What would I have available to make BP lube....

[Black River Smith]

....if I were "winter-keeping an isolated ranch just north of Yellowstone National Park".

Just like Steve Garbe way back in the early 90's.  He had to snowmobile out so he did not do a lot of shopping.

So what would he have stored or stocked away in order to make it through winter that could to make up into a yellow waxy substance that has become the hit of BP shooting?

Want to play this guessing game?  Come up with newer items.

Don't believe it would be specificly Bear or Deer tallow.  The items must be generally mass produced items so that they fit in the final idea of mass production.

Butter or Margarine (processed lard)
Candles
Honey
cooking oils
motor oils for large generators
kerosene
hand creams
body oils
hand soaps
soft soaps(back then)
goop
laundry detergents
greases
3 in 1 oil


ADD on,  we must be missing some product in order to produce a great homemade brew.

[The Elderly Kid]

Honey? Have you ever tried to get baked-on honey or any other sugar-rich fluid off a pan? Every shot would coat your barrel with steel-hard enamel.

[Dick Dastardly]

Don't know who Steve Garbe is, but if he's alive, why don't ya ask him.  I've given the formula for Pearl Lube to many and it's made a lot of happy shooters all around the globe.

DD-DLoS

[Advertising]

[Cuts Crooked]

Canning parrafin?

[Fox Creek Kid]

Stve Garbe is the editor of Black Powder Cartridge News, the foremost BP journal for single shot rifles in the country. He is the man who invented SPG bullet lube, which is tallow based. There is none better FOR ITS PRICE RANGE. There is a lube used by some long range BPCR shooters called "White Lightning" that is probably better. However there are two downsides:
1. It's full of synthetic esters (so much for tradition).
2. It costs about $50 lb. 

For CAS ranges it doesn't matter. SPG, Pearl Lube, Wolverine semen  , etc., will work fine, especially using a Big Lube style bullet. Long range shooting is a different matter.

[Cuts Crooked]

For CAS ranges it doesn't matter. SPG, Pearl Lube, Wolverine semen  , etc., will work fine, especially using a Big Lube style bullet. Long range shooting is a different matter.

Anyone brave enuff to get THAT ingrediant don't need no stupid gun fer nuthin!

[Fox Creek Kid]

True, The wolverines I've met are most reluctant to part with it! 

[Black River Smith]

Sorry, for those that do not know.  Steve Garbe is the inventor of 'SPG' bullet lube as Fox Creek stated.

Sorry thought everyone that shot BP knew that story.  Its in most of Mike Venturino's books.  Especially the 'SPG Lubricants BP Cartridge Reloading Primer' By Mike Venturino and Steve Garbe.



Honey would not be in the lube but...  Just throwing out ideas to get the mind thinking.

[Adirondack Jack]

I can't say as I know, but when I recently broke down and bought the lyman luber-sizer, I bought a few different kinds of lube to try out.  SPG is one I ordered, and I hadn't opened the box til I read this thread.

Taking the stick out of the plastic, I gave it a good sniff, and ya know, it smells very much like my Beeswax/crisco lube, which, (say it ain't so), smells like beeswax.  Looks and feels like it too.  Well, we all know it CAN"T BE THAT SIMPLE, but if there is tallow in it, maybe there's some beeswax also.  Maybe it's got some soap or some sch, I dunno.  I ain't a lube guru.

[Be-A-triss Bandit]

It's advertised as containing beeswax.  Smells like maybe soap and tallow.  Doesn't smell like motor oil or 3-in-1.  Smells pretty much non-petroleum, which would make sense.
Do you know the ingredients or are we on a fruitless carousel here?
BB

[Dick Dastardly]

Ho Black River Smith,

I'll ask my first question again.  If Steve Garbe is available, why not ask him what's in his lube?  Otherwise, take a sample to a good analytical lab and have it analyzed.  You'll get a pretty good answer, but it won't be free.  All of us guessing combined won't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting the right answer.

A good lube has to do a number of things, some seemingly contradictory, at the same time.  Simply guessing at a lot of ingredients won't get you an answer.  In order to bring a product to market that performs predictably and reliably all the ingredients have to be consistant from batch to batch.

I'll add that there are some fine vegetable waxes and oils that are very consistant and predictable.  Bees wax is also fairly consistant.  Were I to design a bullet lube around animal fat, I'd want a very good way of testing it's propertys.  I doubt that those conditions or equipment would exist in a winter time cabin in the wilderness.

I think it might be productive to ask what propertys are desireable in a fine bullet lube and reverse engineer the question to get those results.

Having developed two successful bullet lube products I have a feeling for the pitfalls.  The first product was a happy accident with some chemistry background.  That was PL-1.  One of the charms of PL-1 is that it's easy to make at home.  I freely give out the recipe and many shooters are enjoying great results with it all around the world.  The second lube, PL-II, took a LOT of work.  It's not an easy formula to make over a campfire and I won't give out the recipe to it because it's very tricky to alloy.  Here are two similar products that have very different levels of precision needed to successfully make into a fine bullet lube.  PL-II addresses several of the problems associated with PL-1 without giving up any of it's benefits.  Will there be a PL-III? Time will tell.

DD-DLoS

[Black River Smith]

Guys, you are not getting the point here.  He created it while isolated in the Montana winter.  It does not have to be rocket science.

What would someone have available in a home in an isolated area of Montana?  That is all I was asking.

I am not taking this to a final production, but he/they did.   But it had to be common materials not a factory ingredient or a laboratory mixture of specific organic groups to create a new product.  It had to be a combination of off the shelf products or else he could never have made it there. 

DD, Garbe and Venturino were paid not to reveal the materials or else it would never sell to the public as SPG.  It is proprietary information.  The same as any other company lubes.  Natural Lube 1000,  Wonder lube, etc.   No one real know the ingredience.


I just thought some new ideas would come up for all our homemade lubes if we used this approach.  Like the toilet bowl ring idea -- DD.  I used standard car joint grease for over my bullets in C&B and blanks back in the early 90's.  No excessive tar.

This was all for fun, never mind just ignore the posting.
Cuts, I won't delete it but since this is your forum section you may lock it.  Once again one of my posting is not going in the right direction.  Sorry

[Cuts Crooked]

Tell ya what, I'll give it a chance to get back on track. I'd like to see what some ideas are for what might be available in a winter home that would make good lube ingrediants. If folks won't stay on that track, then I'll lock it.

Come on gang, I'll bet the possibilities are nearly endless!

[Adirondack Jack]

Could be any of a bunch of things I guess.  We already are told "tallow based" are we not?  We're told Beeswax, so who knows what else?

Could be anything from Corn Oil to KY jelly (glycerin) in there.

[Be-A-triss Bandit]

My dad claimed he used lye soap as lube for his Trapdoor during the Great Depression.  I've got the 1884 Trapdoor on my mantle.  He handloaded with a punch and hammer.  Didn't resize cases, just filled the bullet grooves and pushed the bullet down with his thumb.  No lube wads and fancy stuff.  Just lye soap.  And if you're wondering, I shoot the Trapdoor and it has shiny rifling all the way to the muzzle.
He had a muzzleloading shotgun but I have no idea what he did with that.
BB

[Cyrille]

This thread, to me has the sound of lawyer talk, "legalize" if you will, amimal fat, oil, grease, beeswax etc.etc.
 "The party of the first part has docketed the proceedings because it has come to our attention and to wit it says in vol.15 of the 8th circuit court
on pg. 396 subsection D paragraph 14  8th line, sentence 4. etc, etc.
 You may as well be discussing "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
 I think each and every BP shooter should be able to use whatever lube suits their need regardless of who made it.
 I've used bacon grease, Crisco, and commercial bp lubes and found that all work well if the firearm is kept in good condition and cleaned properly after range time is over for the day.

[Adirondack Jack]

This thread, to me has the sound of lawyer talk, "legalize" if you will, amimal fat, oil, grease, beeswax etc.etc.
 "The party of the first part has docketed the proceedings because it has come to our attention and to wit it says in vol.15 of the 8th circuit court
on pg. 396 subsection D paragraph 14  8th line, sentence 4. etc, etc.
 You may as well be discussing "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
 I think each and every BP shooter should be able to use whatever lube suits their need regardless of who made it.
 I've used bacon grease, Crisco, and commercial bp lubes and found that all work well if the firearm is kept in good condition and cleaned properly after range time is over for the day.

Ya can use anything ya like if it works.  If ya wanna copy a "proprietary" formula, ya gotta figure it out first, and NO, don't expect the folks selling it to automatically give away the store.  if they hit upon something real good,they are entitled to make a buck.  Ain't nobody ever got Col. Sanders to give up his "seven herbs and spices" or Coca-cola to print the formula on the can, so why should SPG give away their "intellectual" property if they don't want to?

[sundance44`s]

Well i wouldn`t change my lube mix for nothin ..it`s simple as most , beeswax , crisco , 50/50 add a 1/4 cup of olive oil ..thats it .. bullets fly straight , nice star on the end of the barrel , what more could i ask for . use the same mix to lube patches for my front stuffers , and over ball on my revolvers when shooting them cab and ball .
The soap idea mentioned above would probally work into something if no beeswax were around ...maybe even pariffin . My father use to rub large nails across a bar of soap before driveing them to keep them from splitting the wood when hammering home .. worked well.

[Dick Dastardly]

Not that I'd want to over winter in a snowed in cabin, but maybe that's what needs to happen before Black River Smith will get his answer.  One thing for sure.  I'd want a rite good lookin woman around.  Probably no help with the lube, but it would make the nights more interestin'.

One thing that's not being asked here is this.  What was in the cabin before the inventors arrival, what was runnin' around on the hoof or paw and available for the taking and what stuff did he pack in with himself?  Also, did he set out to make bullet lube, or did he do it to avoid boredom?  Knowing this stuff would help.

Aw heck, I tend to get too serious.  Bring two wimmen.  Fights are fun to watch.

DD-DLoS

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

Steve Gerbe and Mike Venturino went in on the SPG venture together. Later on Mike gave or sold (not sure which) his interest in the business to Steve.

It sure does not have to be Rocket Science to make up an acceptable BP lube. I used to make mine out of 50/50 Crisco and Beeswax, substances that would be easily available in the wilds of Montana.