White Lithium Grease

7.62x39Lover

Hi guys.

What do you guys think of white lithium grease as gun lube? I saw a guy on youtube use it and wasn't too sure about it. I have used, and have heard of using high temp brake grease as lube.

What do you guys think of those two options? Any other grease good for this? What do you guys think?

burpfire

the only time I saw grease used was by my friend who had a full auto 1919. and another guy who used it on his m1 garand. in the real world in war, you wouldn't want grease as it would quickly collect dirt and foul up. you didn't say if a certain gun is giving you problems or you just want it as lube? I use fp-10 and it works great. a little lube goes a long way. I really don't think you need grease on it.

7.62x39Lover

I haven't had a problem with any firearm. I just saw somebody use it and got curious. He used a dab if white lithium grease on the hammer and sear. And a bit inside the bolt.

llama

Some parts are meant to be greased - grease 'em.

Some parts are meant to be oiled - oil 'em.

Some parts are meant to have a dry lube - dry lube 'em.

Both grease and oil are lubes, but so is other stuff (silicon, graphite, etc).

That said, I've used it and still do - between bolt carrier and bolt on the FAL, etc.

mark christian

It works fine and I seem to remember a LONG time ago that this was the lube recommended for stainless steel guns to prevent galling. I've seen people use it to lube M1s and I think that it liquefies very quickly and then flies all over the place making a mess. Since it is not a recommended firearms lube I have to wonder how it affects synthetic stocks, plastics and fiberglass.

rufe-snow

When I was in basic many moons ago. We were issued little plastic containers of a white grease for our M1's. I didn't know what it was back then, we called it goose grease. In retrospect, more than likely it was Lithium grease.

Sky Soldier

quote:Originally posted by rufe-snow
When I was in basic many moons ago. We were issued little plastic containers of a white grease for our M1's. I didn't know what it was back then, we called it goose grease. In retrospect, more than likely it was Lithium grease.


Hey, Rufe.
I've still got a couple of those little plastic containers.

11b6r

Yes, there are points on some firearms that are meant to be lubed by grease. All else fails, read the manual. I use a dab of white lithium on a q tip to lube the rails on my 1911s. Garand is meant to have grease- for the bolt.

beantownshootah

If I remember right, things that rotate (eg hammers) like oil.

Things that slide back and forth like grease.

M1 garand rifles, for example, are supposed to be lubed with grease, and it does work well for other guns with relatively heavy actions. Yes, you can use it on semi-auto pistol slides, and people have (and do) use it for 1911 rails. Yes, this was once recommended for use in stainless guns to prevent galling of the metal.

Problems with lithium grease are that it can congeal in really cold temps, and it can mix with dirt to make a yucky paste, but yes it does work. I think nowadays there are a number of specialty molybdenum-disulfide based gun greases that are a bit lower friction and don't congeal as much, so those are probably a bit better.

In general, I don't like to get into long-winded discussions about what works "best" because that's highly application dependent. EG, what you might want to use on a machine gun in the desert could be different than what you'd like on a shotgun in the jungle. I think in most applications there is a fairly wide variety of products that "can" work fine, and a SMALL amount of routine maintenance goes a long way to reduce wear and tear and ensure things work properly. In practice, you're probably not going to see much if any performance difference between these different products until/unless you stress your system (eg firing hundreds/thousands of rounds without cleaning, extreme temperatures, highly dirty environments, etc).

Things people use routinely and get good results with include: Lithium grease, moly-based greases, other greases, high viscosity synthetic motor oil, 3-in-1 oil, and an endless number of specialty gun lube products (eg Breakfree/CLP, Rem-oil, Slick 2000, militec, etc).

Personally, I like CLP because its been tested out the wazoo by the military, from experience it works fine, its relatively cheap, and readily available. IMO, it doesn't matter if I pay $5 for a bottle of CLP vs $2 for a similar bottle of motor oil, because that one bottle of CLP is probably going to last me for 5 years.

jonk

It's the cat's meow for black powder guns, I can tell you that. As a non-petroleum base that doesn't liquify in hot weather (unlike bore butter, crisco, etc.) it's great for lubing all variety of things, and makes for a good minie ball base filler.

As I have it on hand for that, I also use it for slide rails and so on and so far it doesn't create any issues.

andeaninc

White lithium grease was recommended by the manufacturer of Coonan pistols, in years past. I used it with good results on that pistol. A sizable tube of it can be had at any good hardware store.