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

[Major 2]

I'm thinking everybody had some favorite recipe'
Might even have been a regional thing....

Here in the 'Glades is was Gator Grease

Murphy's Oil Soap , glycerin & green dye # 3

[sundance44`s]

It wouldn`t take long to mix up a good brew of lube with whats around the kitchen ...the rest of the time , i agree with DD lets watch the Cat fight ! ring side ! 

[Cyrille]

Move over!

[Advertising]

[Be-A-triss Bandit]

Home made Lye Soap is 25% glycerin.  If you add more oil or fat and smelly stuff after the lye is done and before it gets hard it will stay semi-soft.  Don't need beeswax.  Now dad invented this when he was lost in the wilds of Nebraska during the great blizzard of '33.  He had to make his own soap from charcoal and buffalo fat from the buff he kilt with is pocket knife 'cause there was a blizzard and he didn't have no bullet lube.  If he'd just been a writer for a magazine instead of bein' a minister I'd be sittin' here rich from y'all buying my secret fomula lye soap. 

Hey, if you're stuck in a cave in the snow for months.  Well, she may not be good lookin' but she's the only girl in town.  And she'll smell good from using all that lye soap.

[Wills Point Pete]

 Well, one of the operative words in the question is "ranch". I think it would be safe to assume that he butchered his own stock, most ranchers do, or did. This means he had a good supply of lard.
 Add some beeswax, either store-bought or from his own hives and there are two big ingediiants right there. Fact is, a body could do just fine with only those ingreiiants.
 To make things even better add a third, some kind of liquid vegetable oil, I've fooled with olive oil but it seems that the cheapest pure veg oil on the supermarket shelf is just as good as the most expensive olive oil.
 Here is my super-secret formula, please kill yourself after reading...
 About fifty percent, more or less of beeswax, the rest lard. That is a high summer recipe. As the weather cools add some veg oil until it is as soft as you like.
 All these are available on a ranch.
 Further research prooved that vegetable shortning works just about as well as lard.
 It ain't 'zactly rocket surgery nor brain science. There's lots of slippery stuff that works, much is found on a ranch. Garbe and Venturino made money do to skillful marketing, their goo ain't any better than Dick's or mine or Be-A-Triss' Dad's lye soap.
 What counts far more than the formula is that there is enough of whatever one uses.
 

[Adirondack Jack]

Pete, your last line is telling.  Of course enough lube is key.  Sometimes the answer is a bullet such as the big lube bullets.  Sometimes such an answer doesn't exist, and one must try to run a lube "rich" enough to do the job at the available payload, or go to cookies, etc.  I'm thinking about the challenge of the .50-70 I have, with it's 36 inch pipe.  Ya gotta have some mighty fine lube to work all theway to the snout in bullets made in the reproduction original molds.  And yet the literature says it was done.

[Grizzle Bear]

I think SPG is beeswax, tallow, and a little bit of lanolin.

I just use beeswax and Crisco, works just as good.

You just don't want to use anything petroleum based for black powder lube, the two do not mix well!


Grizzle Bear

[Wills Point Pete]

 Adirondack Jack, stop worrying and make up your loads with a grease cookie. They ain't 'zaclkly hard to make. Drop some beeswax into a pan of hot water, hot enough to melt it. let it cool and you now have a sheet of beeswax. It should be around an eighth inch thick or so.

 The neat thing is that you can add wax if'n it's too thin, cut a chunk off and remelt if too thick.
 Use your charged case as a cookie cutter by pressing the sheet down on it. Use a pencil or dowel to push that beeswax wad down to the powder.

 Now, take a ball of your favorite lube and place it onto that beeswax wad. With that long tube and big caliber I'd try about a .45 ball to start with. Place a card or fiber wad over that, seat your bullet.
 
 Fire off a round and see what kind of lube star you get at the muzzle. Not enough? Add more lube.

 I load all kinds of storebought cast and swaged bullets over The Holy Black by melting out the crayon lube and shooting them over a grease cookie. Sometimes I don't even bother relubing, the grease cookie is plenty. I shoot those hollow based .454 Remington .45 Colt swaged lead bullets over the grease cookie with that black wax stuff all over and the work fine in a 24 inch tube, black wax and all.