Shotguns I saw this week (I promise I won’t do carbines)

[TCinVA]

Lubricants don't work the way most assume that they do:



ATF doesn't really do anything special for us in the firearms context. It will likely work but that's because nearly anything that doesn't gum the gun up will work. In firearms proper lubricants grab particulates, encapsulates them, and ultimately flows them away from working surfaces. Lube in guns just keeps the system working smoothly. It's not like your engine where the entire function of it is dependent upon a thin layer of oil acting as a hydrodynamic fluid wedge. It just keeps grit and particles from gagging the action and keeps the working parts sliding against each other predictably.

As machines go, it's a very simple system that doesn't challenge most lubricants. It's a laughable challenge compared to a combustion engine.

Because so few people actually know what the chart above represents, there's hardly any home-brew solutions that are going to actually provide any level of benefit to function.

All we are looking for is something that doesn't flash off at too low of a temperature, something that doesn't leave behind a gummy residue, and something that won't cause problems with the metallurgy of the gun. There are lubes and/or cleaners for automotive applications that have chlorinated esters in them which would be a pretty bad idea on most of our shotguns, for example, because chlorinated esters do not play well with aluminum and even some steel alloys. They cause corrosion and stress cracking so it would be a good idea to avoid those.

Trillions of dollars have been poured into researching how we can cope with friction and wear (these are two separate phenomena, by the way) over the history of the modern industrial age with the bulk of that money going into high demand applications that power civilization. Nobody is putting that kind of money into researching gun lube. Some government research exists, but it's usually been focused on a particular requirement.

Grease being seen as good for firearms application, for example, tends to come from the M1 Garand where the action being open to the elements and the need for an amphibious landing with a gun that has a big bucket under the action allowed water to float oil completely off the gun. Grease would at least keep some of the oil component on the gun and so it got the nod for lubricating the gun under those specific conditions. That's been taken to be gospel for everything ever since even though they don't really understand what problem they were attempting to solve.

Point being there's no magic formulation that's going to solve all your problems. You can be too clever by half like all those poor bastards who thought that dry graphite lubrication would work really well on the AR platform only to find it most certainly didn't (because they didn't understand what lubrication actually does in a firearm) AND promoted some pretty nasty caking that was more difficult to clean up.

Once you understand what lube is supposed to do on a firearm, you can free yourself from all the other nonsense.

We just need it to be there, to grab contaminants and either wrap them in a liquid ball bearing or get them away from the working parts to help the working parts move against each other without hinderance. That's it.

You don't need to season your gun like a cast iron skillet. You don't need "non-toxic" lube that isn't really and ends up rancidifying over time because bacteria like to eat it. You don't need magic lube or the special recipe some dude got from the knot of a tree after a magic gnome pointed at it, winked, and disappeared.

All you need is some, and some that doesn't suck out loud. So no rem-oil, no WD40 (useful for getting water off of-out of your gun, terrible if you just leave it there and don't carefully clean the gun), probably avoid the EEzox, etc. Apart from that, frequent application of something that's quick and easy is good. Using something like a needle oiler bottle keeps it from getting messy...but messy will work. It's just messy and usually the "messy" part ends up on the parts of the gun we're trying to have a firm hold on.

[vcdgrips]

TCVA

Does that mean that 0-W 20 Mobil 1 fully synthetic for oil and lithium bearing grease out of a tub for grease are GTG?

[TCinVA]

Does that mean that 0-W 20 Mobil 1 fully synthetic

Unless it's a European formulation, it's not actually fully synthetic because "fully synthetic" is a marketing term in the US instead of an accurate descriptor of how the base stock is made.

for oil and lithium bearing grease out of a tub for grease are GTG?

I don't use grease on firearms because grease is an oil component inside a binder. The oil component does the same thing that oil does in any other context. It migrates, evaporates, and eventually burns off. That leaves the binder behind. The binder component stripped of the oil grabs the very stuff we want away from the working parts and turns itself into a lapping compound. There's no good way to just look at a grease and tell how much of the oil is still left in the binder.

If I was performing a beach landing I might break out some grease on the possibility that I'm swimming with the gun and might need to fire a couple hundred rounds when the swim is over. Absent that, I'm not using grease.

If you have a bottle of 0W-20 sitting around and you use it, your gun will work just fine. Or 10w-30. Or bar chain oil for your chainsaw. (Although that might not be the best idea in a really cold environment)

If you want to be super-duper detailed and find yourself an oil that uses a true Group IV base stock like a true European spec full synthetic (because the EU doesn't have a 1st amendment and their full synthetic has to be, or so goes the story) because it has a little bit better ability to cling to metal...knock yourself out.

But you don't have to overthink this.

For years I've used whatever I got for free that wasn't going to be a problem. The only free lube I've turned down is Frog Lube because the person handing out said you needed to season your gun like a skillet so it would fill in the "pores" in the metal and I knew that meant it was magic gnome shit. So I couldn't tell you what I've used the most of because I have no idea. But in class if I need to lubricate a gun...usually a client's gun...and somebody hands me a bottle, I just squirt it on there without a second guess because regardless of the firearm I know what kind of lube it needs: Some.

You don't have to overthink it. Your gun just needs some that isn't going to leave behind some sort of residue that impedes function or could potentially damage the gun. Even the stuff that sucks like RemOil will work at least in a pinch long enough to keep it functional until you can get the chance to clean the crappy stuff off of there and put something better on it.

I don't use grease for the reasons outlined above. You can, though, and assuming you don't try to do some really stupid stuff like see how infrequently you can possibly lubricate your firearm (which some people seem hell-bent on doing) you are unlikely to notice any issues unless you put the grease where it shouldn't go. (Striker channel of your pistol, for example)

Just use some. And if you are looking to keep your gun working reliably some lubricant should be applied proactively on a schedule designed to facilitate the most reliable function of the weapon ahead of potential emergency use.

[MandoWookie]

IIRC the M1 Garand used grease because it was the cheapest & most expedient way to solve galling issues without impacting production.
The M14 using a roller instead of a lug to connect to the op rod was actually developed for the Garand to solve that but never implemented.

[LHS]

Esstac side saddles once again proved their frustrating inferiority to the Vang Comp shell cards.

Every bloody class, I see people with the cheap elastic sidesaddles having issues, and I just pass around a couple of my Vang cards to show the difference. Much ooo-ing and ahh-ing generally follows.

[BobM]

Every bloody class, I see people with the cheap elastic sidesaddles having issues, and I just pass around a couple of my Vang cards to show the difference. Much ooo-ing and ahh-ing generally follows.

I have two or three Vang Comp cards and I’m coming to your Ohio class next month. Should I pick up a couple more?

[LHS]

I have two or three Vang Comp cards and I’m coming to your Ohio class next month. Should I pick up a couple more?

It certainly wouldn't hurt. Personally, I tend to just reload shells into a shell card from my dump pouch between drills when I'm a student, but I'm also stupidly OCD about placing them on the receiver so I tend to not switch them out unless I have time to do it 'right'. Whatever works to keep you from having to load the gun directly from the dump pouch is going to be better than reloading the gun directly from the dump pouch

[LHS]

To expound on what I've found works best for me, I use a three-tiered system when I'm taking a class. I have a sidesaddle that I use primarily for emergency reloads, a shell belt that I use primarily for mag tube reloads, and a dump pouch that I use to backfill the sidesaddle and shell belt when I have the time. I can do any kind of load from any of these sources, but I greatly prize having a consistent, fixed orientation of shells I'm going to stuff in the gun. I've seen (and been) too many people have issues with shells that come into the hand in the 'wrong' or unexpected orientation. At best, it slows down the reload. It results in dropped shells quite often. At worst, you stuff it into the mag tube backwards and tie the gun up hard.

In my real world use case, I'll likely only have a sidesaddle available, so it makes sense to prioritize reloading from that source, but in a class environment you reload so often that you need alternate options and I find it much faster to reload from a shell belt than to fish out a new card and swap it for the empty and then reload from that.

Again, YMMV, this is just my way, not the way.

[Chuck Whitlock]

Esstac side saddles once again proved their frustrating inferiority to the Vang Comp shell cards.

Every bloody class, I see people with the cheap elastic sidesaddles having issues, and I just pass around a couple of my Vang cards to show the difference. Much ooo-ing and ahh-ing generally follows.

Will the 5-round Vang cards work on an M1S90? I've heard that the weight of sidesaddles will muck up the inertia system.

[LHS]

Will the 5-round Vang cards work on an M1S90? I've heard that the weight of sidesaddles will muck up the inertia system.

Potentially? Likely it will depend on the power factor of your ammo.

That said, Vang does make 3- and 4-round cards.