Before Dirk goes there, no. Not those lubricants. This is Part 2 to follow Part 1 of our review on KG Chemicals. Part 1 dealt with KG’s cleaners while this review will deal exclusively with their lubricants. All ratings below are subjective and based on a 5-star scale and include a link to Midway.com embedded in the price . . .
KG-4 Gun Oil – $5.99 – (2 oz.) – * * * * *
The Claim: KG-4 Gun Oil meets the stringent requirements set forth in the original Military Specification Mil-L-63460 D. It is a blend of the finest lubricants available and contains no synthetics. With very low surface tension, KG-4 exhibits excellent lubrication and provides outstanding corrosion protection. KG-4 has the added property of keeping current firing residue in suspension which allows for easier cleaning. KG-4 has been field tested for endurance using 50 caliber machine guns. Initially the 50’s were experiencing stoppages at 750 to 1000 rounds. After using KG-4 (CLP2) the guns were fired and stopped at 6000 rounds due to heat and to clean the weapons.
I normally use Sil-Glyde for the internals of all my guns because its a high temp grease that stays put and cleans up very easily. I’ve stayed away from other oils because they seem to evaporate to some degree and leave a sticky mess behind. KG-4 has reached equal status in my eyes. My carry pistol still gets Sil-Glyde because I hate having oil seepage all over my grips. However, my AR platform, Garand, and bolt guns are now sporting KG-4. It seems to penetrate well, and provide good coverage for metal on metal contact. I’d say that cleanup is ever so slightly easier after using KG-4, but heavily carboned areas like DI bolts still need some scrubbing. Also keep in mind that a “wet” AR upper will have some burnoff and spray for the first few rounds. A nice bonus is the nozzle on the bottle which allows you to get in tight nooks and crannies without spilling oil everywhere.
KG-5 Trigger Lube – $5.99 – (2 oz.) – * * * * *
The Claim: KG-5 Trigger Lube is formulated specifically for trigger mechanisms. It is a blend of the finest lubricants available, including P.T.F.E. KG-5 provides excellent lubrication and corrosion protection. KG-5 will keep trigger pulls even and smooth and has been field tested by Military and Police personnel, and has proven itself to be a superior product.
Trigger mechanisms are so much harder to lube than anything else because you do need a true penetrating oil. The problem is that most penetrating oils like WD 40 need to have a solvent that evaporates. The solvent keeps things thin to get into tight places, and then evaporates leaving behind the oily residue. Usually, this results in a gummy, crappy trigger pull. Conversely, a thicker oil like KG-4 might be too viscous to get into the tiny nooks and crannies of a trigger mechanism. KG-5 seems to be a lighter weight version of KG-4 that doesn’t gain or lose viscosity when exposed to air. I’ve found that after a thorough cleaning, it does seems to help trigger smoothness. It is not a miracle drug, so don’t planning on spending $6.00 to make your milspec trigger less crappy.
KG-9 Leather Kote – $5.99 – (2 oz.) – * * * * *
The Claim: By incorporating our new micro technology P.T.F.E. and a combination of fine silicone lubricants in a fully suspended formulation, KG Industries has developed one of the finest leather lubricants on the market today. The lower friction coefficient of KG-9, once burnished into the leather, will dramatically reduce the leather wear on your firearm or knife finish.
KG-9 seems to be a lighter version of Mink Oil which I’ve used for years on my leather boots and gloves. The thing that’s kept me from using Mink Oil on my holsters is that it aways seems to leave a bit of “stick” behind. KG-9 doesn’t have those same issues as it seems to make good use of some solvents that evaporate after 10-15 minutes leaving behind a well lubricated leather surface. I’m not so high speed, low drag that I can reliably tell you that my draw is faster after using KG-9. What I can tell you is that it didn’t discolor my leather holster, it did seem to make it slicker, and (as a bonus) it left my hands delightfully soft.
KG-10 Dri-Lube – $10.99 – (2 oz.) – * * * * *
The Claim: KG-10 Moly Dry film Lubricant is a highly effective MOS2 multi-purpose lubricant which greatly reduces friction and wear. KG-10 goes on wet, penetrates into the metal, drys leaving a pure Moly dry film that will protect and lubricate without attracting dirt or dust. Use KG-10 Dry Lube where a dry no-mess lubricant is required i.e. Triggers, slides, etc…
KG-10 was far and away the most “fun” lubricant as it is a dry lube suspended in a solvent that smells quite a bit like acetone. I had good luck using it in the actions of my knives, and while all my guns ran reliably using KG-10, I feel safer with wet lube vs a dry film. If you’ll be running your guns is a very dusty, dry environment, this might just be the ticket. I’d also give it a whirl for magazine lubrication if you feel your mags need it.
KG-11 Moly Grease – $16.99 – (2 oz.) – * * *
The Claim: KG’s New Moly Grease is based on the formulation of our KG-4 Gun Oil and Technical Fine Grade Molybdenum disulfide powder. The result of blending these two fine products produced a grease which will provide a lubricant that will reduce wear and prevent seizure of dissimilar metals and other alloys in sliding motion parts. KG-11 Moly Grease is appropriate for use, but is not limited to many applications in the Automotive, Motorcycle and Firearms Industries. Most impressive is the amount of pressure KG-11 will bear and holding true to our products being limited to only your imagination, KG-11 Moly Grease can also be used as an anti-seize compound for threads of steel nuts and bolts in heavy industries.
I had high hopes for KG-11 as I’m a grease man. However, I had multiple failures to load while using this grease in my AR-15. Keep in mind, I’ve only ever had primer related failures with this AR. Once I cleaned my BCG, and lubricated using KG-4, I was back in action. The other major problem which has been noted in online reviews is the propensity for KG-11 to separate. My jar was most definitively separated upon delivery and took about 5 minutes of vigorous stirring to get back in tip top shape. That honestly sucks and took this from a 5 star review to 3. This grease is quite nice for assembly and once applied is nearly impossible to remove. I advise that you wear gloves or your hands will be stained for days.
Crap, now that you’ve shut Dirk down on what is obviously a post made just for him this is going to be a boring thread.
So which one is going to be the best for the new Glock 42?
sacrasm alert
On the whole I think I’d be a little leary of using a PTFE lubricant on good leather. In that realm I’ve found it incredibly hard to beat Bick 4.
“…penetrating oils like WD 40…”
WD-40 is many things, but a penetrating oil isn’t one of them.
Other comments as I re-review the article.
WD-40 is a penetrating oil, just not a very good one. Off the top of my head PB Blaster and Marvel Mystery do a better job in that realm…
And Kroil does a better job yet.
I haven’t used this on a firearm but have on every hardware thing you can imagine (mostly rusted and otherwise seized nuts and bolts on cars, turbochargers, outdoor equipment, boats, etc) and this is THE BEST penetrating lubricant I have ever used, hands down, and I’ve used tons of them: http://www.royalpurpleconsumer.com/products/maxfilm-multipurpose-synthetic-lubricant/
While I’m at it, the Zep TKO hand cleaner is the best I have ever used. But it’s expensive and not readily available.
It’s just fish oil….
And Stoddart Solvent.
WD-40 is great at what it was designed to do: Displace water-based emulsions used in CNC machining. particularly on aluminum (e.g., the aerospace industry).
For machining aluminum on a lathe or mill, there’s nothing that makes for a nicer surface finish than squirting some WD40 on the workpiece while it’s being machined. It can make a finish that would be rough as a cob if machined dry come out looking like it is just short of having been polished.
But a penetrating lube, it is not. If I had three 1″ bolts and nuts rusted together, and I sprayed WD40 on one, PB Power Blaster on another and Kroil on the third, you’d have ample evidence of who was a penetrating lube and who wasn’t in an hour or two.
I got to thinking some more about this, it was before my time but the company I worked for before my recent move used to make Kysor Shutter Fluid. One of our maintenance guys kept a jar around for emergencies. And I mean “we put this on it or we cut it off” type emergencies. Having seen it used a dozen or so times I am convinced that there is NOTHING it couldn’t break apart….
Alas, as with so many products that actually work, EPA took it away….
I honestly know like nothing about different oils and lubes. I just use Hoppes Elite on my mosin or Hoppes #9 on my friends shotgun. What are the different properties of oils and lubes?
I’m with you on the elite. That stuff will (with the right amount of time) take anything off. #9 is thoroughly disappointing though.
Are they made with the crocodile tears of liberals?
IMHO Hoppes is good for lubing car door hinges, locks, and anything around the house. Too watery for my Glock and Browning Buckmark. Have had good luck with CLP products especially here in the high and dry desert.
If Dirk wont jump in, then I have to ask how are the products on Latex and Lambskin? Especially KG9?
Another thing that makes me go “Whaaa?:”
“…It is a blend of the finest lubricants available and contains no synthetics…”
Um… yea, about that. The highest quality lubes today are now mostly synthetics.
This is the sort of stuff that just sets me off about gun lubes: The seemingly endless nonsense on stilts.
I used to be a farmer. At one point, we had about a quarter-mil wrapped up in equipment (and that’s not much on a modern farm). 12 diesel engines, a whole bunch of gasoline engines, electric motors up to 200HP, various expensive bits of non-engined equipment with hydraulics and bearings. We bought lubes by the 55-gallon drums (NB plural) every year. Most of our larger diesel engines slurped down 5+ gallons of oil per oil change, which was done every few weeks (many farm diesels spec an oil change every 200 clock hours). We had perhaps six different types of oil on the place (gas engine oil, diesel engine oil, turbine lube, drip oil, gear oils, hydraulic oil/fluid), four different types of grease, yadda, yadda. All engines were oil-sampled. All transmissions/geartrains/hydraulic systems were sampled.
Along about 2005, the price of synthetics started coming down in price and we shifted to the nominal fleet oils to synthetics. From my sampling data, there was no question after one year of use which was better: the synthetics owned the farm after only one year of test data. In greases, there was never, ever any question which was better: synthetics ruled the day, in everything from disc harrow bearings to wheel bearings in tractors. All I had to do was look at the money I was no longer spending on bearings.
For certain types of gearboxes, the new synthetics were a godsend, with thixotropics that could keep gear lube from running out of the gearbox when the bearing seals developed a leak.
Today, all my vehicles run synthetic engine oil and synthetic gear oils. I still sample my diesel pickup and change the synthetic engine oil at 10K miles, instead of the 3K+ interval suggested by the owner’s manual which dates from 2000, before synthetics took over the market. I also get 2MPG improvement in my mileage and easier starting in cold weather.
Those are examples of what synthetic lube engineering has done.
Now let’s get back to guns.
MIL-L-63460 D goes into a great deal of detail about the DOD’s requirement for a witch’s potion that can be both a dessert topping and a floor wax. It’s a cleaner of WC 844 powder residue, and a lubricant, and oh, it has to prevent rust or corrosion to a certain extent.
For people who don’t have to put up with the DOD’s procurement nonsense, why should you compromise in what you need? You’re footing the bill for the lube, the ammo, the guns and accessories. Buy what works best for you, not the DOD. When you need a cleaner, get a good one and reduce your cleaning time. When you need a lube, get a good one that works really well. When you want a corrosion inhibitor, then get a really good one, because unlike the weapons the DOD spec’d MIL-L-63460 D for, the taxpayers ain’t about to make good on your guns if they do corrode or rust. If you’re seeking a corrosion inhibitor which will keep your nice guns from rusting in the safe when you live in a coastal area near the ocean, MILl-L-63460 D ain’t going to do it folks. You’re going to need something that really sticks to the metal.
OK, the “mil-spec” stuff is flowable down to -65F or some such. That’s nice. How often are you going to be out in that kind of cold? I’ve been outdoors for hours in temps down to -45F. Below -20F, thing start to seriously suck. At -45F, your entire frigging skull hurts. Not a headache, your skull aches from the cold on the outside and your warm brain on the inside. When you inhale through your mouth, it feels like your teeth are going to split down to your jawbones. You can’t inhale through your nose, because your nose hairs and any snot therein have frozen shut. Your beard, mustache, eyebrows and any other hair on your face are clogged with rime ice.
Screw whether your gun lube still works. You don’t work so well any more. Wouldn’t you prefer a gun lube that works better when you’re actually going to be on a range or out hunting?
Moly greases are notorious for separation in the container, especially if they get warm in storage. You can buy better moly greases in industrial distribution centers that work quite well. For really tight-fitting, sliding surfaces, I’d recommend against moly greases, as they can actually change dimensions. For loose, sloppy sliding fits, sure, use moly.
For leather, look into Obenauf’s products. I use their heavy-duty “LP” product. Works well. Mink oil is OK, but you have to keep applying it as it evaporates.
Good read. You should contact a publisher. You might get a book contract out of that. 🙂
Yea, I know. It’s a common failing among engineers. We don’t want to tell you the time, we want to tell you how to make your own 17-jewel railroad watch.
These posts are why I book mark articles. You give a better starting point than pretending Wikipedia and random forums have any logical base in reality when it comes to technical stuff. A blog of your own of the random stuff you digress on would be worth reading.
I don’t run too many firearms that are finicky enough to hate CLP or Rem Oil but I know the latter dries. Looking at what you’ve said it may be worth looking into some synthetic stuff.
DG,
How does Moly-Grease change dimensions? Do you mean it builds up or that it wears parts?
It adheres to the surface of the steel. The places where you can see it cause problems are in really tight fits, like, oh, roller bearings on wheels. When you have a roller bearing in a wheel, you tighten a “pre-load” onto the bearing after you’ve packed the bearing with grease and installed it onto the axle stub and you’re putting on the hub. There’s a nut on the end of the axle stub that you tighten to get the wheel bearing to be tight, but not too tight. There should be no slop that you can feel by trying to wobble the wheel side-to-side or top-to-bottom.
OK, so one day, I’m changing out a wheel bearing on an implement. The grease I had close at hand was moly #2 grease. Packed the bearing with it, put it in, screwed in the pre-load and closed ‘er up. The next day, the wheel bearing was shot again, completely galled and fractured on the rollers.
I called up the lube engineer for the moly grease in question (I won’t mention the brand name) and asked “Hey, I greased a simple, non-powered wheel bearing with your super-premium black-as-the-Devil’s-Heart moly grease and a new Timken bearing was toast in a day! WT-F’ing-F?!”
And the lube engineer told me “Don’t use moly grease on things like bearings. The moly builds up a layer that binds with the steel in the bearings, there isn’t enough allowance in the sizing of the bearings to account for this (that’s the whole point of the preload, duh!), the bearing then gets tight, then bearing rollers start to gall, and it’s all over.”
“I did not know that.”
“Well, you do know, Mr. Dumbass EE.”
Love reading your comments! Keep them coming. Also, given your knowledge on greases, what would you (or do you) use on triggers such as in AR’s etc.?
Thanks!
In 1964 I started working for a major airline. One of the jobs was to check the oil on the Boeing 707 jet engines. Guess what kind of oil they used…………Mobil synthetic! Way back then. It was many years before you could buy that stuff in an auto parts store.
I had a tube of gasket lube from Leslie’s pool supply lying around since I had my pool installed 12 years ago. I looked at the ingredients and turns out it is DuPont Krytox. It is food grade heat proof grease. I apply it to my Glock rails, trigger bar, coat the barrel and inside of slide with a thin coat. It doesn’t move or come off till you wipe it off. I think this stuff is expensive so I don’t recommend it but if you have some around the house, then try it on your gun.
Krytox is an entire family of lubricants – synthetic, high-performance lubes, seriously good stuff. I’ve encountered their lubes in gear trains with tight bearings where a “fill for lifetime” lube was called out.
Bingo. Until newer technology comes along, the pure Krytox variants (not OTC products with Krytox as an additive) from DuPont are pricey but unique in offering high temp, inert greases that are the only ones which work on stainless-to-stainless connectors where even anti-seizes don’t. Bike folks have been using Krytox in ceramic bearings, which is ironic as it’s really a better metal lube, but bikies are more anal than gun nuts. A thin coat of Krytox on slides is nearly invisible, dry enough to not accumulate dirt, and yet can be removed, unlike many silicones. Don’t know about Krytox oil, but someone will surely check it out, re-label it, and charge $50/vial for it sooner or later.
The devil’s in the details with so many products – some fine oils break down leaving acidic byproducts, with heat; others are don’t play nice with two different metals, and motor oils are designed for constant flow via pumps or moving gears, in closed/clean boxes, in controlled temperature ranges, with filters. Modern synthetics won’t separate, nor dry out, both serious flaws in CCW/EDC guns that aren’t fired or serviced often. A gelled grease is just soft glue. Guns have zero in common with engines – more like a high-temperature door hinge with corrosives added.
anyone use froglube? i received a free sample when i bought my hoppes viper snake went to the website seems a little too good to believe….any one use this product or are using this product?
Glad to see some press on the KG stuff. Being using for about a year and worked great.
Did you find this at AVN while in Vegas?
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