[Other] CherryBalmz Weapons Lubricants - get 60% off + free shipping!
cherrybalmz.com/christmassalePosted Dec 18, 2018, 3:55 AM UTC
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cherrybalmz.com
Alright I’ll be the one to ask, how does it reduce friction in 12 different ways?
Also can it reduce the friction in my marriage that gundeals causes?
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Also can it reduce the friction in my marriage that gundeals causes?
Yes! Simply buy some CherryBalmz, tell your significant other it is lip balm, sensual oils, or other MLM bullshit then leave a bottle near their general vicinity, and within 30-90 days be divorced!
Can’t have friction if you remove the one half, therapists hate this one weird trick!
*note: IANAL but it’s cheapah to keepah
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IANAL
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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**Analrapist
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Oh you blowhard!
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u/Semper1371, as a moderator, you have a responsibility to either mod in an ethical and unbiased way, or to openly declare to everyone here that you're both a mod and are being intentionally hostile.
Also please note to everyone that you have zero experience with our lubricants - and that you have zero technical background to evaluate a lubricant formulation or tribology in general.
-8†
as a moderator, you have a responsibility to either mod in an ethical and unbiased way, or to openly declare to everyone here that you're both a mod and are being intentionally hostile.
As mods we try to look out for the community. That includes commenting on products we think aren't deals, for whatever reason. In this case, the price per ounce of your products is absolutely exorbitant compared to buying similar commercial lubes in "bulk". I put that in quotations because even a quart of motor oil is ten times the amount of product.
and that you have zero technical background to evaluate a lubricant formulation or tribology in general.
Does someone with a ChemE degree suffice for technical background? I requested HPLC or GC analysis the last time and didn't even get a comment reply. I'm feeling a bit neglected since you apparently gave your phone number out to the other guys.
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u/bartman383, thanks for this note man - I can see you're trying to be reasonable, and I appreciate it.
It covered several issues that each need a reply: a phone call, your analysis question, moderator behavior, and our product pricing.
Phone Call: I'm more than happy to have a phone call with you anytime, including right now or tomorrow morning. It'd be especially helpful if you can get your science and engineering questions answered. I thought I'd offered the phone call in my PM, even if the phone number wasn't there, so please pardon the oversight if that's the case.
Analysis: On your question about GC analysis, I remembered you asked it, and that it was perfectly reasonable...but my memory was also that I actually had answered it.
It took a little digging, but here's the permalink. The short answer though is that we don't have any need to do gas chromatography or similar types of analysis, because we are the ones who developed our products - we know what's in it already. In our call I'm more than happy to share some of them, but we just have no need to do it, and anyone wanting one to dig into our lubricants likely wouldn't trust one we provided anyhow.
If you want to do this yourself - or if anyone out there wants to run spectrometry, GC, HPLC, etc tests - I'm happy to ship you all the lube for free you could need, especially if you'll post the results all over the internet. It'd be absolute gold for my company - but it's best is someone other than us does it.
Now, regarding the mods here man...
I agree you've got every responsibility to look out for the community.
But is it not fair to ask that moderators do so in an informed and unbiased way?
That if mods want to utterly sabotage a post and trash a company and its customers, that they at least do so based on personal evaluation or testing of the product first? In a transparent way?
Or at least listen to the dozens of customers who've posted in great support of it - especially when they give their personal experiences with it, including things like round counts? All verifying my own claims? Going back over a year or two?
You've personally been pretty fair, if skeptical - but these other two mods are outright hostile, and seemed 100% intent on destroying this post and the reputation of my company and our customers here. For over a year there were no problems, then they suddenly appeared the last time I posted and almost sabotaged that thread - now today? What suddenly happened? It's pretty creepy man.
I actually appreciate your skepticism - it's fair and reasonable, and generally comes across that way. It's a great opportunity to have informed, high-end tech and science questions asked, and to give anyone reading my replies that much more info and background on gun lubrication and reliability.
But this hostility from the other two is based on what? Opinion? Neither have used our lubricants.
And neither show any evidence that they've read through any of the science or tech-oriented answers I've provided - at length - in comments and replies to the half-dozen or so deals we've posted over the last year or two.
It feels very much like a couple of fudds being hostile to Trijicon's ACOG in the 1990s, because they've got no reference for it, haven't used it, and don't know a thing about the science - and don't listen when science answers are explicitly provided or easily found in their own subreddit. But they're used to paying for Bushnells, and know only that level of reliability and performance. And prefer iron sights. Because they know better.
And on top of all of that - now at least one of them is shadow banning my reply to his hostility that called him out on this bizarre unfairness, and outright deleted another person's comments who called him out on the ban he did. I have the screenshots.
On that note, I'd appreciate it if you'd ban the person who set up the CHERRY_BALLZ sabotage account. (EDIT - thank you for the ban of that account. Deleting all his comments would also be appreciated.)
Now, again, your personal approach has been reasonable. I'd like that to continue - sincerely, thank you for your role in trying to sort this out.
Onto your final point, regarding pricing...
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I was just making a joke about using gun lube as lip balm. Didn’t mean for you to get upset.
Also, unless I have the green shield next to my name declaring a comment a mod comment (such as this one) it should be expected of me to be speaking personally. The mod team has said it countless times: we’re users too.
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Some users are more equal than others. Not an attack on you, but it's a reality on the internets.
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u/semper1371, what's objectionable here, is how as a moderator - but not declaring yourself that - your comment seems intended to set the tone of accusation and/or doubt for the whole thread, that our lubricants are some sort of scam, as though you're some random person.
Especially as you've publicly said to me elsewhere that you're completely convinced it's a scam...
...even though you've never seen our lubricants...
...and don't seem inclined to listen to any of the science regarding them that I've shared.
What's worse though, is how, out of the blue - unlike any other post I've ever done here - everything was just magically downvoted within a minute of my posting and for hours after, that didn't conform to the opinions of you three moderators?
Only u/Bartman383 has been reasonable, but the other three of you getting a bunch of buddies together to hate-brigade this post?
It's unconscionable.
Any other post I've done has hundreds of up-votes and positive comments - look at my karma score, all from just a grand total of 6 posts. But this one post is just magically all downvoted by such anomalous brigading that it only gets 29 upvotes? When my very last post had nearly 10x that, at over 200?
You guys do a tremendously good service for the gun community with this sub - I've said that publicly before, and I mean it.
But I'm waiting to hear how what you, u/_2na, and u/hateplow169 have done here can in any way be considered ethical or fair.
At some point you are going to have to sit back and give some consideration to the possibility that perhaps you may simply have just categorically misjudged the situation, and have worked each other up into some unfortunate group-think.
It happens.
I'm open hearing and answering specific questions any of you have about the validity of our tech. Email, phone call, here. Wherever. If you're terrified of losing the mask of anonymity that I don't personally enjoy the protections of in this public discussion, then get a burner phone. You can figure out something, if you want to actually be fair.
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+x, -x, +y, -y, +z, -z, +xy, -xy, +xz, -xz, +yz, -yz
See? 12!
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u/sparklingsloth, these are the 12 major ways we reduce friction:
1: Achieving Hydrodynamic Lubrication
2-7: Specific, highly specialized oils - polar and non-polar from both Group IV and Group V
8-12: Five specific types of boundary lubricants, with even more variants of almost each of them within the broader type.
There are over 20 components in total, including corrosion inhibitors, pour-point depressants for cold weather functionality, viscosity modifiers, and of course the thickening complex itself, along with others. Grease is best understood as a sponge, with all these other components stored inside it.
To understand the importance of this approach, the biggest way our lubricants reduce friction, by far, is achieving achieving hydrodynamic lubrication - each of the other ways is component-specific and plays a supporting role in an important way, especially in certain challenging situations.
Hydrodynamic Lubrication is one of the two main lubrication regimes that pretty much all machines are lubricated under – it’s similar to hydroplaning your car. The parts literally float on a fluid film, separated from each other while in motion.
The lighter the fluid though, the faster the parts have to go to get on top of it, similar to how a water skier needs a minimum velocity to get on top of the water. This principle is called the "Stribeck Curve", and it’s a fundamental pillar of tribology.
When part speed and lube thickness are balanced, there’s virtually no friction – or wear – on those friction/bearing surfaces while the parts are in motion.
This is the principle your car’s motor operates under, and it’s why they can typically go a billion rotations in their lifetime. The Stribeck Curve is also why the vast majority of your wear comes from stop-and-go, and at startup – the parts just aren’t up to speed in that first moment.
With guns, that minimum velocity of part speed is still necessary to achieve Hydro and float the parts, so most wear on friction surfaces will occur at the very beginning of part movement, in either direction. To minimize that wear and maximize energy retention, this is where Boundary Lubrication comes in.
Before parts get up to minimum speeds to achieve Hydro, they are cycling under the other primary lube regime, Boundary Lubrication - and it’s why competent lube formulation is absolutely critical.
Boundary is the “make do” category, as the parts remain in physical contact, and are more prone to friction, wear, energy loss, and heat.
Competent lube engineering always includes boundary additives to mitigate this. It’s as fundamental as putting shoes on – there are different types for different purposes, but gun lube without boundary additives is like going into combat barefoot.
Generally, boundary lubricants are extremely slick microscopic solids that attach themselves atop the metal asperities between the two surfaces, most often with a weak electromagnetic charge (“van der Waals” forces). This category is broad, and includes things like molybdenum, Teflon, graphite, and many others.
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u/sparklingsloth, please give me a few minutes here, there's a pair of moderators who seem to be intent on being hostile to me and our customers, and seem to be trying to destroy a company's reputation on reddit.
-9†
you sell overpriced lube dude, and based on all but one or 2 replies you dont really have a reputation
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So make a competing lube and undersell him. Problem solved, profit made.
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You gonna stop bitching anytime soon?
-4†
You obviously have no idea what tribology is!
Note to everyone that you have zero experience with our lubricants - and that you have zero technical background to evaluate a lubricant formulation or tribology in general!
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Nautbot ban
We are not going to allow parody accounts any leeway to screw with verified dealers.
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Banned u/CHERRY_BALLZ (Permanent).
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You obviously have no idea what tribology is!
Isn't that like a fossilized snail thing?
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You're thinking a Trilobite
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Why are you guys shitting on CB? Last time they posted here with the same deal you guys were clambering over yourselves to get some of their lube. Wtf happened that made CB not in vogue anymore? I've used their stuff tons with no problems.
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Why are you guys shitting on CB?
The dealer is making a fool of himself in the comments, think that is feeding it a bit.
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Yeah it is kinda weird. I was skeptical last time it was posted, and offput by the vendor's hard sell. Then, I felt like I was the odd man out of the circle jerk. Now it is the complete opposite.
Classic Reddit fickleness I guess.
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At the risk of sounding like a shill: Bought this stuff the first time it was posted. They ran low on one kind so I didn't get that kind. I did get a letter with a code to go online later and get my bottle. They DID send two or three extra bottles though. I have a few gunsmith friends and passed out the extra bottles to them. Everyone liked it. One time the .22 remedy even helped fix a .22 Walther pistol that refused to cycle with any other lube. I STILL have the black rifle balm on my black rifle from my first application years ago. This is my go to grease for gun purposes.
Tldr: spendy but it is good and I support a small buisness with my purchasr would buy again.
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Want to see a genuine difference in gun lubes, with actual performance, and get a great deal?
This promo gets you free shipping on 2 complete sets of our lubricants (10 bottles), plus over $100 off retail price. It's enough for a quarter-million rounds of shooting.
Several thousand folks from Reddit have tried our lubes since our first promo here, and [there’s been a ton of positive feedback, along with great Q&A and people’s personal experiences with it.
What do you get out of the lubes?
What they are, what they provide:
- They’re lightweight gun greases that each spent about a year and a half in R&D
- They stay wet and reliable on a gun for 2+ years – they don’t get sticky, or clogged from fouling
- You’ll get roughly 10x the shooting on one application over any gun oil – ARs easily go 3000rds on one application, classic P-series Sigs and CZs typically go over 4000.
- One bottle is good for about 25,000 rounds of shooting - it’s extremely efficient.
- Complex engineering – it literally reduces friction in over 12 different ways. Ask me how.
- Finicky guns especially get a huge reliability boost from this complex friction reduction – as long as mags and ammo are good, they become instantly reliable with our lube right around 98% of the time. Ask for details, it’s pretty interesting.
That’s the basics – a lot of people do have misconceptions about grease, but you get a massive reliability benefit in using a properly engineered grease in your guns, because it acts like a sealant to keep fouling away from your friction surfaces. And gents, car greases are far too heavy for *maximum* reliability in guns – ask me why.
Our heaviest grease is about the consistency of a creamy mayonnaise – it’s around an NLGI #0 grade, with our lightest being a #000, which feels close to a thickish whipped cream.
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For those who are a little more science inclined, here are some key things to know, that are a big part of why we engineer greases, not “gun oils” - bottom line is that the science led us to greases as the best route to reliability:
- Guns are unsealed, sliding machines...this is a nearly universal indicator for using a grease in any industry on the planet, because greases stay put, stay wet, and most importantly for such applications, they act like a sealant to keep junk out.
- The sealant effect of greases allow them to maintaining their lubricant properties far longer than oil can when exposed to the environment.
- Guns don’t have any lubricant support systems like gaskets, pumps, reservoirs, or filters - because of this, oils will flow away from your friction surfaces from both gravity and violence of cycling, they thin out and dry out, and they migrate contaminant into places it shouldn’t go.
- Oil does work in guns, but you have to become the “lubricant support system”, requiring you to be an oil pump, filter, and reservoir literally ten times as often as you would need to when using our greases.
- Greases are far more complicated to engineer than oils, and our lightweight technical greases are very different from "grease" most people have ever seen, which is why we're doing this promotion...until someone physically experiences them, especially on a gun, it's simply hard to understand how different and effective they are, because they've literally never seen anything like it.
- Being engineered properly for guns, they will not get clogged or gummy in your guns, and will actually push sand, brass shavings, or other fouling out of the raceways, similar to why a dozer's bucket pistons are clean, with the junk trapped at the front and back of travel, safely out of the way.
- These basic oil vs grease lube differences are foundational in how we get such tremendous reliability enhancements, but the lubes still spent a year and a half each in R&D for max reliability as we dialed in the most effective combination of anti-wear, anti-friction, environmental performance, and corrosion-inhibiting additives, for some pretty elite performance.
__________
If you have questions about the science of lubes in general or ours specifically, definitely feel welcome to ask here.
You all have experience with gun lubes – please consider me a resource in providing science-based gun lubrication answers, from the most basic use and application to the some pretty complex tribology. Very little of it is complicated, but it has largely been siloed away from our community.
All I ask is that questions and comments be meant for good, respectful sharing of info, and that we keep in mind that the question on any gun lubricant is not, “Does it work?” – the proper question is, “How long will a lube work, how well, and under what circumstances?” Whatever you’re using likely works fine, but technology evolves.
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What weight is your black rifle balm?
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It's roughly a #0, so it's about like a creamy mayonnaise in consistency. The others are #00 and #000.
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Cool, thanks.
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Does this mean less cleaning of the gun? Does it still need to be cleaned after shooting if using your grease?
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Good question - it means a lot less cleaning. I typical AR is going to go at least 3000 rounds on one application of the lube (lube heavy, the grease will stay put and act like a sealant to protect your friction surfaces, and as high as 5000, all depending on gas-system and barrel lengths, and cadence of fire.
Cleanup time is also cut down by about half or better - it's a simple wipe down with paper towels, q-tips, and some rubbing alcohol if you want to really clean it well. An AR or Sig 226 with 4000 rounds downrange on one application of the lube typically takes 10 mins or so to clean up.
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Your asterisks aint workin
1†
Looks like he got it. It was really weird, i copy/pasted into a comment and it formatted just fine.
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Yea its fixed
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Thanks man - don't know how/why it happened, but thanks for the heads up.
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Dude dont even bother. Anyone that says anything positive about this gets downvoted and banned on here lol.
Unless you cut the price down to like 20 bucks or less for all 5 bottles its never going to be well received here.
-3†
I think I recall when this grease was first posted, but haven't been following the shift in mood towards it. What the hell happened to cause such hate?
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The dude is kinda sassy and selling a fairly expensive product to people that have used the same, cheap, product their whole lives.
Basically, angry internet shit.
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Last time we posted this deal, a couple of months ago, there were hundreds of comments, about 95% being positive reviews of our lubricants, or neutral questions. What went wrong, u/welcometodiowa, is that 2 moderators in that thread became very hostile, and they decided to crap on this post and set the tone. It's simple bias from people who haven't used our lubricants, and have somehow managed to get upset. As said, weird angry internet sh1t.
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I won a bottle of Black Rifle Balm and figured what the hell, might as well try it. So far it has really impressed me, especially on my 10.5” suppressed SBR. It stays put, doesn’t run everywhere, and just plain works. This is my honest opinion of the stuff but I’ll probably still get down voted anyway.
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Thank you for your support goym customer!
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These threads are always fun.
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-3†
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I hear a very sharp note. I believe that's the call of the Cola Bro dog whistle.
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They definitely run our lubricants hard and are very vocal supporters, but they're also a tiny fraction of our customer base.
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3†
I get why everyone shits on this, but like it works...
I think the trap I fell for was like $20 and I ended up with 7 bottles.
Probably works as well as any other grease you can get at autozone or walmart, but all the varieties of this dont have a strong odor like other tubes of grease do.
Realistically if I wasnt lazy I'd just get a $5 tube of grease and portion that into little bottles with brushes to get the same effect, but I fell for the trap of this once and it works well, slathered it onto all my guns once quite awhile ago and everything has worked fine not needing any other attention since.
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Glad our lubes are working for you.
I place a high priority on sharing fair, unbiased science and gun-reliability info. So, in mentioning Walmart, here's what I can tell you:
I'd use ATF or 0w20 motor oil in the winter, and 20w50 motorcycle oil the rest of the time. They're far more competently engineered than any gun oil on the market, with a lot of additives and appropriate viscosities to give you a lot better reliability performance in guns.
That said, automotive lubricants just aren't engineered for guns though. It matters, because guns cycle under only a tiny fraction of the energy, and it's pulse-energy, applied in only the first 1-3% of part travel. On top of being both unsealed and sliding machines. This makes them uniquely challenging as a class of machine to properly engineer a lubricant for, and it places an absolute premium on friction consistency.
With greases you'll find at Walmart or Autozone, they're virtually all a #2 NLGI grade. This makes them close to a kind of sticky peanut butter in consistency - that's what they need to stay put and lube properly under the energies cars and things like bull dozers cycle under.
That's the most obvious instant difference you'd notice between those and ours - our Black Rifle Balm is about the consistency of a creamy mayonnaise, and is close to a #0 NLGI grade. The rest of ours are even lighter, at #00 and #000.
1
Someone pointed this out, and linked me a #0 grease on midway usa where it was 15 oz for 15.99. If I ever run out of the cherry balmz and the price hasnt dropped realistically ill be switching to that stuff, but the cherry balmz I have now works fantastically.
I dont think ill run through everything ive got for quite awhile, and the rimfire stuff has my cmr 30 running at a higher round count without cleaning than forum posts say they'll go.
Like its a quality product and im a big fan of it, just to get it more accepted and have less of a shitshow every time it gets posted here the price needs to come down.
1
Can I get one set with free shipping? $67 is a lot for lube, seeing as how 4 bottles are useless to me - bolt balm and winter balm. I ran the black rifle balm in my AR and no complaints, would like to try the rimfire remedy.
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This is for two complete sets, so it's actually 10 bottles of lube. Also, while each of our greases is optimized for a specific friction challenge, any of them will work far better than oil in an AR or any other centerfire. Don't use the Bolt Balm in finicky 22s or inertia-action shotguns, as it's a bit too thick, but other than that any of them are excellent in any other gun.
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Free shipping? That will cut into my profits!
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I think you crossed a line here. Making a meme account name AND pretending to be the OP dealer. That's not very cash money of you.
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Yep. Not kosher.
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Coincidence! I sell a separate cherry flavored snake oil product for your testicles.
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TIL you can brigade a thread in a subreddit that you moderate.
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[x] doubt. How are we brigading a thread? All 4 of us?
-3†
I'd actually like to discuss this on that phone call.
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In no way, shape, or form am I ever going to be on a phone call with any dealer on this subreddit.
-4
Whoever created that convoluted website needs to find another career path
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glad you pointed that out. I was kind of laughing that someone was bragging about how overly engineered the product they were selling is, yet the website used to get that product out to the public looks like it was created by an 8 year old. CB, perception is reality. there's a lot of skepticism regarding your products which is justified, but when going to either order or do further research on them nothing that is available to us as consumers strikes me as professionalism. That's just honest feedback. instead of spending 10 hours answering questions on the internet, perhaps you should clean up the website and make it a better representation of the products that you are say are best in class.
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See, the problem is that I won’t use up my Winter Balm, probably ever. I rarely shoot my bolt actions, and wouldn’t need to clean away the Bolt Balm hardly ever, and don’t see using up my Rimfire Remedy for a long time to come...Now, I do have a ton of ARs, so BRB is always good. But it lasts for so freaking long! Going on three years since I put it on my main AR, several matches, including SUPS moon dust blowing into the open dust cover with a chamber flag in...it’s ridiculously filthy. But still wet under the residue from fires rounds and Utah moon dust, and it just doesn’t stop working.
To some extent, I have long wondered if making a product that lasts so long is a good idea, from a business perspective. It’s almost like a pencil company inventing a never ending pencil, and having their sales collapse because no one needs to replace their pencils any more.
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It's a terrible idea.
Signed -
Guy who overdesigns AR500 target systems that don't seem to break or wear out
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Love this - thanks for sharing. It's a legit problem, but a good one to have. Most shooters clean it off far earlier than they need to, but it's good to see people pushing one application of it to its limits.
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You make an excellent point. While I love the fact that this stuff stays wet for an extremely long time, it's almost a moot point since I generally like to wipe down my bolt carrier group and parts in general after a long day of shooting. Even if it's still soaking wet, I have to wipe it off and reapply anyhow if I don't want my bolt carrier group to look like Cherry yogurt has been mixed in with remnants of an ashtray..so the .5 oz bottle of rifle bomb really doesn't last that long and reality.
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It may look nasty, but it'll keep running. Like you though, I personally go through a lot more of the grease than I need to, in my case because I'm obsessive about cleaning and relubricating after every range trip. But one application is good for at least 3000rnds on just about any gun, even if it takes a couple of years to get there.
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I've gotten CB Black Rifle Balm for free out of competitions before, so I don't feel any obligation to say good or bad things about it. I didn't pay for it and I wasn't gifted it directly, just part of a goodie bag. So, take this as you will, but I don't feel like I have much or a bias here.
Most people don't need CherryBalmz. Most people also don't need noveske barrels, S&B or Elcan optics, Spuhr mounts, and Geissele handguards. Even fewer people are going to need a Crye Airframe with WP PVS 31's attached, or a KAC Suppressor in front of a BE Meyers MAWL.
The amount of people who need parts on that level of quality is exceedingly small, and yet I imagine more than a few of us here are running similar configurations on one or more of our rifles.
And that's the point where I'd start shelling out for CB. Top level gear is top level gear. No, it's not cheap, but that's to be expected for the product you get.
Having said that, I'm also not a high round count shooter. I manage ~2-5k a year through my AR, and I know some people manage that in a month.
And that's part of the reason why I like CB as well. If I slather up my rifle, go to the range, run it a bit, and then come home and set it next to my bed with some gold dots in it for the next couple months of dust collecting, then I'm comfortable knowing it'll be just as effective and lubed up two months later if I hear my house getting broken into as it was when I was at the range an hour after application.
Oil doesn't really do that for me, I usually have to check my gun occasionally to make sure it hasn't dried up. I've only found one oil that really worked, but it's no longer available. Most grease I've found either gets gummy, or is just thicker than I'd like to even start with.
Do I need top level gear? Nah, not really. I don't need my gun to survive constant hard use as an occupational tool. Largely, I need my gun to not make me teach a new shooter how to clear malfunctions on their first day out, or to just let me get through a calm range day. But if I do need to use my gun in any higher capacity, then I need it to work 100% without hesitation or question.
Y'all do y'all, but for me, if and when I run out of the two bottles I've got I'm not hampered at all by the price tag knowing I might have to bet the lives of myself and my family on it.
6
Great review - thanks for sharing it.
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In my experience, black rifle balm does not last nearly as long as it's claimed to. After about ~800 rounds through my suppressed 11.5" AR things start to feel dry and gummy. Right now if I slowly ride the bolt home I have to use the forward assist to get the lugs to lock into the chamber.
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I'm in an awkward position here, where I need to share some info with you but also don't want it to sound like I'm invalidating what you're saying.
On the bottle, it says to lube heavy, on all friction surfaces - when this is done, a suppressed SBR will get at least 2000 rounds of reliable firing. This is what our testing and a lot of our customers have also confirmed, one or two in this thread here. Some go as high as 3 or 4 thousand rounds, depending of firing cadence.
The only time I've come across anyone reporting what you have, is when the grease is applied in a very, very thin film, almost like what people are used to with oils. That's because we're very calibrated to using oil - if you put too much on, it flows out of your unsealed machine.
Grease is an entirely different animal - "excess" acts like a sealant to keep fouling out of your friction surfaces.
Our greases are properly engineered, so there's no BS application voodoo, it won't "react" with anything, etc - just slap it on heavy, on all of your friction surfaces. Especially in suppressed guns, you want it slathered.
Here's the key points on lubing an AR for maximum reliability - this should give you around 3000 rounds out of your suppressed SBR at 11.5", unless you're doing full-auto mag dumps, then cut that by about a 3rd:
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LUBRICATING AN AR
Application - How Much?: LUBE HEAVY. Unlike oil, slather the grease on. It is extremely difficult to "over lube" with our grease when applying it only to friction surfaces. Here's why:
The gun will push out all it doesn't need when you reassemble - just wipe it off and put it back in the bottle (it's still perfectly good), dry-cycle a dozen times and wipe off any further excess, and you're good to go. The "excess" remaining in the empty spaces inside the gun will stay put, and significantly enhance the sealant effect of the grease.
This takes on even more benefit and importance in suppressed weapons and the shorter a DI AR is, as they pump much hotter gasses and super-heated contaminant in much higher volumes right into the the action than unsuppressed and longer gas systems do, and significantly extends the round-count such guns can achieve.
Most shooters are calibrated to use a minimum amount of oil, because of how it flows out of unsealed surfaces - this is often an emotional/cultural hurdle that must be overcome in applying a heavy application of our greases.
Bottom line: if the gun doesn't push out a bunch of grease when you reassemble, you didn't put enough on. If it does not feel like "snot-on-glass" when you cycle, you missed a spot.
This heavy application if for maximum reliability - a thin coat still works very well for a common range day of just a few hundred rounds, and will be far more reliable than gun oils can be, so you can economize. But if you need to rely on your firearm, grease it heavily.
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WHERE TO LUBE:
Cam Channel and Cam Pin: Slather the entire channel and the upper half of the cam pin. Slather - especially when running suppressed.
This is an area of tremendous - and unrecognized - friction and mechanical dis-advantage when the cam goes to cam-over at the cam-shoulders. It also has 700F+ gasses pumped into it, full of friction contaminant, almost directly from the gas tube as the BCG pulls back - this cooks off and/or blasts away gun oils, while packing it with super-heated friction contaminant - creating a tacky abrasive right on those cam shoulders and the cam pin.
When bolts break at the cam-pin hole, it's because of this - the tremendous torque that's being applied to it, because of the friction on the cam shoulders. So, lube heavy, and slather the grease in there.
Bolt Carrier: fully coat the rails, and sides of the gas key if rub wear is present. For max reliability, lube heavy - with oils, the wetter the better, up to the point where the lube may get into the mag, which you do not want. With our grease, a thick coating on these bearing surfaces.
Upper: coat the 4 opposite mating surfaces on the upper where BCG rides - yes, lube both mating surfaces, including the entire length of the upper, to ensure sufficient lube and no dry contact surface, and to help with the sealant effect.
Gas rings and bolt tail: leave dry, do not lube - the gas is direct, under pressure, and far too hot for any lube to endure long enough to matter, and the friction surfaces are not large enough to be significant in the total amount of friction surface in the gun to matter, if everything else is properly lubed.
Extractor: Nothing on the claw face that may contact the casing. Lubing the pivot pin is debatable, but would require disassembly to apply our grease.
Locking Lugs: There are few situations where lubing AR locking lugs will enhance reliability to be worthwhile, over the risks that come from lubing them. The primary risk comes from lubes heated beyond the point where they begin to break-down and polymerize, and then start cooling - it can create a tacky substance. And for fresh guns that need first-round reliability, the rest of the gun will have so little friction from being properly lubed, that lubing lugs just does not provide enough added benefit.
Firing Pin: Never lube, on any gun, without exceptional and clear need to do so (ie, rust), for three reasons:
- There simply is not enough friction between firing pin and channel, compared to the energies applied by the hammer, to require lube at all,
- The energies applied by the hammer will displace or crush sand or dirt that may get in to the firing pin channel if dry, but a wet pin may retain enough sand to be too much to displace or crush,
- Firing pins are usually the first place a gun will shut down in cold weather. One drop of oil is enough to create contact between pin and channel almost the entire length of the pin - and when cold enough, any lube will go from reducing friction, to acting like an adhesive. This channel is also extremely challenging to clean lubricant out of fully, down to bare metal, making it subject to freezing even if the shooter thought they'd cleaned it out well. Combined, always run firing pins dry, unless presented with a very serious and clear need to lube it.
Magazines: Never, ever oil or grease, for 4 reasons:
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In complete opposite of the action, magazines run best dry, and worst wet, and have a very narrow window of reliability between energy and friction - the energies of the springs compared to the resistance of the ammo and follower are narrow, because if too powerful the action would have a hard time stripping each round during cycling, and too light the springs wouldn't move the ammo fast enough. Being of looser tolerances, if dry, sand will tend to want to drop below the follower during cycling. But if wet, it may stay in place and accumulate, adding enough friction to overcome the narrow window of reliability.
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Different geometries and energies mean different friction experiences - the fast speed of an action, combined with tight, long geometries, can allow a single piece of sand in an action to cause binding, while slower mag followers with shorter and looser friction-surface geometries may not experience such binding, and can handle a little dry sand. But by adding just a little lube, that sand can add up enough friction to keep the ammo from moving fast enough up the mag.
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Lube on ammo will virtually guarantee sand sticks to it, and cause a malfunction in the chamber during chambering if sufficient enough.
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Lube on ammo dramatically increases the pressure on locking lugs. When ignited, the gasses treat the bullet and casing equally, trying to turn each into a projectile out either end of the barrel. Casing brass, however, being soft, first expands against the chamber walls during firing, serving to seal off the chamber from expanding gasses, and also creates a significant amount of friction against the chamber wall that would otherwise be directed into the locking lugs of the bolt. Lubing a casing plummets that friction, and can increase pressures on the bolt lugs by up to 40%, depending on cartridge design.
Trigger Group: Similar to the firing pin - don't lube unless there is clear and compelling reliability need to do so. Dry sand will get crushed by the power of hammer/spring parts, or it will fall out entirely. Wet sand, however, can accumulate enough to cause a physical blockage.
Bore, Chamber, and Ramps: Never lubricate, except for storage or rust prevention, and even then only use oil: For identical reasons mentioned in the last point on why not to lube mags, any lube in the chamber can dramatically increase pressure on locking lugs, with lube on ramps possibly also allowing sand to be stuck and carried into the chamber. Fluids in a bore will be pushed out by a supersonic, high-pressure squeegee - if there's enough liquid, it will accumulate in front of the bullet and possibly result in a splitting or detonation of the barrel.
Oils have been very forgiving to shooters on this, in no small part because oils, especially thin coats, tend to dry out quickly. But our grease does not - it is also much thicker than oils, and is technically both a solid and a liquid. It also has components that, while microscopic, are solids (the boundary lubricants). While our grease is a phenomenal rust preventative, it's unlikely it would be easy to get every bit of it out with one or two dry patches, and could be dangerous if present in a bore when fired. The narrower the bore and the higher the bullet velocity, the more the danger.
General: Lube any other shiny spots were you see rub wear, or know parts are sliding against each other. Look for any and all friction surfaces, especially hidden ones, and lube them. Even the tiniest spots of rub wear need lube if you want maximum reliability
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In the thread on one of your deals many moons ago, this guide was posted and I followed it to a T. I felt that hydroplaning effect between the upper and bcg you described, the gun cycled very smooth but simply hasn't lasted for me. I've burned through one bottle of the BRB and haven't gotten anywhere near 25,000 rounds out of it.
I suppose user error is always a possibility, but I feel pretty good about my ability to follow your process and take care of my guns in general. Right around the 800 round mark things are dry and sludgey and manually cycling the bolt feels sticky, like it's gummed up.
I don't think you make a bad product, I like the stuff, I'm just not getting the performance that's claimed and don't feel like I'm getting my moneys worth out of it. If the bottles were 4 FL Oz instead of 1 I would probably keep using the stuff, but $17 and 1 FL Oz just doesn't get me very far.
Now, credit where credit's due, the stuff absolutely stays right where you put it and smoothes the action of the gun. I get much better performance out of it in my glocks than my rifles, and haven't reached a point where they start to malfunction, but I usually end up giving them a wipe down and reapplication before they may actually need it, like after classes.
I don't mean to put you on blast here or start trouble, but this has been my honest experience so far.
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What do you use instead these days?
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You're obviously using it wrong and have no idea what you're talking about!
Note to everyone that you have zero experience with our lubricants - and that you have zero technical background to evaluate a lubricant formulation or tribology in general!
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This is the best stuff I've ever used, hands down no comparison to anything else on the market. It's a light grease and oil combined. Slick when it needs to be and stays put. It's all I use now. They could easily charge double and it would still be a bargain.
5
Bought some CherryBalmz in the past, ordering a little of each of the products on offer. In my personal experience the standard the Black Rifle lubes where "meh" at best. No opinion on the Artic one because it never got cold enough for a real test. The Bolt Balm was better as a lube for my pistols ironically enough while being useless on my mauser rifles but doing well in a mosin and R700. Bolt Balm ended up being a slight improvement over the standard lithium grease I was using but whether or not its worth it at the inflated price is up to the individual.
4
I'd enjoy hearing a bit more about your experiences with the Bolt Balm in your Mausers vs the Mosin and 700. It could be pretty interesting, and possibly helpful.
Something to know is that each of our lubes is optimized for something specific- a very difficult challenge of some kind, that other lubes just don't achieve max reliability on. You may very well not need the Bolt Balm, for example, on your Mausers - the Black Rifle Balm might actually be even better, depending on what's going on.
Or even the white lithium grease you mentioned, given that they're comparatively heavily sprung, high mechanical-load bearing surfaces in those bolts so often. I will always tell you the limitations of our lubes, and if you might be better off with something else in some situation.
The specifics on this situation with the Bolt Balm, is that it was engineered to help preserve accuracy in extremely accurate bolt guns, in big chamberings. We engineered it at the request of a precision rifle manufacturer, to help distribute the firing energy across the back of the bolt lugs more evenly, minimizing the peening between microscopic inconsistencies in mating surfaces. This keeps them from opening up the tolerances longer. They'd learned this works with moly grease from benchrest shooters, but also had a lot of customer objections at the messiness of it, and that it shut down those guns in cold weather. We engineered the energy-distribution properties into a lube to excel in the realities guns experience - not cars the moly grease is for.
Second to that property is extreme cold-weather performance, and keeping the extremely tight, high-energy guns like Chey-Tacs cycling smoothly when they heat up. They typically start getting difficult to lock down after 3 or 4 rounds, with the hot metal expanding within very tight match-grade tolerances. The Bolt Balm absolutely packed with a set of boundary lubricants to help with this - more than any of our other formulations.
It happens to be our best lube for manual actions generally, mainly due to the way the boundary lubricants help so well with minimizing the friction of a heavy mechanical load, under what are usually much slower speeds than semi-auto actions. These parts can't really achieve hydrodynamic lubrication, so we focused on exceptionally low-friction, low-speed, high-load boundary regime engineering.
So that's why we recommend it for manual actions, but as you've already found out it's a great lube in a lot of semi-autos too. But in any of your specific bolt guns, the Black Rifle Balm may work just as well or even better. It's optimized for centerfire self-loading actions, but it's a phenomenal all-around lube.
Regarding your meh experience with the Black Rifle Balm in your pistols, the only time I hear this is from folks running pretty reliable handguns already, like Glocks, who aren't yet putting them through extremes, like round counts of 2000+ without cleaning, or extreme environments. Or just letting it sit for a couple of years on a gun, and needing instant reliability.
Without that, someone running a Glock or an HK may very genuinely just not personally see a "performance difference" between our lubes or any random gun lube. Lube up a finicky 1911 though, or need to keep that Glock running high round counts in sandy desert conditions in a competition or something, and you'll see a very, very big difference.
One other test you could do very easily though, is a "limp-wristing" test. We had a prominent female instructor in the Northwest tell us that there hadn't been a single limp-wristing failure from any of her female students since she'd adopted our lubricants, which had been a common problem before. It wasn't something we expected, and were a bit skeptical, but we tested it and found it to be largely very true. It relates to keeping the slide velocities as high as they're engineered to be by plummeting friction - they complete their cycle before the unstable wrist can be a problem.
So, test without our lube on a gun with a really limp (but safe) grip and try to induce limp-wristing malfunctions, and then try it with the gun heavily lubed with the Black Rifle Balm, on all the friction surfaces. It's a pretty quick and revealing test - including just as a benchmark of how finicky any given gun can be expected to be.
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You can get all this for only 67 dollars! Thats just an amazing deal!
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October 2017 I bought the set for $34 + $6 shipping. And got a free black rifle balm to go with it.
Edit: same price now. The $70 refers to 2 kits.
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I feel like I paid half that last year. I certainly wouldn't have paid $70 for that.
Then again maybe I did and just have a bad memory. Their grease smells good but I will stuck with sta-plex in the future.
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It's the same price per bottle as last time, but in buying two complete sets, for gifts, etc, you also get free shipping.
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You dont think thats a little expensive for some flavored grease? It aint magic
5†
Oh I see. I thought it was the bottles in the picture.
3
Last time a deal was posted for this stuff everyone was clamoring over it but I didn't buy it, regretted it...now everyone's losing it in the comments. Do I buy this stuff or not?
3
Its whatever. I bought some last time it was posted and probably wont buy again. I didn't notice any difference between it and the staplex I have used for 10 years.
4
If you want to see the differences, it'll show up most powerfully in 2 areas: your most finicky guns, and in the cold. If you're shooting Glocks in warm Arizona, you may not notice any difference. Until the staplex clogs with sand, which ours generally won't - the heavier grease is engineered for industrial machines, and guns operate under a fraction of that energy. Heavy greases clog up, but in engineering the grease for guns specifically, it'll actually actually push sand out to the front and back of travel, keeping your raceways clean.
Our lubes are engineered for maximum reliability, but in all honesty if you don't have "finicky" guns, and aren't putting your guns through harsh round counts exceeding 3000 rounds without cleaning, or aren't operating them in really harsh environments, you may very well not get a lot of benefit from our lubes. It's advanced, high-performance engineering, but not everybody needs that.
2
Yea I probably don't need high-performance stuff. I take old guys out hunting on a ranch for a living lol.
1
Ah, got it. Just supply a bottle of Hoppe's, and they'll love you man.
On manual action guns, there's rarely a reliability need for lubricant, so if that's what you guys typically hunt with you'd be good to go with pretty much anything unless it gets cold.
If I had to keep a bunch of guns running with only what I could find at Walmart? ATF or 0w20 in the winter, 20w50 motorcycle oil in the summer. Better than any gun oil on the market. Happy to share why if you're interested.
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I got the sample deal a while back. It is lube. It works as intended but it is really just lube.
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I use it, I like it, yes its kinda expensive, no its not magic, no its not a huge cherry scented scam, yes grease is different from oil, yes oil is fine, and yes these threads get real annoying real quick, we get it you either ain't gonna use no dumb ass smelly grease that's just for those lonely Saturday nights or its God's greatest gift to jerkin' it since Jergens.
There, everyone shut up and spend your own money however you damn well please.
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Part of it seems a little sticky all on its own.
I’ve always noticed some manufacturers and gun shops use grease. It makes sense to me because the vicious nature seems like it would last longer while making for smoother surface contact.
If I wanted to get a grease to try (AR15, Glocks) for no more than say $30, what brand would you recommend?
I was once told, for machines in general:
If it slides, grease it. If it rotates, oil it.
No idea if it holds true or not, and I haven't really adhered to it...
This is a really good rule of thumb, that apparently was really common amongst millwrights and machinists. There are a few reasons for it, including part speed and the dynamics of how they move. There are exceptions of course, but as a general rule it's pretty good.
It might make you wonder why grease isn't "normal" on guns yet. Tribologically, it's laughable and bizarre that we use oil on guns at all, instead of a properly engineered grease.
The reason is that guns don't occupy any special exemptions to the laws of mechanical engineering or physics - in every other industry on the planet, unsealed, sliding machines without lubricant support systems like gaskets, pumps, or filters, virtually always get a grease. Like so many other things in the gun industry, the community is just siloed away from a lot of stuff that's basic, normal tech and engineering in any other industry. It's a cultural thing from what we can tell, more than anything else.
https://www.primaryarms.com/ALG-0000-Very-Thin-Grease-4oz-Bottle
I picked up one of their triggers from PA on Black Friday, and man it feels good. I’ll try this, thanks
I just started using the ALG grease but it has been running great in my finicky AR-9 that hates regular oil
For anyone that doesn't know, 4 oz. is a shit load for something like this. Unless you are deploying or running dozens of rifles into the dirt, this bottle will likely last for years.
Thanks for sharing this point - you're absolutely right. Our normal bottles are good for over 25,000 rounds of shooting, and one application is good for around 3000-5000 rounds on a gun. Even if that gun sits for 3 years building up that round count.
u/c6r882, your suspicions are right on the money. Grease also happens to act like a sealant to keep friction contaminant out of your friction surfaces. Just remember that guns cycle under only a tiny fraction of the energy cars do - auto grease is far too thick for maximum reliability in guns, and will actually suck away a lot of the energy they need to cycle reliably. It's like peanut butter - ours is closer to a creamy mayonnaise in consistency, as a #0 grease, as opposed to a #2.
You can get a free bottle of our grease here.
You could get an absolute assload of CB for like $35. ALG is also good supposedly but I've never used it.
I use this.