Jig-A-Loo - Product Review

Jig-A-Loo?

Woo who!

What did you say?

That was about my response when I was asked to review a water repellent and lubricant I’d never heard of. Jig-A-Loo what? Sure, OK. Send some over. What I got was an orange can of spray about the size of a can of Pam cooking spray and an orange hat I doubt you could wear any place for long in the United States with out getting something kicked.

jigaloo.com

After a little internet searching, reading, and checking up on this stuff I found it’s a pretty well established product in Canada and hails from Quebec where they have this funny habit of speaking a lot of French. Thus the name, Jig-A-Loo, and the company’s claim it derives from a saying they have up north, “I’ve got it!”

Well, ok. If you guys say so, but what I really care about is, does it work.

Water repellent? Lubricant on a par or better than WD40? No smell and a line or two later in their ad it claims to have a pleasant aroma or some such phrase. Now my skeptic radar is lit up like a Christmas tree son so let’s get right on this and get it figured out.

First I got out a pure white paper towel and a white cotton shop towel. Both were perfectly clean to start and I folded each over in half. On the side up I sprayed a good coating of Jig-A-Loo, just like I would with any other water repellent. Then I hung both of these over a fence in the sun to dry.

Despite their claim to be odorless this is when you will notice an odor, when you are spraying it. Considering a warning like this, “CAUTION Contains: methylene chloride, perchloroethylene, isobutane, and propane… ” you get a pretty clear picture of the odor. Not really objectionable but not exactly odorless nor exactly pleasant and definitely one you should not smell in a confined area or around an open flame. The label on the can makes this perfectly clear as well.

If did my own little flammability test I won’t describe in detail but I’ll say it’s less flammable right out of the can than hair spray but not much and it doesn’t appear to have any affect on the flammability of material after it is dry at all. So be careful where you spray it but once dry I don’t consider it an issue.

I must say when it dries, there is no odor my nose could detect so I’ll call Jig-A-Loo odorless at that point and there was no stain and both materials appear plain white again when dry so I’ll definitely call it nonstaining as well. I like that it was dry after a few minutes to prevent collecting dirt and dust when used on a weapon as well and after a month of humid summer weather I see absolutely no sign of rusting on my blue steel 10/22 I sprayed with Jig-A-Loo and after about 500 rounds since lubing it I’m still not experiencing any of the stove pipe malfunctions with sub sonic ammo that motivated me to give Jig-a-loo a try as an action lubricant.

The only area of their advertised claims I found deficient was in the area of water repellent. Both materials I originally tested soaked up water from a spray bottle equally on both the treated area and the untreated area. I couldn’t tell any difference no matter which position the fabric was in when sprayed, it still soaked right in to both the cotton shop cloth and the treated paper towel. In order to make sure I was giving this a fair test I even sprayed my army surplus field jacket from the middle of the shoulder over to the left side and when it finally rained a little last week I wore it to go out and feed the dogs. I wasn’t outside more than five or ten minutes but when I got back in I couldn’t tell a bit of difference looking at the back of the jacket or feeling it on my back. It was just plain wet and it felt wet.

Jig-a-loo worked great quieting the squeaky truck door and the hinge on the back door of the house with the advantage over WD40 that I wasn’t worried about staining the wood or stinking up the house. Ten minutes later you couldn’t look at it or take a whiff and know I’d done a thing until you opened the door. Then I was smooth and squeak free.

I’d recommend this to gun owners and I’m using it as a lubricant on my own guns now instead of most other oils but I think I’ll keep my umbrella handy for feeding the dogs in wet weather.

Richard Becraft J