What is wrong with old fashioned gun cleaning oil?

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What is wrong with old fashioned gun cleaning oil?

Modern cleaning solutions are much more efficient and effective at keeping your guns in working order.

By Mike George

Friday, 28 March 2008

In a recent article you said that you don't like using old fashioned cleaning solutions containing soluble oil on guns. Can you tell me why?

Technical
MIKE GEORGE says:
I used to use these cleaning solutions 40-odd years ago, largely because most other shooters did.

One brand was Young's 303, and the instructions said you were to add water to it.

Now, when you add water to soluble oil it forms an emulsion.

Old-fashioned engineers will be familiar with it as the 'white water' used as cutting fluid on lathes and milling machines. Nowadays there are cutting fluids offering much higher performance, and more efficient gun cleaning fluids, too.

I suppose it all boils down to the fact that I don't like putting anything containing water on my precious barrel steel.

However, there is another reason.

I once investigated why a Lanber wouldn't fire the second barrel. When I took the stock off, the mechanism stunk of soluble oil, which had settled in a gooey gum over everything, and started to soak into the stock wood.

Diluted soluble oil had obviously been running back through the firing pin holes in the breech face and getting into the mechanism, then the water had evaporated out of it.

A good wash in a modern cleaning solvent solved the problem.