Steel Horse Rider
Member
WD-40 is great for cleaning because it is a solvent, not so great for lubrication purposes though.
Not many like the smell of Ballistol. I do though...
Exactly what I found to be true, use lard or lard/beeswax and you will never look back.Vegetable oils will work. However, they are prone to polymerizing, which means you end up with plastic-like layer on the internals which you have to scrub clean with a bronze brush. The internals will get filled with BP & oil sludge. You'll need to clean that.
Otherwise they work.
I was out of Ballistol once and there wasn't any in the local shop, so I cleaned my gun with cheapest vegetable oil for about three months, shooting (almost) every weekend. It worked fine, but after three months the gunk in the action was such that it didn't work reliably anymore and I had to tear it down and clean it.
(Normally, I just clean the barrel and chambers and oil the rest)
Oil is oil and I've used cooking oil when I had forgot some oil while in the field, but like all oils, don't just oil and leave it if that is what you're planning. I've recently discovered Rand CLP and so far is as good or better than the other "CLP"s I've tried in the past.In one of the sticky articles, the author says he uses olive oil or crisco on the bore and chamber and even the inner parts of his BP guns. The whole gun. I've always used WD-40 or Rem-oil but i don't really like breathing such chemicals or getting them on my skin.