The Best Damned Gun Lube In The Whole Wide World

Bar none.

Back when I had the run of a lubricant laboratory (don't ask), I fussed around with various and sundry oils and greases in search of the perfect gun oil. I wanted it to be corrosion and rust resistant, have both anti-wear and extreme-pressure modifiers, be relatively hydrophobic, and contain both detergents AND dispersants to clean the gunk then entrain it in a wipe-me-off-agglomerate.

It's a well known secret that certain engine oils are super-dee-duper all-purpose lubes, and I'd been using Mobil 1 for a time and decided to make my own. And because this stuff is important I'm going to give you the recipe for free. It's still patent-pending because the attorney wanted 6 grand and I told him to find another sucker:

First off, you'll need a base oil that won't contribute to the problem. When any oil gives up the ghost the first thing to go is the base fluid, so forget about napthenics or aliphatics and mix a good dimer acid ester with a polyalphaolefin at about a 50-50 ratio. The Dimer-acid is a fantastic cleaner all it's own but has a tendency to create a seal-swell environment, but the PAO is just the opposite and will balance the dimer to a T. Blend the 2 to arrive at a 10 centistoke oil and it won't freeze at -70 F nor cook at 500 F, so that should take care of operating conditions you're likely to find almost anywhere on planet earth.

Cold blending is okay with this particular formula, but if you can, it wouldn't hurt to heat the base oil to about 130 F or so.

Next you'll want a good detergent/dispersant blend, high in Magnesium and relatively low in Calcium. Because of the ash content. Mg and Ca are terrific cleaners, especially when blended together, but Ca is too high in ash/residue and Mg is not. Co-valenced like this and the Ca takes on some of the properties of the Mg and the bottom line is even after heavy-duty use you won't wind up with gunk. The Lubrizol Corporation in Wickliffe Ohio specializes in such animals and they'll send you a free pint sample for testing purposes. It will have it's own rust and corrosion inhibitors and foam suppressants and friction modifiers but we're not making run of the mill stuff here. Ask for their best product, something the better engine oils use, and you're good to go. Put it into the base oil at 12% by weight. You COULD use a borated ashless dispersant but you want the cleaning properties more than anionic and/or cationic dispersions. Yes, it's true that dispersants prevent the by-products of everyday use from evincing deleterious agglomeration but give me a good cleaner over a good disperser any day, unless it's a piston aircraft engine we're talking about lubing. Okay, okay, you can add .5% of such a borated additive but you'd never be able to tell the difference. And as we all know, a decent succinimide would do the same thing but we want a LITTLE residue as sacrificial metallurgy, and sometimes dispersion can undo a delicate balance of chemistries to the point of making the whole property worthless. And stop shaking your head because you know that the Mg/Ca blend will have dispersion qualities as well as detergent ones.

Now you want to add a friction modifier booster. And it wouldn't hurt for the friction modifier to contain a rust inhibitor so look for a zincdialkyldithiophosphate, or ZDDP. Add this into the mixture at 2% by weight.

The worlds best extreme pressure modifier that isn't a solid like molybdenum or graphite, and in fact is better than either of those two, is antimonydialkyldithiocarbamate. Look up the Vanderbilt Company that has offices in New Jersey, then ask for a sample of Van-73. They can also help you with a good ZDDP, but add the Van-73 or equivalent compound into the blend at 4% by weight. IF the dithiocarbamate isn't available it's okay too substitute a dithiophosphate at the same ratio because you're not making an engine oil but a gun oil and the phosphate will work just fine. In the old days they used lead, but lead is a no-no anymore and the antimony is 99% as effective anyway.

Add all of the above into the synthetic base oil, and mix for approximately an hour. This will return a homogenous solution with a shelf life of a couple years or so, and after that amount of time all you'd have to do is mix it back together so it's no big deal. I know you're asking why no polytetraflouroethylene, but trust me on this, Teflon doesn't plate under anything resembling normal operating conditions, and has a tendancy to drop from suspension, taking important chemistries along with it. And we're staying away from solids, remember?

A few drops in the right places will make your gun rust-free, and prolong it's life expectancy 3 to 4 fold. Follow the normal routine of shooting, then cleaning, then a little dab of the World's Best Gun Oil and you're good to go. Someday I'll take a picture of the bottle we had labels made for, and all that jazz, but for now, take it with my blessing and rule the gun world.