• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Bear Greese for lube

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

gunbug

32 Cal.
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
26
Reaction score
0
Hi How many of you use bear grease for lube and what are your results? How do you clean your barrel after? Dan
 
Been using it on and off for years. Actually in oil form. The oil works terrific, but is a PITA to carry in a jug of any sort. If I had it in grease form I'm sure it's all I'd use. Taking me a wee bit of time to go through the quart of oil I made up, though.
 
Thanks but how about cleaning barrel after. I dont think cold water will do it? Dan
 
Never used it but..........it's grease? I'd just clean as usual and then hit it with brake cleaner or another degreaser and clean, dry n oil. Then I would pop a beer and watch Chicago PD. Other no more though so maybe a "user" can better give ya a scenario
 
I gave some bear grease to Cynthia Lee for bullet lube this fall but haven't heard back from her on how well it worked out. Hope she is OK as I haven't seen her post in months.
I'm going to mix it with Bee's wax and Murphy's oil soap for a bullet lube on conicals. It will replace the Neatsfoot oil part of the formula.
Ned Roberts,in his book (The Muzzle Loading Capped Rifle) claimed there is nothing better for bullet lube , patch oil and rifle preservation, than bear grease and oil. Course that was before our modern era products.
 
I've heard some folks complain that bear oil is "too slick." Whatever that means. :yakyak:

As for cleaning, no different than cleaning up after shooting any other lube. I use room temp water. Used to add a tiny drip of dish soap to it, but got to thinking about it. If there's any oil left in the bore (which I doubt, if the gun was shot to unload it rather than the ball pulled), isn't that a good thing? After all, we get the bore spanky clean, then put oil back into it for preservation.
 
Had a friend of mine drop off about five more pounds of bear fat from his freezer I was going to pitch but think I'll go ahead and render it out for some more bear grease for bullet lube.
That will make about four more pints of pure rendered bear grease.
 
I had a small bottle of bear grease a very long time ago (over 30 years ago). We were having our monthly club shoot and I used it and I shot great! Won several matches. I was never able to find any more after I used that up though. My go to is Mink oil. I cleaned it up just like usual, hot water and it was fine.
 
I've used it. The only downer was after you carried a while it would turn to oil. Thus, a bugger to carry.Worked good in either form. Just messy.
 
You do, or at least mine does. Stored in pint and quart mason jars it seperates over time, I pour off the oil into another jar, leaving the white very soft grease which will melt when warmed. I store the jars in the basement, and have not yet had any go rancid.
 
So you make your own from actual bears? How is it actually done, I mean the process? Presumably that would work for any animal fat then. And, why bears? Does their rendered tallow have different properties than that from other critters?
 
I made mine from a very fat boar black bear I killed this fall.
Black bear is the very best grease and oil for gun use I'm told.It's also great for pie crusts.
Brown or Grizzly oil is not quite as good I'm told as black bear oil.
Black bear will render a rich amber color and will solidify to pure white in about 12 hours.
I used a crock pot set on medium for 10-12 hours and strained it through Cheese cloth. It came out perfect.

This is right after rendering in a crock pot before it solidified.
 
BrownBear said:
If there's any oil left in the bore (which I doubt, if the gun was shot to unload it rather than the ball pulled), isn't that a good thing? After all, we get the bore spanky clean, then put oil back into it for preservation.
There you go again, being logical. That will get you nowhere.

The idea that a bore must be taken down to bare metal when cleaning is just one of those things, written in the stars, dogma, gospel, natural law, and it's unseemly of you to question it. No good will come of doing so. No living person knows where it came from, but there are rumors the original was divinely carved on a stone tablet and preceded by 10 less important ones.

Pass the brake cleaner, please. :wink:

Spence
 
Col - the only thing I would add to MD's reply is that bear grease/oil does makes the best lube, and the best pie crust, or so I've been told by my older betters; and from experience deer tallow isn't worth the hassle, but the very best lube, now unobtainable, at least legally, is sperm whale oil. Real mink oil is just fine also, as is anything else that works for you.

Since photobucket got silly I have not been able, or maybe motivated, to figure out how to post pictures, so I will try to describe a pint plastic squeeze bottle I had filled with bear oil last fall for range use, mostly full, there is a little bit of the white wispy grease that formed at the bottom, it was all liquid when I poured it, and there is no rancid smell to it. It is a very light oil, not thick or heavy.
 
And here I have believed that sperm whale oil was always the best, but since I've never had any and it is no longer available I'll just have to speculate. Of course, I've never had bear grease either so I'll just have to get by with lessor stuff.
 
M.D. said:
Black bear will render a rich amber color...


Wish I was home to take a photo. Oil from brown bear is as clear as water. Never tried it for cooking, but I can testify first hand that oil from a spring black bear is tops not only for pie crusts, but for frying homemade donuts. Wow.... Don't want much to do with it in the fall though, if they're around salmon streams.
 
Is there something creepy about ”˜Brown Bear’ talking about using bear grease to hunt bears as long as it isn’t to close to salmon season.
It makes me think about soylent green :rotf:
 
Back
Top