Wax for Home-Brewed Bullet-Lube

[Bobby Twoboar]

The Frontier Spot seems to be down so I'll ask this here:

What’re the relative merits or drawbacks of the different kinds of wax called for in various percentages in the many types of mixes for home-brewed bullet lube recipes used out there and cited in many threads?

Beeswax?

Household Paraffin Wax for canning or candle-making (new)?

Soy Wax Flakes (I think that’s how it’s termed – never heard of this before now.)?

Toilet Seal Wax Rings?

I’m familiar with and have used Beeswax and Paraffin (but not as an ingredient for bullet-lube).  I’m also familiar with the Toilet Seal Rings but not as to what type of wax they are as compared to the others and I’ve never melted them.   

[Cuts Crooked]

Bobby,

I have never dealt with the soy wax stuff, but those who use it swear by it. I have used bees wax and toilet seal wax with  great success and have tried parrafin also. The toilet seal wax rings have mineral oil in them and this makes fer a tackier lube.

It is a long standing "fact" that one should not use petroleum based products as a lube for BP due to the nasty hard tar like fouling that results from burning BP with it. However, both mineral oil and parrafin are petrol based and seem to work fine. I recall reading that someone (The Mad Monk, I think) has experimanted with parrafin and found that the reason it seems to work ok is because the refining process for food grade parrafin removes the ?esthers/keotones? that produce the hard fouling. (Note: Ballistol, one the Darksiders favorite lubes and cleaning solutions is mostly mineral oil!)

[Sergeant Smokepole]

I've been a consumate experimenter all my life. I stumbled onto the toilet ring puyrely by accident about 6 years ago. I combined it with Crisco, old candles etc and settled on 3 pounds Crisco and 2 toilet seals (preferably unused). This combination has served me well as it is loose enough for cold weather and stiff enough for 80 plus degrees and extremely sunny days. It was originally concocted for use in C&B revolvers but it has been found to work just as well as a B/P bullet lube for cartridges.

Some will argue that the rings are not pure beeswax. I'll give them that but not being a lab rat type, I go not by the book, but what works, and this stuff works. It also does not dry up and crack, causing it to fall off the bullet.  As Cuts said, the mineral oil gives it a tacky to the touch feeling. It was put there to keep the rings from drying out and cracking, thereby losing the integrity of the ring.

Look at the economics.... Beeswax 5 yankee greenbacks a pound.  Toilet seals 98 cents a ring weighing about a pound, give or take.

Sot wax has also been highly touted here but I have as yet trried any. I made up a batch of my GOOP about a year and a half ago and still have about 2 pounds left. That batch cost me less than 5 yankee greenbacks.

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[J.D. Stawker]

Soywax is cheaper per pound and has a slightly lower melting point. It also cleans up with soap and water when you spill it somewhere it isn't supposed to be.

Toilet rings are actually a mixture of beeswax and mineral oil. They are easy to find at your local hardware store.

Food grade parafin seems to work. It has a melting point somewhere around soywax I think but less than beeswax. It is cheap and easy to find but it has a tendency to be brittle. Its main drawback is it is boring and the purists will tell you not to use it. (I fall into that camp)

Now as to what works. For CAS you need lots of a soft lube, period. Put it in cookies behind the bullet, put it in deep wide bullet grooves, preferably two per bullet, or melt it and dip the end of your bullets in it after you load them.  The secret is lots of lube. I have tried many mixes, many waxes, and heard of even more mixtures. If you have lots of it all the mixtures seem to work.

The simplest recipe I have heard of is just to use beeswax sheets and push the case mouth through the sheet after the powder is in.  The more complex recipes use carnuba wax, bayberry wax, peppermint oil, murphy's oil soap, and a host of other stuff.


I use an approximately 50:50 mix of crisco and beeswax. A little more beeswax in the summer and a little less in the winter.  May suggestion. Mix up somthing you think will work, call it your own mix, use lots of it and enjoy the buck and roar of BP.

All of these comments are directed at CAS ranges. Long Range shooting is another ball game and I don't play that, yet!

[Bobby Twoboar]

What's the original intended use for the soy wax flakes?  As I said, this is a new one on me.

[J.D. Stawker]

Lots of candles are made with it. I think it is being used in some industrial applications also.  It is basically a vegetable wax so it could be used wherever waxes are needed. Furniture polish, car wax, high viscosity lubricants, etc.  It is considered a "green" product in that it is biodegradable, renewable, and environmentally friendly and non-toxic. 

[Delmonico]

Bee's way varies in price as to where you buy it.  I'm cultivatin' a new source right now, but I ussually give a dollar or at most two a pound.  The $2 was the last I bought in the plumers section of a hardware store, sadly the now put it in a fancy package and doubled the price. 

Got some folks that raise bee's that are spossed to get back to me when they get done with all their other crops.  Plannin' on buyin' both honey and wax from them, most often paid a $1 a pound to beekepers, but the one I used to get honey and wax from got to old ta mess with it..

Soy wax is the latest thing for fancy candles, mostly used to burn yuppies houses down when fergot about.  One of my wife's Yuppie craft lady friends was ravin, 'bout them the other day.  (I knew she was a yuppie cause there was a 4WD in my driveway that had no dirt on it.  Since it's deer season here I figgered any 4WD that did not have dirt on it the Monday after openin' weekend must belong to a yuppie. )

Ok time fer my Yuppie disclaimer again, I don't dislike them, got a few friends that are ones, my cuz, she even married one.  Just don't like the ones that try to change my ways and think I belong in a zoo cuz I like do things like the folks they learnt about in grade school.

[J.D. Stawker]

I thought the yuppies all got older and turned into muppies.

[Delmonico]

Was a bit tongue in cheek, but in plain English, bees wax is cheap from the beekeeper, if you don't know one find one.  Things that work I don't change, deer tallow and beeswax has made me happy fer almost 10 years, tallow/beeswax mixes worked in the 19th century, so I won't change.

Toilet seeals to get a good price on a large amount would invole goin' to a hardware store as large as an airplane hanger and not bein' able ta find what I want and havin' ta ask.  Well they might ask me why I wanted so many and I most likely would have to splain things ta someone who is lucky to know that a toilet seal is most often used ta keep tha poop of yer floor.

Soy wax would most likely cause an encounter with some artsy-craftsy person at some craft store and they would not understand why I didn't want lilac-kiwi fruit scent to put with the wax.

No it's best I deal with good old country folks who understand such things, it's better for my sanity and the sanity of the rest of the world that I continue on my present path.  I just hope that nice lady that I talked to last month comes in soon, she said she would whe the rest of the crops are out and bring me cards when they get all their honey extracted.  Don't need any wax right yet, got plenty of lube, but some fresh honey would be nice, would buy a couple a gallons from here and she's like me, she knows the good stuff ain't the pale clover stuff that folks want in the store.

My last keeper friend quit cause he was to old and I don't dare raise my own cause I be 'lergic ta tha stings.

[J.D. Stawker]

I agree whole heartedly about buying local. If you can get beeswax for a buck a pound that indeed is a good deal. I don't know any bee keepers or bee losers for that matter.  My current supply of BP lube is a mixture of 50:50 beeswax:crisco, some left over soywax and beeswax from candles I made, and two deals of SPG I found in a bag of "stuff" I bought for $20.

By the way that bag of stuff, had 200 speer round balls, 1 k of caps, some wads and cards and the SPG.

[Wal Nutt]

Howdy All,

        I went to one of those airplane hangar hardware places and found wax toilet seals boxed ten to a box for $6.50.
65 cents apiece.
 I melt three and a three pound can Crisco and I gots lots o bullet lube.
Never any leading and I use it fer Holy Black and smokeyless loads.

I have a lyman bullet lubrisizer, but now I justwipe the lube on with a finger and  shoot as cast 
I push em thru a cut off 45-70 case first to clean off the extra.

[Delmonico]

Jd, most who have read many of my posts also know that besides the bees wax I use tallow that is rendered from some of the deer that take up temporary residence in my deep freeze.  The three that have come my way this year though have all been fairly young and have not had the heavy layers of fat the older ones seem to have.   This though assures that their residence in my freezer will be very temporary

Don't tell the Yuppie types but by usin' beeswax and deer tallow my lube is also green friendly or what ever the latest fancy word for such things are.  Both of course are a re-newable resource, green frinedly and most often organic by their terms.  Course if they really knew and not abused the language theyed know that organic really means "contains carbon' not "we were very lucky and saved some from the bugs" like the very expensive stuff ya see in stores.

[Sergeant Smokepole]

Just to remind you.... Beeswax is bee poop......

[J.D. Stawker]

Consider yourself lucky Del,

I haven't had a good chunk of Venison in quite some time.  Most muppies (middle aged upwardly mobile) wouldn't know organic from shinola if they had to tell what it meant. Someone convinced them it was better so they want it.  I actually went to a conference on the subject for work the other day and if farmers can get their product labeled "organic" they will be money ahead.  Did you know that there are federal regualtions as to what can be called organic and what can't?  It is a 3 year process to get to be called organic. 


Sgt. Bee poop lube just doesn't have the same ring

[Delmonico]

I like that ring, bee poop lube. (Don't tell Slim)  Honey of course is bee barf, and I love it.

Next time ya order a pizza tell them ya want fungus and dead fish on it, my favorite.

[Bad Flynch]

Beeswax consists mainly of free cerotic acid and myricin (myricyl palmitate), with some high-carbon paraffins. What that means in practice is that it melts and softens over a fairly wide temperature range and as it melts, the consistency and viscosity change slowly. With these characteristics, it does not run away as fast, and being somewhat tacky, it sticks where you put it. It will hold on to some dissolved oil, but will sweat some of the oil out with time. It is so much a mixture that it is somewhat amorphous rather than crystalline.

Paraffin wax is from the fractional distillation of petroleum. When I worked for the now defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines doing petroleum analysis, I saw plenty of this stuff. It is mostly a mixture of straight-chain hydrocarbon molecules with closely related molecular weights. Its crystals are large and it has a relatively sharp melting point. Being a straight chain paraffin, the viscosity of the melt changes rapidly from thick to super runny.  The rapid viscosity change means that it melts fast and runs away fast. It is not really sticky when hard (it is crystalline) and so does not stay put as well as beeswax. The large crystals do not hold onto oil well, so it sweats out oil that is mixed in easier than beeswax.

Microcrystalline wax is extracted from the residuum from petroleum fractional distillation. Refined gunk. I really do not know a lot about this stuff, except that being microcrystalline, it will hold on to dissolved oil better than paraffin wax and mixtures sweat less oil out.

Soy wax is probably just a plant wax with physical properties much like beeswax, and is probably cheaper. This is a similar situation to Jojoba oil (which is actually a liquid wax) being used as a plant substitute for Sperm Whale Oil (also a liquid wax) because Sperm Whale Oil is no longer available. Automatic transmission fluids, once made of Sperm Whale Oil, are now mostly synthetic liquid waxes. Many lube makers have experimented with Jojoba oil, but it has not caught on. In the 19th century, some cartridge manufacturers used a mixture of beeswax, tallow, and Sperm Whale Oil as a lube, and it worked well.

Crisco is a vegetable oil (fixed oil) that started out unsaturated. It has been hydrogenated (saturated) nearly completely. It is white because they whip in a lot of air to bulk it up. It is now so saturated that it resembles a stiff paraffin oil quite a bit. It melts sharply, runs fast, and will not hold oil in a mixture. It is soft and sticky when solid and has a low melting point--a summertime problem.

Tallow is the fixed oil rendered from certain species of animal, like deer, cattle, sheep, and the fat used to produce it is from specific areas of their bodies. It is the bovine equivalent of lard, but is slightly different. It is an animal fatty oil and solid when cold. The product is quite a mixture and therefore not very crystalline (somewhat amorphous) at all. It is relatively gooey and sticky, but suffers from a narrow melting range and a rapid viscosity change when hot. It runs away fast. It can serve as a holder for other oils (like the paraffin oil commonly called mineral oil), or can fill the role of an oil itself if the temperature is right.

Natural product soaps, like sodium tallowate (a.k.a. Ivory Soap, and others) and sodium stearate are fine in bullet lubes and can carry a lot of other oil. They are also slick in their own right, but grease makers discount this and characterize them as carriers only. Castile soap, usually made from olive oil should be OK, too. Potassium salt versions are liquid and sodium salt versions are solid. Murphy's Oil Soap is made from stuff like that.

The soaps in petroleum greases, like chassis grease and waterpump grease, are bad actors with black powder, and this may be where petroleum products got their bad reputation. They are lithium, sodium, and insoluble calcium soaps, generally, although aluminum soaps are used, too. They work fine for smokeless powder. Alox is essentially a calcium soap of this type--great for smokeless loads, but bad for Holy Black. Ammonium soaps are known and are often found in smokeless powder bore cleaners these days.

Peanut oil, olive oil, safflower oil, and the like are fixed oils from plants. They are liquids at normal temperatures because their molecular chains are either partially unsaturated or short, or both. They are chiefly useful for lubrication when there is a carrier available and for adjusting the consistency and melting point of the mix, say, to compensate for temperature. They are the plant's equivalent of lard and tallow, but are liquid at normal temperatures, and so mix with tallow well. They mix with other things like beeswax and paraffin wax just fine, but will occasionally sweat out.

Mineral oil, usually the heavy version, is an ultrapure version of motor oil. It has no additives, good or bad. It mixes ok with beeswax and paraffin, but sweats out some. It is chemically akin to paraffin wax, motor oil, and gasoline, except that it has shorter chained molecules than the paraffin wax. Many of the commercial black powder patch lubes and bullet lubes contain some of this and work just fine. This, apparently, is not part of the petroleum-blackpowder problem. There is a lighter version of this that could be used where the viscosity difference would help. Most baby oils and many lubricating oils for household use are very much like Light Mineral Oil, many of these things are just that. I use it for sharpening knives, but it has no rust preventatives added to it, so I do not use it for rust prevention. These oils, like all straight-chained paraffins, change viscosity very fast with temperature changes and run away easily or would sweat out of a mixture fast in the heat.

Hope that helps.

[Delmonico]

Thank You good post.  May I add that deer tallow has a higher meltin' point than other tallows or lard.

[Bobby Twoboar]

Thank you, Professor Flynch.  That was great and very informative.

Thanks to you and the rest of the pards, I’ve been launched down the road to Perdition. 

I’ve got my 12 gauge shells loaded with BP, I’ve just finished melting off smokeless lube on my 38 and 44 bullets and pan re-lubed them with beeswax (toilet-seal type) and Crisco. 

This was based on comments from everybody here.  Sarge, rather than start with a Crisco-heavy mix, I chose to begin with a 50/50 mix and figured I’ll just adjust from there with results and experience, which may push me toward your ratio (weather temps?).

Although I’m not so sure about this breaking the whole pan-load free in one piece and then pushing them out from the base-side while watching TV stuff. (Driftwood)  We’ll see. 

The pans are in the fridge now.  I’ve pan-lubed for smokeless before but always used a cookie-cutter (sawed-off cartridge case) to get them out of the hardened lube.

In the meantime, Mason Stillwell is going to send me an order of some Snakebites and Mav Dutchman’s and while Mason’s catching up on his orders, Dick Dastardly has graciously agreed to send me a couple of samples so I can actually see them, “in the flesh.”  Dick, when you start gearing up your next mould order, please put me on your list for a “heads up.”

Now, what’s this “grease cookie,” I keep reading the pros and cons about.  Will I need them in my 38 and 44 Blackhawks – the 1894 Marlin shooting 38’s?  I was just planning to put a thin Walters water-proof wad over the powder charge to protect the powder from the lube.  Does this “grease cookie” method involve even more lube on the base or is it – maybe - only necessary in certain circumstances?

I love it.  A whole new art.

Thanks, all.

[Delmonico]

I will say this, I think most any of these lube recipes will work or folks would not use them and post them.  Find out what works for you.  I do mostly long range with a Sharps and I wipe as often as possible.  I don't care if my lube will let me shoot 100 shots with out wipin'  I don't think the less than a minute it takes me to push 2 wet and 2 dry patches is a waste of time or takes much effort. 

My deer tallow/beeswax mix will let me clean 99% of the foulin' out with 1 dry flannel patch.  The higher melin' point of the deer tallow and the fact there is nothin' in my lube that is liquid at room temp makes me more sure the lube will not melt out in 100 degree weather.  If I shot long strings with out cleanin' in a revolver or lever gun I might look to somethin' different if needed.  I have a large wet lube star on my muzzle and recovered bullets have lots of lube left in the grooves.  So even though I only have a 30" barrel I think it will work with a longer one.  This is with either the RCBS-500-BPS ot the Lyman 457122 huntin' bullet.

With pistol type rounds I would not use a grease cookie, with the BPS bullet I use a lube soaked wad as per other posts here on this fourum.  With the 457122 I don't, cause I want all the powder I can in the case.  Since it is a huntin' bullet 1 shot should be enough, if not I'll clean with a pull though and wait again. 

[J.D. Stawker]

With the bullets you are talking about using, a grease cookie is not needed.  They come into play when using a bullet design with a single narrow lube groove. Those designs don't hold enough lube and need extra lube.  I use them when shooting the meister bullets.  I melt my lube mix  and then pour it onto a pan of water till the lube is about 1/8" thick. I let it cool and lift it off the water. When I load I just push the case mouth through the sheet to make the cookie. I don't use cards. I do set my bullets in the box lead down just in case though.  I do have the lube adhere to the powder and base of the bullet creating a "tracer" effect. It doesn't hurt accuracy enough at CAS ranges for me to tell the difference. It would at long range though.  With the bullets designed for BP using multiple wide lube grooves, cookies are not needed at CAS ranges.

To the esteemed Dr. Flynch. Thank you so much for your discourse on waxes, oils, and lubes. It was quite enlightening. I will print off a copy to go into my reloading files.