Lot of talk about good oil, good oil, best oil.
What's bad?
Bad as in: your perfectly functioning AR in your closet/safe, you could clean it up tomorrow and put X oil on it, and
it would cease to function reliably directly or shortly after.
I'm sure there are some that thicken up in really cold weather, but for say, 32F and up?


I hear pretty much every type of oil have a trumpeter of one sort or another, my comparatively limited personal experience
says a well built AR(or any firearm) with no inherent flaws will run with anything vaguely lubricious that is applied with good sense.




Thoughts?

I am no fan of Frog Lube and am hesitant to ever use it again. Admittedly, I have not completely given it a chance but I was not pleased with the film it left on some parts I oiled and packed away for a short bit.
I have intended to actually use it based on some of their reviews but, honestly I haven't gotten around to it.
I will stick with Slip 2000 and Mobil 1 as neither have let me down.

Crisco. Er uhm I mean fireclean.

Mobil 1   engine oil

Do any of those honestly, repeatably, do what I asked?  Make your AR that is in perfectly good working order,
not work?

I gotta say I've used engine oil on a ton of guns (I'm from the South, sue me) and
haven't had a problem.  I always used something thinner in the winter.

I'm honestly asking.  It seems to me it's relatively easy to put something vaguely oil-like
in a bottle and sell it as gun oil and it works.  I've bought gun oil, usually whatever was handy,
I've used engine oil of various types, again whatever was handy but usually Rotella or Mobile1,
I've been a mechanic by trade most of my life and know better than to trust WD40 as a lube but
I'd be lying if I said I never used it.  And they all worked.  If I had to pick a trait that I looked for in a gun
oil, it would be pleasant smell and something that's easy to get off my glasses in a semi-auto that sprays
it now and again.

Edit:  I'll start with something I read earlier today and did not know.  Motor oil might possibly release benzine gas
when burned off in a hot enough gun, possibly only an issue shooting suppressed?(I don't).  I've also inhaled and absorbed so much
crap in my life I'm not too worried about it if it's not going to make me fall over right now but most people should be.  
While it does not fit the "makes the gun not run" requirement it is a pretty big downside if indeed it is the case.

Rem Oil seems to evaporate quickly for me, so you may think you've oiled up your guns, to find rust later on. It reminds me of the 3-in-1 general purpose oil you'll find places.

I'm not a fan of WD-40, either. I've seen to mess up the finishes of some woods and can get gunky. It's part petroleum and half mineral spirits. It's used for water displacement, which it's GREAT for.


Are both fine in a pinch? Yes, but it's important to know their limitations.

Lithium grease is bad.  it turns into Loctite when heated.

You know, I still have a tub of white lithium grease I bought and used with my first semi-auto
rifle, and SKS, twenty years ago.  Like most of us, I didn't know jack and the SKS was a good
and forgiving gun for it, but it never griped about grease on the carrier.  Might have just been
combloc magic. :)

I guess an AR runs hotter too, don't think I ever used grease on an AR, just older stuff with
more metal in em.

Rem Oil.

WD-40. Not a true lube. It was designed to displace water and prevent corrosion.

Hoppes #9. It's plain mineral oil. Nothing added, no anti-wear, no extreme pressure additives. Ok for bolt, pump, and lever actions. Not so good for the heat of a fast firing semi auto. Might as well use baby oil. Same thing but has a nice fresh smell with it.

Rem-oil is ok, but doesn't last long on an AR.

The lack of an anti-wear additive is a problem with the aluminum upper. It allows more wear on the aluminum and can wear through the anodizing.

Many of the dry lubes. Great for drawers, not so good for moving parts under stress.

Silicone oil. Good for rust prevention, but not a very good lube. Might be ok for the receiver extension if you have a tight stock.

None of these will make your AR fail right away though. That's pretty hard to do in a good AR. Well, maybe the silicone spray/oil if it's the kind that is dry.

Rem Oil seems to evaporate or dry up fairly quick. This is why I use it to wipe the exterior of guns. No sticky residue to get on clothes or hands. For long term storage I would use motor oil.

For the insides and moving parts I use Hoppes oil or Birchwood Casey sythetic gun oil. Mainly because I have a few bottles of each. Not even sure where I got them.

So the general consensus seems to be that most any purpose-made "gun oil" is OK with few exceptions (remoil evaporating, etc),
and that lubes that are not marketed/intended as gun oil will work in a pinch but aren't ideal for one reason or another?


If so that's a startlingly simple thing in light of the amount of discussion and money spent on gun lube, no?

I've been using Frog Lube for about a year now and I have stopped using it. I found that unless you apply fresh Froglub the night before, it will burn up in about 100 or so rounds. It'll start short stroking and eventually get to the point where the bolt is bone dry and there isn't a drop of lube anywhere. It seems like Froglube needed constant lubrication just to be operational, and on top of that, for me, it didn't have storage "at ready "capabilities. I followed all instructions with heating and since Froglube recommends ceasing any other lube, it seems like it's either Froglube or die, literally.

To me, a "bad" lube is just what I described above.

I think when people think of "bad" lube, they think of like situations where the gun cannot ever fire ever again. That's nearly impossible unless the lube you're using is somehow solidified and causes everything to lock. That much won't happen unless you use something totally different like candle wax or something. A "bad" lube simply means at some point, it's metal to metal and eventually the carbon fouling will cause it to lock up and cause malfunctions where you either have to manually eject each round or extract spent casings.

The best case is that most gun oil is okay but they all have a "drying up" rate and/or how they able to "stick" to the metal and not burn off or fly off. Meaning that as you shoot or store it, it's slowly going away. But pretty much any gun will function fine with a fresh coat of lube. I think when you choose your oil, you'll have to think about heat, storage, and general stuff. Remember, your rifle spends most, if not all of its life in storage condition. It's impossible to shoot 24/7, 365 days a year. At some point, you got to put your rifle on the rack and do something else. At that time, what oil you choose is going to have a profound effect. Mobil 1 is great for its temperature tolerances and the fact you can shoot tons, and tons of rounds without ever having to relube, but once you store it, it's crap for rust protection. Plus it migrates so you run the risk of it falling elsewhere then having to relube it after storage. Storage meaning kept somewhere, like on a shelf, or in a gun safe.

I wouldn't oil with a hardening oil like tung, or linseed.  These if left to sit for a few days will glue the parts together.

Good points.

Personally, any oil that starts listing requirements like heat and special cleaning and don't mix with other oils is immediately
off the table in my book.  Ease of use and compatibility is in the top three or four requirements for practically anything
to me.  My spoiled first world 2015 standards are pretty high admittedly. :)

So frequency of required lubrication, which would vary between in-use and in-storage, is an important point, the lube's
"staying power" for lack of a better term in both cases.

The at-rest seems easier to find than the in-use.  I've got more oils of all types that are still there when I go back to a tool
in the drawer or on the rack months later than not.  The in-use I think is a somewhat specific AR issues, such as they are.


I know it's a beat to death topic and I really don't want to go over all that's been gone before, but it's not hard
to see why so many people are turned on by reciprocating components with less inherent friction to negate some
of the "in-use" oil requirements.  It's hard to see a downside in and of itself, but the base quality of the part
has to be up to snuff.  

Militec-1

Brief lol moment, I googled Militec, I recognized the name but never used it.
I found a discussion from 09 or so in which someone that was semi-defending it
linked to a page and said "tell larry vickers it's not good", that page now says
he likes fireclean lol.....      gotta love marketing and business..  

How could I forget that crap.

The oil base is fine, but the only thing added to give it decent antiwear performance is chlorine. Yeah, I know they claim they don't have any... yet the product was rejected by the USMC just for that very reason. It contained chlorine when the spec put out said no chlorine. This was for an engine oil additive by the way, not a weapons' lube. It was created as an oil additive first then years later they started marketing it as a weapons' lube.

Rem-oil. No viscosity and evaps quickly.

gimmicks like

froglube
vegetable oils

so much of this shit is marketing BS



MOBIL 1 50w30 works great, better than BREAKFREE CLP and is cheaper by the quart
.

Personal experience with and agreed on all these.  

Hoppe's 9 and WD40 evaporate and leave sticky residue.  I used to use Hoppe's as a lube, no more.  Militec on the semi autos, Hoppes synthetic gun oil now.  

I never thought to use Mobil 1 before I came to arfcom.  I buy it by the 5gal jugs, 3 Mercedes wagons in the house.  

Wait, I just read a little above and Militec is just synthetic engine oil?  wtf.  Ok, I have the drips from my Mobil 1 0w40 (I turn the empty jugs upside down over a mason jar and leave them alone for a few days) and have about a half quart which I use on random stuff.  No more snake oil.