Episode Details

Firearms Lubrication Reality Check

(Hydrodynamic vs Boundary vs Dry-Film, Plus Heat + Water Behavior)

FireClean had its backside handed to them from a public relations perspective after the wake of what I now refer to as LubeGate 2015. For many gun owners this was shocking news when Vuurwapenblog.com provided data indicating that a spectral analysis noted significant similarities between FireClean and canola oil — ohh no!!!

What most people tend to leave off the headline is that Vuurwapenblog is the only editor which had conducted a long term one year “gumming” storage test of FireClean which the lube passed. He also went on to note that he still uses and supports the use of FireClean even after his report and published analysis. The kicker is that allegedly as of March 2016 FireClean is now suing this editor for defamation and slander — this is not the way to win hearts and make friends.

What more of the republishers of the Vuurwapenblog’s analysis miss is that even if FireClean is predominantly canola oil, it’s still a legitimate gun lube, so I believe the lube has been unfairly treated by the media. After all, none of the gun lube we buy is much more than some type of basic wax, vegetable, or petroleum based lube. Not to intentionally pimp a fellow writer’s site even more, however he now has a ton of spectral analysis plus the totally moronic public relations FireClean has delivered in response to his original analysis — it’s worth a trip over there to read through his posts.

Don’t take my word for it: vegetable based lubes are still awesome. A professional group of corrosion nerds called the National Association of Corrosion Engineers published a paper and study which stated:

“Recently, the use of vegetable oils and their esters has been found to offer many similar properties to their petroleum derived counterparts.”— NACE, 2010

The paper tested many perspectives of corrosion with a variety of vegetable based lubes and found they performed similar to standard petroleum lube. If FireClean is vegetable based, it would seem that it really does not matter at all. See the sleep-inducing NACE paper here (if you’re having trouble falling asleep, it’s basically NyQuil in PDF form).

The $15 Bottle Myth (and Why You Don’t Need Tactical Unicorn Tears)

Many firearms owners are conditioned to think that gun oil can only come in a $15 4oz bottle, but the reality is that pretty much any lube will work short term — any lube. Long term storage and operation in very harsh environments is a different lubrication requirement completely requiring a corrosion protectant additive and acidically neutral lube.

The personal question I ask all readers is:

“Do you operate in such a hardcore environment and drive your firearms so hard that a WD-40 or quart of Mobil 1 automotive oil will not satisfy any lubrication need you might have?”

I do not — and WD-40 or Mobil 1 works fine for all my general purpose firearm cleaning, lubrication and storage needs, as does Marvel Mystery Oil, 3-in-1, Norvey Turbine Oil and a host of other general purpose lubes.

People will say that “lube is lube” — however that is not the case. KY Jelly for instance is not a good gun lube, but then again Mobil 1 is not recommended for fornication. When it comes to firearms, an aggressive rust and corrosion inhibitor is a required additive to any oil you expect to prevent surface damage.

Too thin and oil on firearms