to it, but I've never been able to get it to happen, even once, in the forty years I've been using it. I suspect that it may have something to do with the solvents interacting with something already present. I have no problem believing that marketing could get people to buy a product that's not as good as others available, but I find it hard to believe that millions of people would buy a lubricant that caused mechanisms to stick more than once.

I don't use WD40 on my guns, but I find it hard to believe that it's the devil's spit some make it out to be.

 

[Fleet]

"I've heard this often enough that there must be something to it, but I've never been able to get it to happen, even once, in the forty years I've been using it. I suspect that it may have something to do with the solvents interacting with something already present. I have no problem believing that marketing could get people to buy a product that's not as good as others available, but I find it hard to believe that millions of people would buy a lubricant that caused mechanisms to stick more than once.

I don't use WD40 on my guns, but I find it hard to believe that it's the devil's spit some make it out to be."


I've scraped enough of it out of customers guns to know it's true.

 

[JohnBT]

What types of grease?

More grease than oil in the summer. More oil than grease in the winter. But that's just me. (50 years ago we cleaned with #9 and lubed with whatever oil was handy if we remembered. Sewing machine oil was thin and so was 3-in-1.) The guns have held up just fine.

- Red grease like Shooter's Choice for blue or black guns.
- White grease for stainless or nickel.

Other than that, they all work more or less, for shorter or longer, cleaner or messier, stinky or not, and some will throw gunk on your glasses.

I think I've tried most of them. Hey, it's cheaper than buying a new gun at every gun show. I buy lube and beef jerky. And cashews.

I'll never be without RIG as humid as it stays around here.

John

 

[Fleet]

Choosing your grease by the color is a good way to grab the wrong product. Color is a function of whatever color dye that manufacturer chose to use.

 

[JohnBT]

Define wrong product. In my experience all the gun greases do a reasonable job. The white lithium grease we used on the car door hinges and hood latches back in the '50s worked too.

John

 

[Fleet]

Define wrong product.

Company X makes a white lithium grease. Company Y makes a white grease, but it's an aluminum complex, company Z also has a white grease - but it's a bentonite mix. After all, it's just dye and the only standard is what's in that company's mind.

Why is this important? Some greases are not compatible with each other. If you mix them, the end result is the grease turns to liquid and runs out of where you put it (in a good case), or it won't lubricate at all and causes damage.

 

[JohnBT]

Never seen it happen. I suppose it could, but I haven't seen it. I've certainly never seen "the grease turns to liquid and runs out".

I have probably 100 different brands of gun grease and oil, some of them from before I was born in 1950 and some of them the newfangled latest and bestest. Maybe I'll set up some tests this winter during football season and see what I can see.

 

[Fleet]

Sounds like a fun experiment, and a great thing to do on a winters day. Use this chart, and start mixing incompatible types. Don't necessarily expect to see instantaneous results.

http://www.finalube.com/reference_material/grease_compatibility_chart.htm