Grease or Oil on the Arbor

fishmusic said:

I have used both, lithium grease for a while and oil now. I prefer oil since the fouling buildup in front of the cylinder isn't mas bad. What do you guys use and why?

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I'm going to try some of my bear grease and see how it does. I usually use gun grease from a tube but feel the petroleum burning is what locks up the cylinder as tar forms on the moving parts and fills clearances.

The twenty year old pasta sauce jar of brown grease that has always worked, whatever it is.

Sunday shot 27 shots from the pietta 1851 using bore butter, no issues.

One thing not to use for sure is WD40. One time a long time ago, my brother (rest his soul) was out shooting my Remington, when it became stiff due to fouling. He took a can of WD40 and sprayed it good. The cylinder spun just fine. He loaded it back up and when he fired the first shot...a chain fire occurred. All 6 cylinders went bang at once. Lucky he didn't get hurt or damage the revolver but he did have to go and change his shorts.

As Mike said, purpose matters.

You are not lubricating the arbor on a revolver to ease friction between the arbor and the cylinder. Any oil would do for this, and in fact probably no oil is needed at all.

The purpose of a grease in this case is not for friction. It is to act as a physical barrier to prevent blow-by gasses and fouling from traveling down the arbor and causing the cylinder to bind up. Some revolvers (Rogers and Spencer, Ruger Old Army) helped solve this problem by adding a boss to the front of the cylinder to help redirect the blow-by gasses.

Grease works better than oil in this case because being viscous it is less apt to get blasted away as oil would.

None of this really matters if you are only shooting a cylinder or two and calling it quits before cleaning the gun. But if you are looking to do an afternoon's worth of shooting a greased arbor will keep things running smoothly.

45D said:

Mobil1 grease.
Won't thin and run out.
Maintains a barrier for fouling.

Mike

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This.

I use Bore Butter or marine grease

I use RIG gun grease initially. But after it starts fouling at the range, and i do my first wipe down with a shop rag, i just squirt Hoppes Lubrcating Oil on the arbor. Its faster.

Lanolin oil, a very heavy oil or light grease. Last week at the range I shot a 144 rounds using my colt walker with no cylinder binding.

rodinal220 said:

Ballistol, or sometimes if I'm out of aerosol Ballistol some spray cooking oil.

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Yuk! Anything but Ballistol. IMHO and experience, woresets stuff ever for use on guns. Have had and used several C&Bs but not a heavy devotee. My experience has been a good gun oil is best and greases tend to accumulate more burnt bp crud than the oil. I know that is different than what some others claim is their experience but this is mine.

I use white lithium grease on the arbors and nipple threads. No matter how long a range session is, the cylinder rotates with no problem. When I clean at the end of the day I just wipe off the arbor and replace the grease. The nipples always come out easily, get cleaned (which I do every time), and new grease applied with a pipe cleaner. The tube of white lithium grease I got on sale at a car parts store should last several lifetimes.

Effective and cheap is always appealing.

Jeff

I’m still experimenting. After range and cleaning yesterday i am trying gun oil on arbor, but swab RIG gun grease around front of cylinder/arbor hole to prevent fouling from getting in. See how that works.

I have a bunch of marine grade lithium I wonder how that would do?

I bought some unsalted butter by mistake.

Hmmm...

Goes great on corn, coming into season soon! Mmmmm, salted butter corn on cob. Oh ya.

Mr Colt suggested that one should use oil, but then what did HE know?

TFoley said:

Mr Colt suggested that one should use oil, but then what did HE know?

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Whale oil was popular around that time, but hard to find these days, same as caps. And bear lard. Seriously, bear fat?

TFoley said:

Mr Colt suggested that one should use oil, but then what did HE know?

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True, but they didn't have synthetic grease. He also says to drive the wedge out / in but until Pietta fixed their arbor length nobody could ( and still cant) unless you corrected it or had it corrected.

Mike

TFoley said:

Mr Colt suggested that one should use oil, but then what did HE know?

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He didn’t know what he couldn’t have known… we have options today he couldn’t have dreamed of.

In keeping with Colt's PC/HC lubrication ideas, I propose we all chip in to kill a whale, boil its blubber and use that oil on our reproduction arbors.