Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Thought I would add another sample point.
Just bought a new Glock 19 Gen 5 MOS, through GT Distributors using my 2021 GSSF pistol purchase coupon.
There was hardly any trace of the gold lube/paste, except for a very light schmear on the left hand slide rail, interior. Talking a scrape of it, maybe. I used a Q-tip to get a small amount and examine it closely to confirm it was that copper color.
The barrel hood had a teeny drop of lube, and there was some on the slide underneath as well (but not much). And that was about all I could see, without punching out the locking lock retaining pin and taking it apart to see (which, I kind want to shoot it first).
I did a basic field strip, examined for shooting residue in the bore (there was a little from the test firing), and bore-snaked it out. I could not tell that there was any lube on the connector to trigger bar, so I put one small drop of lube at the top of the connector so it would drip into the interface and then worked the trigger back and forth.
Reassembled with lube as per the Glock manual.
The manual clearly says to leave the copper lube in the gun and not clean it off. I asked a Glock armorer about it and he said it’s to mate the parts and smooth everything out. Some people are overly obsessed with cleaning guns.
I clean my guns after every usage...but I still follow the advice to leave the copper lube in place. It's possible to keep the firearm clean...AND...follow instructions.
(I don't think I'm obsessed...just disciplined. Dirt in the house goes under the rug. If you can't see it, it's not there, right?)
There's nothing civil about this war.
I've never felt the need to leave anti-seize (because that's what it is) on parts of my handguns. If the chances of galling are that high it's a materials and manufacture issue that anti-seize isn't going to fix in the long term.
I avoid grease in general because grease is just oil with a binder. The oil component of it does normal oil things like migrate and evaporate, leaving the binder behind. The binder then behaves like the sponge it is and picks up new things that aren't oil, generally the things we'd rather not have held against friction points on the gun. Only it looks like there's still grease there because you usually can't see a difference between binder that's holding oil and binder that's just holding unwanted garbage. So I clean all that stuff off and just put a good liquid lubricant on the friction points of the slide, barrel, locking block, and frame.
I also usually put a drop of lube on the friction points inside the frame including a drop on the side of the trigger bar that runs against the polymer. Then run the action several times, dryfire several more, and wipe off any excess before loading for use or carry.
Glock's expertise is likely centered around polymer injection molding and CNC machining. I doubt they've got tribologists on staff to make those calls for them because handguns are not complicated lubrication problems.
3/15/2016
Received a G19.5 the other day, installed sights, and zeroed the gun.
When I cleaned it afterwards, I decided to detail strip the slide and found the internals to be heavily oiled. Also saw no trace of the copper anti seize that Glock usually applies to new guns.
Incidentally, cleaning out the oil from the slide parts reduced the trigger weight just a little bit.