Shooting on cold and rainy day

[arkadi]

Gun lubrication for shooting in cold weather was discussed a lot. What about cold - below 10C / 50F and rainy weather?

 

New to 2011, my STI SteelMaster runs beautifully with FP-10 or Gun Butter.

 

I was shooting in a 10C weather recently - no problem until a moderate rain started. After about 30min of shooting small drills and going back and forth between the box and tent, slide started to slow down and gun progressed to FTE and FTF.

 

The SteelMaster is a nice tight fit, but my other CZ-based Open guns with relatively more slide to frame free play works in rain just fine with the same oils for hours. I also saw quite a bit of STI owners - running 40 cal. Limited Major - having similar problems in competitions on rainy days.

 

Should I just keep adding more oil to rails during training or match? Any special treat to mags?

[Steve RA]

Keep adding lube, especially if it gets wet.  After a few thousand more rounds it should loosen up a little and not have the problem.

[M1A4ME]

Some type of light grease?

 

The solution for heavy rains affecting the M1 Garand was to move from oil lube to grease lube, during WW2 (or so the books say).

 

I'm not a fan of grease, but some people use it.

 

 

[igolfat8]

I had similar issues in cold weather running FP-10. I had a bottle of Ed's Red in my bag, which I generally use to clean the bore. I added a few drops of ER to the slide and barrel and the problem went away. 

[tcazes]

switch to lucas lube and be done with it

[WhoIsPat9]

As per others suggestions as well, it seems you might want to try different brands of lube. I regularly shoot 3gun in below freezing, snowing, raining and the cold without any issues using slip 2000. 

[Flatland Shooter]

I rarely shoot in the rain and never practice in the rain.  And it bit me last Spring.  I had used FP-10 successfully for years without issue.

 

At the 3GN SW Regionals the weather alternated from heavy rain to light mist to no rain but lots of mud.  Not all that cold (possibly low 60's.)

 

All my guns were well prepped.  Throughly cleaned and lubed with FP-10, all had been 100% reliable for months.

 

Come match time and i had few stages where at least one gun didn't puke on me and one memorable stage where all three guns had problems.

 

I did switch lubes but have not had the opportunity to see if it helps in inclement weather (see line one, "rarely shoot in the rain").

[zzt]

When I am going to shoot in cold or cold and wet weather, I use a very thin layer of SuperLube PTFE synthetic grease.  It stays put and maintains its density no matter how hot or cold the weather (or the gun) is.  I use their synthetic oil for warmer weather.  Since I switched to that I've not had a problem all the way down to 24F.

[rowdyb]

It rains more in Little Rock than Seattle, so yeah I shoot in the rain a fair bit. Oh and it also gets below freezing during the winter so I shoot in the cold also. I got a free sample of Lucas products back in the day and have been using the blue/green colored lube on my different pistols exclusively for a few years now in all kinds of weather with zero issues. I love that it is a one and done solution for lubrication.

 

I do clean and other stuff to the guns with different products. But when it comes time to lubricate moving parts in my pistols I just use that one Lucas product exclusively.

[arkadi]

Thank you everyone. The season is perfect for testing all kinds of lube.

[arkadi]

Ended up using Lucas Extreme Duty Gun Oil exclusively, no regrets!

[ParaGunner]

Try slide glide lite. I had a custom Caspian open gun that was tight and I shot a match in cold heavy rain with the pistol lubed with it and had 0 problems.

[Jeremyc_1999]

For rain and colder weather I use plain old gun oil.  I had a match last month and had slide guide and had to clean it all off in the rain and switch to oil to get my gun up and running.