Gents
I wonder which oil/grease/lubricant to use when it is cold outside, which means atleast -25° (C)
It will be a lot of windblown snow as well as temperature changes during the days.
Up till now I have gone without any lubrication at all, but it will need a lot of maintenace if I do not lube it this winter.

Sincerely
Daniel

Huglu
My suggestion is a good scented oil {Essence of Hoppes #9}, a cup of good coffee and a good book and wait til it gets warmer.
If I were forced out during that sort of weather I'd use a dry lube, can't freeze up.
Jim

A high quality gun oil should be ok at that temperature .Cheap oils have paraffins the precipitate and gum up. Use oil very sparingly.The big problem will be condensation . Don't bring gun back and forth from cold to warm cabin.

I believe most good modern gun oils maintain their viscosity to very low temps (Breakfree, FP-10, ect) The trick is to use as little as possible and aviod condensation. Mete is right, going in and out of a warm humid cabin will cause more trouble then running your rifle dry of lube.

where I hunt Saskatchewan, Canada, -25 C is not all that uncommon in whitetailed deer season. Use a light oil, the same as musical instument oil. This does not gum up,in my experience.

Sperm Whale Oil or Militec-1

I'm with Petey here, Oil is for rust prevention, for lubrication I've used both Graphite and Lithium based dry lubes. Haven't hunted in the extreme cold but have never experienced any sticky bolts down into the single digits (F).

Best regards,

Dan

I have been happy with Break Free CLP. IIRC it is rated to something like -50. The trick is to not use too much of it (as I've been guilty of in the past). I will usually do some winter hunting here down to -20 or so and haven't had any problems with BF.

Try EEZOX.
It goes on wet like a light oil then evaporates and leaves a dry film that is a lubericant and a rust proofer.

I'll second and third the Eezox, kicks Militec's butt in rust protection!!

http://www.thegunzone.com/rust.html

Jewell triggers recommends washing the trigger out with lighter fluid and let it air dry and it leaves a lubrication film internally. It may work as well on other parts.

Gents!

Thanks for the replies so far!
I am off to Svalbard this winter and it will be a lot of mixed weather and temperature conditions since the gun will mostly be tucked in the gunboat on the snowmobile, except for those occations that we leave the snowmobiles behind and walk by foot, then the rifle will be in my hands. So, it is a lot of in and out of the box, inside the warm apartment after the days work, out in the gunboat box next morning and in to the house in the evening.

I hope to not need to use the gun, other than on the seals which I will hunt.

I dont think that I can get any pressurized containers with me on the airplaine, and they did not even have shooters choice or Milfoam available at the gunshops.

Sincerely
Daniel

Huglu, funny you should ask about cold weather oil. I also hunt in very cold weather and have often hunted at -20c or colder. We have had alot of problems with gumming up of lubricants. A few years ago I did a test of some popular lubes. I used a metal plate that I put in the deep freeze along with some of the test lubes. I removed the plate and the lubes and proceeded to place equal amounts of lube on parts of the plate and reinserted the whole thing back in the freezer positioned at a slight angle, after a few minutes I removed the plate and compared which oil had flowed the furthest. I was shocked at how bad the oils performed in the cold even though they clearly advertise a broad operating temperature range. At the time the Pro-Shot all Weather oil flowed the best, with the runners up being the Break Free, Birch. Casey Synthetic, Hoppes and the Outers. Since then I have developed a lubrication routine that has proven foolproof in the cold. I use Eezox to coat the metal after thouroughly degreasing the gun and this is the second year since the initial treatment without any sign of corrosion. I have not lubricated the gun in two years and it has been hunted for a total of five weeks in cold weather. The cold is not the only problem it is also prone to sweating when the firearm is brought into a warm area after spending the whole day outdoors and this is also a testament of the products corrosion protection. I had never known about Eezox until I saw a test in the 6br forum about rust preventatives and it was also the fact that the product is applied wet but then dries that attracted me to it.
bigbull

Here's the 6mmBR test bigbull speaks of...

http://www.6mmbr.com/corrosiontest.html

bigbull & wrongtarget

Thanks for the link, and the stuff really looks amazing. I tried to find the dealer page, but it was just in the US and in Canada. I could not find any dealers on this side of the pond and I guess these chemicals are more than tricky to send by airmail due to the restrictions of the airliners.

Does anyone know of a dealer in Europe?

Sincerely
Daniel

Daniel, contact them by email, maybe they can help ya. Their shipping page says to contact them for shipping out of the US. I looked at the shipping restrictions on the USPS web site for Sweden, I saw nothing that would prevent me from sending it to you, but maybe the Eezox folks will know for sure. I could send a can or 2 for less than $10 USD by global Priority which would take a week or less to get to ya, so they should be able to also.

Tim

http://www.eezox.com/contact-us.html

http://www.eezox.com/shipping-info.html

eezox has a noticeable odor that I personally don't care for.I never use oil on the outside of any of my firearms .

quote:

Originally posted by scr83jp:
eezox has a noticeable odor that I personally don't care for.I never use oil on the outside of any of my firearms .

Once it dries there's no odor that I've ever noticed.

For lubrication, I use FP-10 sparingly after degreasing. It will provide lubrication after it dries also. For rust prevention, I use Break-Free CLP. I've heard great things about Eezox also.

I fire my rifles year round, and I've hunted in -30 c plus windchill. for the the few rounds you will fire when hunting I run the action dry and have never had a problem if you arereally worried about lube rub a graphite pencil on the moving parts, it's cheap, and it works.

ax

Get all of the metal parts hard chromed(Metalife.com)and you can forget about any lubrication or rusting issues...forever.

For extremely cold weather Mobil 1 comes in a 0W-20 grade. It works very well, and doesn't stiffen up in fridgid temps. I discovered this when I lived back in Illinois in the Winter. I kept my air compressor in an unheated garage. When I turned it on in cold weather the oil in the compressor was so thick it would trip the breaker. I drained it and refilled it with Mobil 1 0W-20 and the problem went away for good. A quart will last the average shooter a lifetime and costs under $7.00 Bill T.

A number of good choices, but something needs to be done first. Clean that barreled action down to bare metal. Many lubes have problems, not because of them, but because of previous lubes still being on the metal. Use brake cleaner or carb cleaner to get the last little bit of gunk out of that action. Then, a light, a light, a light (did I say a light) application of lubricant is all that's necessary.

quote:

Originally posted by prof242:
A number of good choices, but something needs to be done first. Clean that barreled action down to bare metal. Many lubes have problems, not because of them, but because of previous lubes still being on the metal. Use brake cleaner or carb cleaner to get the last little bit of gunk out of that action. Then, a light, a light, a light (did I say a light) application of lubricant is all that's necessary.

This is very good advice, it is what I do in preparation for the Eezox treatment, of coarse the Eezox goes on wet but then dries, this is a big big bonus when we are dealing with the cold.
bigbull

This is probably common knowledge, but it wasn't to me a few years back: do NOT use WD-40 for any lubricating needs, even impromptu. In -10F air temps, I had myself a scattergun action that wouldn't even move, much less shuck an empty...

I have gone to engine assembly lube with moly graphite.
$4 for about 3.5 oz at the hardware store.