Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns "best" 1911 break-in/everyday lube??

I got my first 1911 awhile back and am needing to break it in. I'm wanting to get a quality lube for the break in process, although my 1911 is probably not quality. It's a Turkish made TISAS, but anyway. Any recommendations on a break in lube and an everyday lube after the break in period?

Wilson's slide lube has worked for me a long time...

I found a bottle of what Glock claims to use on their pistols. It is copper anti-seize compound. I thought about trying that, I suppose anything would do the trick. I've heard of guys using Mobil 1 synthetic motor oil. Not sure what the results were though.

Lubrication needs of a handgun are not high tech at all. ANY motor oil (no, it doesn't have to be synthetic) is a good 5x higher tech than the needs of a handgun. The way handguns are designed, the moving parts along with the lubricating oil will move any dirt and debris out of the action. From the moment you apply lubricant to your gun, it will begin slowly moving out of the gun. So by the time you ever got to the high tech part of that expensive gun specific lubricant, it's out of the gun and either on your hands or on the floor.

Don't use grease, that traps things in and pistols are not designed around the use of grease. Put small drops of a decent oil onto the moving parts, cycle by hand a few times, and go shooting. Add oil when things are beginning to look awfully dry.

If it makes you feel better, then spend $5.00 an ounce for gun specific oil, but I'm here to tell you; it's a waste of money.

Oh, fess up. We all know you use that $30 per ounce stuff. ;-)

Thank you GunGeek, and it makes sense especially for my 1911. You know there was no copper flaked magical gun lube in 1911. Any apparently they did alright back then without it.

I did when it was free.

Really about the only time you need anything really high tech (motor oil is pretty damned high tech though) is in extreme cold temps. Since few of us live in the arctic circle, that's generally not an issue.

I'll second the comments. I might use Mobil One just to minimize wear, but IME, if the gun runs with one lube, it will run with any lube.

I use Wilson's Universal lube on my Wilson/Colt Gold Cup which will probably work for you. Check out their other lubes to see. I have a new Wilson coming and they recommend for my area their lite lube but Wilson's a tight 1911. I would imagine your Turkish model ought to be lose as a goose but I could be wrong.

"You know there was no copper flaked magical gun lube in 1911."

I think you are right about that, But I carried a 1911 almost daily in the military and was assigned 3 different 1911's, besides the ones I was allowed to try for use of the two pistol teams I was on... and I can tell you that significant wear was an issue. Or what I assumed was significant wear, perhaps it was grit from combat usage, manufacturing control, the use of less than optimum steel or the quality of the lube (or any combination of all?); I do not know, but if it was from significant wear my assumption is that the lube was not cutting it?

Jerry

I own two RIA's and they recommend Breakfree CLP.

Ok, this begs the question. Do you prefer a specific viscosity? Single weight?

For break in, I often run the guns dry and metal to metal, and with my RIA 10mm I actually kicked it around in some fine red mountain dirt and shot it that way for a few magazines worth. After a thourough cleaning I use a mixture of Mobil 1 (20/50 if anyone cares) with a little bit of Synthetic Transmission fluid but that is more work than one really needs to go through.

I use the same brew on my SU-16 and CETME (Spanish contract HK-91)
but those are guns that would run good with minimal to no lube if needed.

I learned of the cheap and easy lube ideas here from Gun Geek aka Kevin Gibson and others here, in a similar thread.

Breakfree CLP does everything I need in a pistol lube.

I love lube threads as they have so much potential to become epic in their silliness.

I can't wait for some gun forum Patriarch to promote camel [bleep] as the perfect gun lube; which will no doubt spur mindless debate about how lizard [bleep] works so much better in AR's and monkey [bleep] is the bomb in tightly fitted 1911's.

I'm betting the farm that polar bear [bleep] will work best in cold climates.

;^)

Love it!!!

You can keep the [bleep] no matter how well it works. I will stick with common motor oil. Has never seemed to fail me.

I've never used anything heavier than 30 weight. I have some 10 & 20 weight around the shop, but those are generally for machine oils, I've never tried them. But they do seem a bit thick and gooey to be put on my handgun. I'd say the lighter, the better; that's probably why most use synthetics. While I always say you don't need synthetics, that's generally what I use most often because that's what I have around. I tend to use synthetics in my cars and motorcycles. I used a can of straight 30wt for the better part of a year and never had any complaints; worked just fine. But also consider, I don't slather my gun in oil; just one drop wherever needed.

Has anyone used Frog Lube?