Saturday, June 8, 2024

Slippery Dave!...(A Timely Re-post; I have firearms to clean!)

...Make your own Slippery Dave gun cleaner/lube! and start saving money when you clean and lube your guns. I've tried many of the gun oils on the market, and when you study them you will figure out that there is no magical spout in the refinery that spits out gun oil. Gun cleaners and gun oils are basically solvents and oils in varying combinations, and if you know what you want, you can come up with a good combo yourself.  Ballistol, one of the favorite old-time gun cleaner/oils will mix with water for cleaning black powder residue, and will clean your action while leaving a coat of oil. That's easy to figure out. It will clean black powder fouling and mix with water because of alcohol in the mix, and it has hydrocarbon solvents, too, to clean and to thin the oil. Here's all you need to make your own version of that gun cleaner/oil.



Sea Foam is a mix of alcohol (smells like isopropyl), naphtha, (Coleman fuel) and kerosene. Marvel Mystery Oil is a light oil with oil-of-wintergreen added, which eats corrosion and is a degreaser. It has paraffin, which provides a protective coating to metal, and it smells good, too. Mix these together and you have a darn good gun cleaner/oil. I add about half an ounce of chainsaw bar lube to the mix, because it clings to metal really well. I keep a pump oil can in my cleaning kit for shooting this mix down the barrel, and it makes the bore shine. You can also put it on your barrel cleaning snake for a quick pull-through.  Instead of paying $16 a pint for a name brand cleaner, you will have about $6 or $8 in a quart. You can use any oil you prefer; some folks like 5W-30 synthetic, some like ATF.  Rather than buying Seafoam, you can substitute mineral spirits and isopropyl alcohol. You can get pure isopropyl in Iso-Heet gas line antifreeze from the car care section of popular stores or at an auto parts store.

Keep your mix in an airtight bottle, because the solvents will evaporate if given the chance. Don't use any gun cleaning product or solvent around an ignition source; and don't smoke while cleaning your guns. Beware of oily cloths from cleaning.


2 comments:

  1. Marine lower-unit gear lube is heavily loaded with anti-corrosion additives because of the possibility of salt-water intrusion. It might be a slightly better choice than chainsaw bar oil.

    Just a thought.

    -Joe

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  2. I read up a bit on marine gear lube. It gets milky if water gets into it. That makes me think that they have added animal fat to it so water will stay in suspension. Beef tallow is added to mineral oil to make steam cylinder oil, and milky oil will drip from the cylinder petcocks. It was an important invention in the steam era, that allowed boiler pressures to be raised. Before that, pure tallow was used to lubricate the cylinder and slide valve, but it would work only with low pressure steam. Thanks for writing!

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