Biodegradable Maintenance
Let’s talk turkey about cleaners and oils. I'm not a chemist but I know a few things and common sense tells me the rest. We have this new hippie trend going that everything has to be biodegradable. What you left in your toilet was biodegradable too...but I don’t want that in my gun.
First, let’s talk about oils. To get an oil to biodegrade it had to start out as something that would also degrade. In other words, it had to be a vegetable or a rendered fat in order to be processed into an oil that will once again become one with Mother Earth. Since we don’t have a barbecue-scented gun oil we can rule out rendered fat. That only leave one source. That’s right...vegetable oil...just like you cook with. Vegetable based oils are temperature sensitive. When cooking you have to watch the temperature so the oil doesn’t burn. Once it burns it ceases to be a lubricant. The last time I checked firearms deal with quite a bit of temperature variation. And can surpass the approximate 150 degrees needed to break down
vegetable based oils. Bore temperature can exceed 500 degrees. That means that your barrel is lubricant free after the first shot. We see a few products out there that claim to both clean and lubricate using biodegradable materials. Know what that means? Oil reconstitutes dried oils. So the Canola oil you put in your gun re-hydrates the oils that the carbon, and other fouling, is clinging to. That is how it cleans and yet leaves lubrication behind. Some cleaners tell you to let it soak in for a while. That’s because it needs time to re-hydrate fouled oils. It will also pull dirty oils out of the pores because like oils react with each other like water and allows fouling to flow. For stand alone cleaners let’s look at putting more of the same in our gun but with one exception. Biodegradable cleaners are often water based. Do you really want to put pour water in your gun in order to clean it? Would you use a
cleaner that had to be flushed out in your kitchen sink? I think both answers are a resounding “no”. They will site long lines of chemistry. About using water to link carbon molecules together. Yeah, keep telling me how you want me to put something in my gun that has to be fully flushed out so it won’t rust. You're not helping. But it’s safe for my ultrasonic tank, you say? But being biodegradable it is also temperature sensitive. The normal temperatures I would use to break up oils will break down the natural elements of the cleaner and it will cease to be a cleaner. At that point, it’s just a water bath for your gun. So my question for you is, is this really our best option for maintaining firearms?
