Another great read from CherryBalmz

I could not get to the shop feature from that link. I backed up to the .com and then I could. That article lists Black Rifle Balm to be what to use on your 1911.

I went internet shopping for NLGI #0 grease, there are 3 well known manufacturers but I could not find any in quantities less than 35 Lbs of grease and that runs over 100$. I swear these guys are just repackaging one of the top makers and reselling it for 16.99$ a bottle.

https://www.cherrybalmz.com/product-page/black-rifle-balm
 
A lube company saying you should use a ton of lube....shocking.

1911 will run on any lube if they are built correctly. A shit 1911 will not suddenly function with different lube
 
I went internet shopping for NLGI #0 grease, there are 3 well known manufacturers but I could not find any in quantities less than 35 Lbs of grease and that runs over 100$. I swear these guys are just repackaging one of the top makers and reselling it for 16.99$ a bottle.

Lubriplate #105 Motor Assembly Grease is an NLGI #0 grease. A 10 ounce tube is $9 ($7.35 if you have a C&R) at Brownells, $10 at Amazon, and should be available at/through your local auto parts store. Brownells has free shipping today with coupon code NER. I have not used it personally yet (ordered earlier today) but I have heard good things about it in guns.
 
A lube company saying you should use a ton of lube....shocking.

It was a pretty stupid amount of lube in those photos. I’ll give you that. Probably close to half a bottles worth of product. I use just a light coating on all those surfaces and my guns rack and cycle smoother than any other oil or grease tried.

1911 will run on any lube if they are built correctly. A shit 1911 will not suddenly function with different lube

Funny but I didn’t read anything about shit guns in that article. Can you post a link?
 
Funny but I didn’t read anything about shit guns in that article. Can you post a link?

My point is the type of lube or how much you use can not make up for a gun that isn't timed right, doesn't have a properly tuned extractor and ejector, good mags. The type of lube is somewhere down there with the color of you gun in terms of reliability.

This blog post is designed to give you a command of 1911 reliability at the operator level

But maybe I'm wrong since I'm not an Operator operating at a operational level
 
Gents, a friend of mine just sent me the link to your convo here - I'm the president of CherryBalmz, and I thought I'd introduce myself and open things up for you to be able to ask questions directly.

I'm happy to be a resource for you on the immense amount of gun-reliability and lube science info that are part of what we do - that's the purpose of the blog post the OP shared. Feel welcome to ask questions about our lubes, lube science, or anything related to gun reliability, anytime.

I always share the genuine pros and cons, based on the science of all this - the more you understand the science of tribology and firearms lubrication, the more you'll understand how and why we engineered our lubes the way we have, and how we're able to get such extreme performance. And it will give you a better command of what will keep your guns running best on a trip to walmart- and you won't find it in the gun section.

A couple of points have been brought up in this convo that I might be able to provide some insight on:
  • Lube Heavy: Yes, unapologetically - if you want maximum reliability. The photos in the post may have looked like overkill, but by far, max reliability comes from heavy application of lube. It may sound self-serving as a gun lube company to say this (which we noted in the blog post), but it matters immensely. You can get away with a light lube job for an easy range day, but the more you rely on a gun for your life, or the more finicky your gun is, the more you want it lubed like those photos. The lube job you saw on that 1911 in the post is good for roughly 3500 rounds on that particular gun - when CLP gives it about 250 before it starts getting finicky, while 10w30 allows it to go about 400-500ish.

    You'll also get at least 10 lube jobs on one bottle of our grease going that heavy - roughly 35,000 rounds of fire on one little bottle. Shot for shot it's actually pretty cheap, even if by volume it's more expensive than we'd like. It's simply extremely efficient.

    It's not just important for round count - lubing heavy, the upper layers of the grease protect everything below from oxidizing or drying out, sealing it off and keeping it protected and fresh. That 1911 will be as reliable 2 or 3 years from now as it is today, because of this. None of it is magic, it's just extremely competent lube engineering, applied to guns.

  • Lube Selection Matters: yes, a crap 1911 will run much better with our grease than anything else - it's that stark, even if you haven't seen something like this happen personally in your lifetime. When people have no reference - having only used oils especially - these claims are hard to believe, so I understand people's skepticism. But one of the easiest demos for us to do in selling our lubricants is for our distributors to lube the most finicky 1911 at an indoor gun range - dozens of times now, they become instantly, totally reliable.

    What this all comes down to is how much we reduce friction in over a dozen ways through lubrication: quality, quantity, and placement, keeping the part-speed up. That said, if a 1911 build is simply out of spec, with link, extractor, or other severely ill-fitted parts, that may simply amount to a physical blockage/binding that needs smithing - but our experience is that far fewer "finicky" 1911s need gunsmithing than their owners understand, and the lube instantly reveals that.

  • Lubriplate and other lightweight greases: As noted by a couple of you, ours isn't the only lightweight grease out there - I'd have no problem running Lubriplate's #0 or #00 greases in my centerfires in normal temperatures. It's good stuff. If everyone threw their gun oils away and switched to Lubriplate's #0 or #00s, or Geissele's lightweight grease, or any of our CherryBalmz greases, probably 80-90% of all gun malfunctions in the US would disappear almost overnight. It is that stark and that simple. To help share the science a bit, here are the pros and cons you get out of using Lubriplate's greases in these weights:
    • The positives:
      • Far better performance than you'll get from any "gun oil". As mentioned in our blog post, unsealed, lightweight machines need lightweight greases, and Lubriplate's #0's and #00s do fit the bill for guns.

      • By volume, Lubriplate's a lot cheaper than ours - we engineered ours for max reliability challenges in guns, which involves complex engineering, formulations, and over two dozen components (base stocks, thickening complex, additive oils, boundary lubricants, pour-point depressants, viscosity modifiers, corrosion inhibitors, etc). Some are cheap, and some are extremely expensive and hard to source - but they give outsized performance benefits in guns, especially in finicky ones, suppressed weapons, high round-counts, and harsh environments, that no other lubricant can match in guns. But we simply don't have the economies of scale yet to be able to drive down the cost of our greases the way a major player does. If you want a cheap, lightweight grease for your guns though, Lubriplate's #0s and #00s are a great choice for you.

      • Lubriplate's competently engineered - this means they have quality components, for the intended use of their greases. Very few "gun oils" are competently engineered - the fact they are oils at all indicate the "gun lube" company doesn't know what it's doing, or doesn't care, as oils are simply not the appropriate lube for unsealed, sliding machines. Guns possess no magical exemptions to the laws of physics or mechanical engineering. Lubriplate does good work - you can be fairly certain something from them won't get tacky, "react" with another lube, or require some sort of application voodoo. Ours won't either - competent engineering matters, and is far more rare in the gun lube world than people understand.
    • The negatives, compared to ours:
      • Lubriplate's greases are not engineered for guns specifically - if they were, they'd be demarcated for things like centerfires, rimfires, extreme cold weather, etc. This is precisely why we have the different greases we do, as light as a #000 grade: different energy realities in different machines and/or the environments they're operating in. Theirs will not allow the reliability, in either shot-to-shot reliability, or overall round count, that ours will - because ours are not just engineered for guns specifically, but for different types of guns and/or operating environments, for maximum gun reliability.

      • Greases can have dramatically different properties, even in the same NLGI grade - just because a grease is a "#0" doesn't mean you'll get optimal performance out of it compared to other #0s, as you don't know what it was engineered for. Also, our primary grease may be a #0, but it's optimized for the cycling speeds of centerfire gun parts (roughly 12fps) to achieve hydrodynamic lubrication for as much of the length of travel as possible. When you achieve this, the parts start floating on a fluid film, literally not touching each other during motion - it's the same principle your car's motor is lubricated on, just at different speeds, loads, and energy dynamics.

        We have two #00 greases that are a good example - they have very different dynamic and static rheology (flow) that's not measured well by the NLGI grade scale. One, the Field Balm, has a little flow engineered into it for application in the field on assembled weapons, allowing it to flow a little to where it's needed, rather than needing to disassemble to apply. However, it is inherently a lot thicker than the other #00, the Rimfire Remedy, which needs to stay put to provide as much sealant effect as possible, but to give way as much as possible between the friction surfaces from the low energies that the masses of the moving parts in finicky .22s cycle under. Very different static and dynamic rhelologies. One's about the consistency of a thick, slick syrup (still a grease), while the other has the consistency of a kind of thick whipped cream.
    • Bottom line: If you want a quality, cheap grease for guns, Lubriplate's fine (as are Shell, Mobil 1, and other industrial #0 grease manufacturers) - just know that there are very significant performance differences between even the same NLGI grades of grease, and that you get what you pay for. Ours are far more effective in guns, but this isn't a knock on Lubriplate at all - theirs just aren't engineered for guns specifically, and the performance differences show, especially in the more extreme or finicky applications.
  • "Operator Level": this is in reference to user/owner/shooter level of "operating" a 1911, as opposed to "gunsmith level reliability knowledge". Not the NinjaSealDeltaSniper "operator" tacticool usage. As you can tell from our company name, we don't play that game.

The science of this stuff is pretty fascinating, but in many ways, our greases are experiencing in the market something similar to what Trijicon did with the ACOG rollout in the 1990s - some jump on it and love the performance boost, while some, if all they've ever had reference for is Bushnell or Tasco glass, have a hard time believing the reliability or performance of a "scope" that costs 10x what they've ever known for scopes. Until they experience it personally.

Whether someone chooses to go with our lubricants or not, I'm happy to answer questions on our lubricants or the broader science of it all, anytime - this world is the last frontier of common shooter knowledge, and it's filled with myth, misunderstanding, and misinformation. I'd love to see that tide turn.

Technology evolves, and performance expectations do too.
 
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That sir, is one hell of a first post at NES. Thank you for that and my apologies for suggesting that you were repackaging other makers product. Good read there.

Thanks for coming on board and a hearty welcome!
 
How much of that grease ended up on the beavertail when you reassembled the frame and slide?

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