Lubricants

J

johno

Joined
Aug 12, 1999
Messages
779
At a recent show I picked a new lube to try out, 'Tetra Gun', and so far it seems to be good stuff. I liked the fact that he also had a nice brochure with some lubricity test data of popular lubricants, which I've posted below. I scaled the numbers from the printed charts so don't make too much of a few points. The test was evidently done a Timken type friction testing machine with the values being seizure point in foot pounds:

Sprays
Tetra - +160
Triflow - 110
Hoppes DriLube - 107
TSi 300 - 100
G66 - 56
Rusty Duck - 19
WD40 - 16
Super Lube - 16

Oils
Tetra - +160
Miracle Fire Power - 125
Bonanza Case Sizing Lube - 120
Stard - 103
Eezox Guncare - 82
Rig2 - 72
Prolix - 70
Break Free - 70
Rem Oil - 16
Marvel Mystery Oil - 13
Gunner's Choice - 10
Hopped #9 - 9
Rice's XF20 - 9
Sports Lube - 6

Greases
Tetra - +160
Rusty Duck - 45
Lubriplate Hypoid - 35
Superlube - 35
Plastilube - 30
Rig Universal - 20
Muscle Grease - 20
Par All Weather - 15
Shooter's Choice - 11

I've been using Break Free for years, Eezox kind of recently, so they haven't been bad choices. A toothpick tip of Tetra grease on knife joints seems to work better than other products that I've tried, among others like the little tube of GunSlick that I've had for years. I use a lot of WD40 but not as lube, instead as a cleaner and short term protectant for tools and such. For more info on Tetra lube contact rayclentz@msn.com. Usual disclaimers.

 
Tetra is good stuff. However, when a manufacturer wants to do a comparison test with competing products and arrange the chart with its own product at the top, it is usually easy to design test conditions and choose characteristics to test that will do that without any faking of experimental data at all. Probably most of the manufacturers of the other products could produce very similar looking charts with their products at the top, and very likely some of them will now Tetra has done it.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
I have been using Shooter's Choice grease for years on the slide rails of my Gold Cups, with excellent results. These guns are fired with special low power ammunition, generating only 8,000 lup. Standard pressure for the .45 ACP is about 20,000 cup.

Thus, there is not very much force to function these guns, but they all work perfectly with Shooter's Choice. Which is the worst performer according to this test.

I agree with Cougar. Walt
 
The nice thing about data is that when the other makers offer some similar test results one will be able to make more comparisons, and even better ones if different and possibly better methods were used.
 
Yeah, and we might end up knowing more characteristics than just seizure point measured in one way under one set of conditions -- like corrosion protection, galling protection, wear protection, longevity in use, resistance to washing, rubbing, or flowing off the surfaces where you want it, resistance to oxidation, gumming, etc. etc.

Each manufacturer will publish comparisons on the quality that their product is best at, and if we compare all their ads we'll have some clue which will suit our needs the best.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
For a lubricant the ability to prevent seizure is a basic attribute and includes other attributes such as prevention of wear, tack, resistance to galling, etc. I think that the most interesting part of the data is how all of the other lubricants compare, the order of which the maker probably has little interest in.
 
The ability to prevent seizure in one set of conditions has some correlation with ability to prevent galling and wear, but you can expect even the correlation with those characteristics to be far from 100%.

Just to pick an extreme example, suppose I want to run a racing motorcycle engine at maximum rpm without the pistons seizing. I do some experimenting with mixing up ingredients and test them with a machine that rubs a cast iron piston ring against a chrome-plated bore at high speed under extreme pressure at high temperature in clean conditions, no dust. I come up with a lubricant that accomplishes my goal better than anything on the market.

I go into production and sell it to motorcycle racers. Then I want to expand my business so I start advertising in the knife magazines -- this is the best lubricant on the market, test results prove! Look at the chart!

But ... the stuff is lousy for preventing rust, even worse than WD-40. It's much thicker than necessary for the light pressure in a knife joint, especially at room temperature, so friction is high and your knife action is sluggish. In about three weeks the stuff has gummed up so much it acts almost like glue, and the rust in your joint isn't helping the action any either. You're wondering why the knife gets dull just carrying it around in your pocket, and what's that stain on the blade? And by the way, all the other lubricants I compared to in my advertising are perfectly capable of preventing seizure under the light pressure and room temperature conditions of a knife joint, so you didn't get any advantage in return for the disadvantages of my product.

I'm not suggesting Tetra has any of those disadvantages, of course. I know several people who use it on guns and say it's good stuff.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
The four ball and Timken type testers are kind of the standard bench testing machines for testing lubricants. A search turned up the Tetra Gun site, http://www.tetraproducts.com, where looking at the oil or grease in industrial products one can find results for a number of ASTM tests as well other technical information. Knives and lots of other products often don't require high performance lubes but I appreciate a maker going thru the effort to perform such a wide array of tests, compare his product with others using kind of standard tests, and making the data available. It's a bit better than wondering what the 'riddle of lubricants' is :^)
 
I noticed Shooters FP-10 lube wasn't included in the oil comparison. I've found it to be a great all weather lube and if I remember correctly it was at the top of the list in a similar test I read awhile back.

------------------
Ray Carr
 
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