Bore seasoning?

[smylee grouch]

I can,t think of any thing more " minimalist or traditional " than plain old water. 

[Leatherbark]

If you feel good about your Wonder lube and have had good results I'd stick with it.  If I was an occasional shooter that only plinked or did informal matches that Wonder lube would be just fine  Us guys who shoot up to 50 shots in a few matches usually use a liquid type of patch lube that takes the fouling back down into the bore with each loading.

 At the end of the day it's cleaned up with tepid or warm water patches and dried with WD 40 and lubed with Break Free.   A few weeks later at a new match  the bore is wiped before shooting and it is nothing but oil on the patch.


I do like to use lambs tallow for patch lube though occasionally.  Especially on my balls loaded in a loading block and used on woodswalks.  I figure Wonder lube would work for that also.

Bob

[yellowhousejake]

The seasoning always has confused me. I heard it first in the 70's and believed it. Then I thought about it some and decided that if I could not burn a load of BP in my mom's skillet without damaging the seasoning, then I couldn't do it in a rifle bore either.

Just my thoughts.

DAve

[OldMtnMan]

One thing I never understood is no stick pans. They all say to use an oil like olive oil to treat the pan before using the first time. Put on oil and then warm up pan. It's a pretty hard, smooth, and slippery coating. What does the oil do?

[Daryl]

As Pete asks,
What is it supposed do for you? What are the claims?
What advantage is there with this 'seasoning'? With a frying pan that is seasoned, if left empty on the stove, excess heat will burn off the 'seasoning'.
Will this not happen every shot in a rifle's bore? 
Is "seasoning" just an excuse or reason, typical lying advertising to sell a product that no one needs?
After decades of use, my bores remain rust free with cleaning to steel after every shooting with zero/0/no seasoning. 

[hanshi]

The "seasoning" myth may have started as a way of describing the breaking in of a barrel.  Maybe it got perverted as it passed down from ear to ear.  Even today it's used as an "ol' timey" gimmick to market the lube.  The lube is okay for what it's used for, lubing patches, but should not be relied on to make a bore, ahem! ol' timey.  I've used it some in the past and decided I didn't like it nearly as well as spit patch.  Too dry to do spit patch now and found Hoppes and mink oil, along with a handful of others, to be much superior. 

[OldMtnMan]

TC was saying it when they started selling Wonder Lube.

[Mad Monk]

TC was saying it when they started selling Wonder Lube.

Actually the seasoning nonsense started before T/C started selling Wonder Lube.  The idea of seasoning the metal came out of one of the large ML supply houses around 1984 or 1985. 

The thing here is that no of the so-called Wonder Lube variations that have been on the market are based on animal fats.  The various versions of Wonder Lube were based on a petroleum wax.  You will find standard mineral oil in them.  That points to a petroleum wax base.  The yellow coloration seen in some was simply an oil soluble orange dye that could be extracted with the mineral oil. If the various versions of Wonder Lube had been based on an animal fat you could turn them into a form of soap with a caustic.  Never could do it when I tried it.

So the idea that you are seasoning the surfaces of the bore as you would season a frying pan for eggs and bacon simply does not fly.

This seasoning nonsense started after Ox-Yoke quit selling repackaged Young Country 103 as their lube.  And the Young Country 103 was nothing more than repacked Chap Stick which is petrolatum, a bit of cetyl alcohol and a bunch of water.  The first Wonder Lube was basically a repackaged chest rub which is why it had oil of Wintergreen in it.  Then some respected person in ML circles commented that one was seasoning the bore much as you would season a frying pan.  But he was working under the idea that the lube was based on animal fats simply because he had been conned as to what was in the lube.  I used to joke that the orange oil soluble dye gave the shooter the lube had some beeswax in it.  The oil of wintergreen odor convinced the shooter that the ingredients were indeed "all natural" and "non-petroleum".

[EC121]

The only part of the Wonder Lube that I found useful is the plastic container it comes in.  After trying it, I threw the lube out and used the container to store my mink oil in my shooting box,

[sqrldog]

I kill hogs with mine. Works as well any of the other paste/grease bullet lubes.

[hanshi]

Salt and pepper are seasonings that go back to the "good ol' days".  Not so good for a barrel, however.

[Mad Monk]

Salt and pepper are seasonings that go back to the "good ol' days".  Not so good for a barrel, however.

So go with garlic, chives and onion!