Originally Posted by
borderhawk
This is a wake up call for me because, for some reason, I'd been thinking that barrel swivels had ball bearings in them. I've always been in the habit of dripping a bit of 3-in-1 oil in my swivels at least once a year, and I'm betting doing that on a more regular basis would help the barrel swivels tremendously. Especially with a hard bating bird. One thing to remember is that being made for underwater use, these swivels are designed to get their lubrication from the water they're submerged in, like an aquarium pump that will burn out if ran dry.
On stainless steel, it's basically an "alloy".. which means "recipe" in metallurgy speak. With true stainless even the strongest magnets will not hold to it because it actually has no iron in it... which makes it not a 'steel' at all, really. So, if you carry a strong magnet in your pocket, you can check the quality of things labeled as stainless. It's become very popular to plate brass (or regular steels) with stainless because it's shiny/pretty (sells better), is much harder than brass, and doesn't oxidize. But, like David said, it's not soft at all, so it's not squishable/bendable, and much harder to cut. That's also why it's become so popular for knives as not only does it not have any iron in it to rust, but the harder properties of it help it hold an edge better.