Vaseline and preventing rust

[TenTea]

Another method to protect a rifle was to varnish the entire thing, metal and all. I have come across two such "guns". A trapdoor that a friend bought and stripped it all off, should have left it, and my father inlaws remington double barrel.

They did it then but there are better ways and better greases. ie Rig.

Flea market tool sellers coat steel with BLO (boiled linseed oil) and let it air dry, as a rust preventative.

Cosmoline is still sold at various vendors.

http://www.brownells.com/gun-cleanin...prod26344.aspx

http://www.cosmolinedirect.com/

[SSGOldfart]

There are better greases, but if that is all you have, it will work.

Okay I'll bite what's the better grease for short-term and long-term storage?? East Texas weather causes every thing to rust.

[lightload]

Rig probably the best known.

[youngmman]

Brownell's Rust Preventative #2 is outstanding at preventing rust by displacing moisture. I have also used cosmoline when I knew the storage was for a very long time but warmed it up first and it seemed to do a better job with less.

[country gent]

Save your cosmoline from cutters and parts it can be remelted and used over and over. We had a slow cooker at work full of it and either dripped parts on a wire or brushed it on hot. Occasionaly you may need to add a little oil to it from loss due to heat and what sticks to parts. Rig grease is very good I apply it with a piece of sheeps wool pad. Another most have and dont think of is bullet lubes, Beeswax vegtable oils or other oils and lanolins are all good presevatives and spread on with a felt or flannel cloth very evenly. They dont run or seep much and in the bore they are whats going to be there so a few dry patches to remove all but the thinnest filmn does good.

[M-Tecs]

Ear wax works also but much better product available today. I mostly use Eezox. Not a grease but works very well.

http://www.cosmolinedirect.com/

http://www.brownells.com/gun-cleanin...prod31842.aspx

http://www.thegunzone.com/rust.html

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/lid=1..._Preventatives

http://www.6mmbr.com/corrosiontest.html

http://www.dayattherange.com/?page_id=3667

[runfiverun]

y'all know alox is a rust preventative right.
alox is just burnt Vaseline with some calcium carbonate added in.
JPW is pretty good at putting a coating on stuff, like floors and metal and stuff.
a light coat of paraffin and carnuba works pretty well and don't have to be cleaned off before use.

[perotter]

Cosmoline, anyone?

Vaseline is a sibling of cosmoline.

[2ndAmendmentNut]

I have recommended KY jelly for the rails and mag wells on plastic pistols. Helps smooth things and allow for easier insertion.

[gwpercle]

.

AND, when you shoot a Vaseline lubed gun, the odor'll help with your cold/sniffles..................


.

Vick's Vapor Rub would be just the ticket for that !

[M-Tecs]

Don't get your Vick's Vapor Rub and Vaseline/KY jelly confused. Saw that happen once. I tried not to laugh but I just couldn't help myself. I had to find some place else to sleep that night.

[W.R.Buchanan]

I have ran the full gamut of Magic Spuges and have finally come back to plain old Vaseline. I assemble my Hand Presses with it.

I was using Frog Lube on My nice Shotguns until last year when my .410O/U Seized up on the line! I took it to my guru who slopped some Vaseline on it and everything is now fine.

I read a story about Wonder Lubes by Charlie Petty in Handloader Mag a year or so ago. He said as soon as someone could prove to him that the old stuff didn't work anymore, he'd convert.

Not surprising that the old stuff has been working for a really long time, and the new stuff for not as long.

Sometimes change is not needed, because what you are doing currently, is working just fine.

Change for the sake of change, is nothing more than boredom rearing it's ugly head.

Randy

[M-Tecs]

The OP is requesting info on Vaseline as a rust protector. Vaseline is still wildly used in industry as a assembly lube particularly on O-rings and assembly of tight slip fit tolerances. I also use it for assembly and as a light grease. It is very good for those applications. As a rust protector not so much.

[EDG]

Tradition is often just making the same old mistake over and over.

Charles Petty might live in a desert and be totally ignorant of the needs of people that live in high humidity regoins. I am sure you could take him to Papua New Guinea and prove his stuff does not work that well. Mr Petty might be totally ignorant that there are products that work better than the old stuff he has grown complacent with. If you never try anything new then you are going to eventually going to be stuck in the past like the old timers I remember that plowed gardens with mules when everyone that did real farming had moved on to a tractor 30 years before.

There are plenty of very effective rust preventatives and lubricants in the market place so that you don't have to rely on a home remedy.
You would not run an army or a navy with petrolatum would you? Their equipment is way to expensive to preserve and protect with a medicine shelf salve.

Liquid alox was designed as a rust preventative and is superior to almost any home remedies for rust prevention.
Almost any chassis lube is a better lubricant than petroleum jelly.

The ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) designs the standards and tests for these materials.
You don't have to depend on folklore and tribal knowledge to find a material that may or may not be the best for your application.
After all you don't run a home remedy in the crankcase of your multi-thousand dollar engines do you?

If you would like more information on corrosion protection there is a book written by one of the most foremost corrosion experts that ever lived.

The book is Corrosion Engineering by Mars G. Fontana PHD
http://corrosion-doctors.org/Biographies/FontanaBio.htm

By comparison Petty was a know nothing.

[35 Whelen]

Seems the wheel must be re-invented from time to time, as the general consensus will always be "if it's old, it's no good anymore".

Several years ago I read a great article/test on rust preventatives in Gun Tests magazine. They tested all the new, trendy stuff in all sorts of crazy ways including salt spray, baking steel pieces that had been treated with these rust preventatives, etc. The hands-down run away winner was Hoppe's Gun Grease. Running a close second and for all practical purposes just as effective, was ordinary petroleum jelly, aka Vaseline. (Don't confuse petroleum jelly/Vaseline with naval jelly/phosphoric acid. Two COMPLETELY different substances. One protects metal, the other removes rust and finish.) I ran out and bought some Hoppe's Gun Grease, and curiously, it looks and feels identical to Vaseline!

35W

[M-Tecs]

The MSDS for RIG and Vaseline are quite different.

https://www.birchwoodcasey.com/getat...un-Grease.aspx

http://www.bmed.mcgill.ca/REKLAB/man...leum_jelly.pdf

I have no doubt at low temps it's a fine rust protector. The issue with petroleum jelly is it melting temp of 100 degrees. It doesn't take much sun or firing to get parts above 100 degrees than it turns into light oil that is easily displaced. Not a good quality for a rust protector? Maybe its better than I think.

Some non traditional products tested here. http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/...?topic=27169.0

I have never seen the article/test on rust preventatives in Gun Tests magazine. If you have it I would love to get a copy.

[NavyVet1959]

Having experienced the "fun" of removing Cosmoline that had had been on a firearm for over 50 years, I would have to say that if you *really* want to protect something, that might just be the way to go. From what I understand though, if you coat it with Cosmoline and then vacuum bag it, it doesn't harden up into the wax/tar that you normally hear people complaining about removing.

[35 Whelen]

The MSDS for RIG and Vaseline are quite different.

https://www.birchwoodcasey.com/getat...un-Grease.aspx

http://www.bmed.mcgill.ca/REKLAB/man...leum_jelly.pdf

I have no doubt at low temps it's a fine rust protector. The issue with petroleum jelly is it melting temp of 100 degrees. It doesn't take much sun or firing to get parts above 100 degrees than it turns into light oil that is easily displaced. Not a good quality for a rust protector?

Some non traditional products tested here. http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/...?topic=27169.0

I have never seen the article/test on rust preventatives in Gun Tests magazine. If you have it I would love to get a copy.

Like I said, part of the test was to heat the test metal in an oven in an attempt to compromise the rust preventatives being tested. Still, the Hoppe's Gun Grease and Vaseline prevailed. And yes, it melts at 100°F and becomes an oil, but there was no indication that this compromised it rust inhibiting abilities.

Sorry, I don't have that issue of Gun Tests magazine as it was quite a few years back. I bet you can contact them and get a back issue, though.

Thanks for the link to the tests. I have no doubt there are some wonderful products out there and am not surprised with some of the results. A gunsmith not far from here loathes Break Free CLP because it's very difficult to remove from metal prior to preparation for bluing. But back to Vaseline, in my opinion one of the beauties of the product is it's available most anywhere.

35W

ETA- The more I read on the subject the more it seems RIG is simply petroleum jelly (Vaseline) with a couple of distillates and a little corrosion inhibitor added.

[M-Tecs]

http://www.wackyuses.com/wacky/vaseline.html

I doesn't allow me to cut and paste. It is also missing cotton balls and petroleum jelly as a fire starter. You convinced me it's a better rust protector than I gave it credit.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4549808_make...l-objects.html

Lanolin & petroleum jelly - since I have a large quantity of each I may have to give it a try. For firearms I will with use http://eezox.com/ or RIG but have lots of tools that may get Lanolin & petroleum jelly.

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist....ad.php?t=21073

[oldred]

As a rust protector Vasoline is as good as anything AS LONG AS IT STAYS ON! But that's the problem, almost any type grease will prevent rust but there are no special rust fighting attributes to most of them including Vasoline. Vasoline simply seals out Oxygen and moisture and so do most other grease concoctions as their primary defense against corrosion but a lot of grease formulas and all specialized rust preventives contain chemicals that inhibit rust, Vasoline has none of that! Vasoline is probably as good as a coat of gun oil as long as it's left undisturbed but it is easily wiped off and as someone else correctly pointed out it has a very low melting temperature making it very hard to maintain that O2 sealing film. The old timers can live in the past if they like and Vasaline *will* work just as will a lot of other products that will seal a surface but despite what some might claim there are far better rust preventive products out there, products that leave a tough hard to penetrate film that repels moisture and also contains corrosion fighting chemicals, Vasoline has none of those chemicals and leaves little in the way of a tough film!

Just because Vasoline *can work* does not make it a good product, fellas you can drive a nail all the way in with a rock or a piece of pipe but there are much better and more sensible tools for doing that!