SPG vs. beeswax/tallow

[flyingcollie]

Lately, I've been running into guys who don't actually shoot BP, but seem to be full of advice about bullet lube, specifically that SPG is the only thing to use.  Can anyone with some real-life  experience compare it with  "traditional" home-made lube recipes, like beeswax/tallow 50-50 ?

[Lucky R. K.]

Can anyone with some real-life  experience compare it with  "traditional" home-made lube recipes, like beeswax/tallow 50-50 ?

I have been making my own BP bullet lube for about twenty years now using it in local, national and international competitions with no problems.  It contains beeswax, Crisco, and canola oil in a 50%-40%-10% ratio.  You can vary the percentage of beeswax to control the firmness of the lube.

There are hundreds of receipes out there for a BP lube and almost all of them work at least as well, in most cases better, than SPG. They are also much cheaper to make if you use a lot of lube.  I mold and lube my pistol and rifle bullets as well as the fiber wads I use in the shotgun. 

With a good homemade lube and bullets with a large lube groove you can shoot all day without fouling problems.

Lucky
 

[rifle]

SPG is touted as the best lube fer the Holy Black. First time ever a black powder cartridge rifle match was shot and won with the operator not cleaning the bore after every shot was Steve Garbe using his new secrete recipie lube named SPG lube.
It was described as edible and described as a conditioner for the bore like seasoning an old cast iron frying pan. The more you used it the cleaner the bore stayed suposedly. The other lubes ,the yellow stuff in tubes, sold commercially all seemed to be using the "secrete" ingredient that made SPG Lube so good.
I was told a good while back by a guy somewhere around the net that his Buddy in a labe isolated the incredients in SPG and concluded that it contained "mineral oil" as the lube part and beeswax as the medium in which to hold the lube stuff in suspension in a firmer base.
The "yellow stuff" sold was tested and sold by Thompson Center and touted as being tested with a rifle fired 1,000 times and still was not too fouled to load and fire.
Anywhooooo........there are good lubes out there that compete with SPG Lube. I don't know if they season the bore like SPG has been described to do. Season the bore by firing and cleaning with water and "never solvents or oil to ruin the seasoning and using thelube as a rust preventative".
My experience seems to dictate that nothing I've found works to make a bore impervious to black powder fouling except......when the lube is not petroleum based and is natural like olive oil,Crisco,tallow,Canola oil and is in the wax in large enough a percentage compared to the wax......the softer the lube is because of the lube part of the recipe the better it combates fouling and ...goes down the bore in front of the powder(as in the case of a cap&ball revolver having the lube under the ball on the powder and not over the ball  but can be under the ball and over the ball also).
You  can get into problems with a softer lube on hot summer days or by storing the cartridges in a hot area so in warm weather a stiffer(more wax) lube is a good idea.
Any lube stuff that's natural and in an adequate amount works well when the lube/wax goes down the bore before the powder blast.
In a cap&ball revolver that's needed advise because of the old wifes tale that lube over the balls keeps fouling soft. The rifles with patched balls or anything with a lubed bullet can't help but to go down the bore in front of the powder.  
Anywhooooo....most every top competitor in Black Powder Cartridge competition uses SPG Lube. Most but not all.
Probably the shooters using those bullets with the canaverous lube grooves make out the best when fighting black powder fouling.
Anywhooooo...I can use lube pills(grease cookies) over the powder in cap&baller revolvers and shoot all day without much fouling problem. A hundred balls and up to 200 balls fired. After awhile ,even using the lube pills, the base pin in front of the cylinder can use a little solvent or water to stop any drag that begins to happen. I've tried all manner of lubes from olive oil to tallow and Crisco and oils for cooking and....as long as there's enough of the lube type stuff in the wax/lube recipie it works well.....including SPG Lube.
SPG does work well and does it with black powder or smokeless.
I make my own lube with beeswax,parafin wax and tallow and adjust the amount of wax according to the weather being hot or cold. Make my own lube to be more economical.

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[john boy]

Can anyone with some real-life  experience compare it with  "traditional" home-made lube recipes,

Yes ...
40% Mutton Tallow
40% Paraffin - an alkane, a saturated hydrocarbon of the methane group
20% Beeswax
(1943 recipe in American Rifleman)
Aids fouling control is cold or hot weather and never had any lead fouling

[rifle]

There are Hombres that use the Big Lube Bullets with wax/Crisco in equal amounts and shoot a whole match without much trouble I've read.
I've noticed that the softer the lube is the better it works. I found that equal amounts bees wax,paraffin wax and tallow works well. That's 66 2/3rds% wax to 33 1/3rd % lube stuff.  The Rifleman recipie carries more paraffin that stays solid in hot weather well so.......adjusting with more paraffin in hot weather must make sense.
I've had the equal amounts bees wax,paraffin wax,tallow get too soft in hot weather where it got into the powder instead of laying atop it and caused erratic loads and lesser accuracy........in a Walker cap&baller revolver. That was with lube pills/grease cookies atop the powder.
I use the equal amounts bees and parraffin wax and tallow (or olive oil,canola oil, Crisco ect. in place of tallow) and don't get leading in the revolvers cap&baller or cartridge or rifle(muzzle load or cartridge using black powder) but the velosities are relatively low compared to the faster rifle cartridges and all. It's the fouling that gets the blackpowder loads problematic since leading happens at faster velosities most of the time and not the black powder loads where the velosities are limited. Like using cast bullets in place of copper jacketed in 30/30 or 30-06 ect.ect. is where the leading problem is at with smokeless powder.
It's the smokeless loads that need be watched fer the leading.
I've only got the leading in one rifle barrel all these past years and it's a muzzleloader with a 45/70 barrel 1-22 twist and loads using a bullet swag that puts the rifling engraved on the bullet to be able to load easily. I need to use pure soft lead in that gun and I thunk it's the obstuation of the soft lead that lets the bullet get too tight and too tight bullets lead barrels. I use 75 gr. black FFg in the gun.
Any other rifle or revolver never leaded fer me using black powder. I attribute that to the fact the velosities are relatively low and the bullets fit the barrels well...not too tight or loose.
I use pure lead almost exclusively too....not a hardened alloy.....even with smokelss powder.
It's the use of lead bullets where normally jacketed copper bullets are used that causes problems with the velosity being too high and leading barrels.
I think it's the velosities and higher pressures that cause most of the leading problems and the lube type is lesser involved in that leading.
I guess I'm trying to say that leading isn't the demon being exorsised but the black powder fouling is the problem being atacked with lube type and the  lower velositiy black powder.
Anywhoooo.....the use of SPG Lube versas homemade lube is actually a trial and error "try it and see" type thing with a shooter wanting to actually know what will work best fer them.
Going to a place on the net where the black powder cartridge competitors hang out might devulge some good info....or raise more questions.
I guess a person wanting to know might need get some real life experience under the belt to be assured of what reality is. Not a bad thing ...needing to shoot more to experiment.

[Ranch 13]

Lately, I've been running into guys who don't actually shoot BP, but seem to be full of advice about bullet lube, specifically that SPG is the only thing to use.  Can anyone with some real-life  experience compare it with  "traditional" home-made lube recipes, like beeswax/tallow 50-50 ?

 There's a number of commercial lubes that work as well or better than SPG, and most cost less as well. One of my favorites is Bullshop's NASA lube.
 You can follow a bajillion lube recipes that all work within reason, most have way to much stuff crammed into them to do much good, and if you take into consideration the cost of the raw materials, your time to devlope and test a lube, one really needs to wonder if making your own is such a hot deal.
 2 Simple lube recipes that have been around since before smokeless powder was invented. 1 part bees wax to 3 parts spermicetti ( can't get spermicetti since it's illegal for US citizens to have anything from sperm whales) so substitute jojoba oil.
 Another that works rather well and was a great favorite of the Shuetzen shooters equal parts beeswax and petroleum jelly, and more wax for hot weather , more Vaseline for colder.

[Cuts Crooked]

Tried 'em all (well, a bunch of em anyway) and never found anything that works better than deer tallow and beeswax. And it NEVER goes rancid!

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

Back when I used to pan lube bullets I used a mix of about 50/50 beeswax and Crisco. It worked fine. These days I use SPG simply because it is more convenient to buy the sticks that pop into my lube sizer. But my old Crisco beeswax mixture always worked fine.

[Earl Brasse]

Spg works great but...you can't just size up a big batch of bullets & leave them for long periods of time.

It rots & dries out.

Cuts Crooked, how long can you store sized bullets?

Anyone else have a recipe for BP that allows you to leave them sized for long perods of time?

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Spg works great but...you can't just size up a big batch of bullets & leave them for long periods of time.

It rots & dries out.

Cuts Crooked, how long can you store sized bullets?

Anyone else have a recipe for BP that allows you to leave them sized for long perods of time?

Yeah!  I learned that.   I now keep cast bullets in 50 rd cartridge box inserts, wrapped in a sandwich bag, until I am ready to lubrisize and load them.

[Cuts Crooked]

Earl,

Donno........I haven't reach the rancid point yet and it's +5 years on some of my 45-70 slugs.

[john boy]

Anyone else have a recipe for BP that allows you to leave them sized for long perods of time?

Yep for several years, again ... the mutton tallow - paraffin and beeswax. 

And if anyone can top the credibility of this lube - bring it on:
I store a lot of bullets in foil faced cardboard tobacco cans.  They were under 36" of salt water from Super Storm Sandy.  After the water was removed from the basement,  for close to 2 months the cans were filled partially with water before I got to pour it out.  NO lube separated from the GG's and was as good as when I pan lubed the bullets! 

[Jefro]

I have been making my own BP bullet lube for about twenty years now using it in local, national and international competitions with no problems.  It contains beeswax, Crisco, and canola oil in a 50%-40%-10% ratio.  You can vary the percentage of beeswax to control the firmness of the lube.

There are hundreds of receipes out there for a BP lube and almost all of them work at least as well, in most cases better, than SPG. . 

With a good homemade lube and bullets with a large lube groove you can shoot all day without fouling problems.

Lucky
 

Anyone else have a recipe for BP that allows you to leave them sized for long perods of time?

Howdy Earl, the recipe from Lucky RK is a good one. I make the same one except I use 5% canola oil and 5% lanalion. I have some that have been in my garage for a good many years without any problem. The store bought ones with SPG have dried up and become flaky. Good Luck

Jefro Relax-Enjoy

[Earl Brasse]

Great, I'll copy those down.

I use a Star & like to size/lube up batches & store them in the empty plastic bullet trays people toss out at the range.  It keeps them from sticking together & they stack well.  (depending on the style)

What I'd like is to be able to get a large amount done & store them in 50cal. cans & be done with it for awhile,
(or at least move on to the next caliber) 

But, I really don't want to cast/lube/size 3-5 k bullets of 5 or 6 types of bullets just to have the lube rot & dry out.  That takes all the fun right out of it.

[Mad Mucus]

For the Aussies.....

4 parts beeswax, 3 parts copha, 1 part olive oil

 

[fourfingersofdeath]

For the Aussies.....

4 parts beeswax, 3 parts copha, 1 part olive oil

 

My mate has an American wife and I was talking to her in the supermarket once and she was complaining that they didn't have Crisco. As I was talking to her, one of the guys I used to work with was walking past and I nodded to him. He is gay and a bit of a comedian and he said, 'try the sex shop sweethheart, they sell it!' I cracked up and she punched him in the stomach with a big laugh.

[john boy]

He is gay and a bit of a comedian and he said, 'try the sex shop sweethheart, they sell it!'

And if you don't like to use a drop tube to settle the powder column ... they also sell vibrators! 

[Steel Horse Bailey]

And if you don't like to use a drop tube to settle the powder column ... they also sell vibrators!  

     

I have had good luck with simple beeswax "watered down" with Olive oil.  I have no idea what percentage the ingredients are, but if I made a guess, it'd probably be about 60% o-oil to 40% b-wax.  I make my lube extra-soft for a specific (actually TWO) reason(s).   My primary use was for pan-lubing the BigLube tm boolits I was casting back then.  I also took a goodly portion of the mix, added MUCH more o-oil to make it much softer, to use as lube for my Cap'n'Ball guns.  I have a lube tool sold by Dixie that resembles a big brass cake decorator that works like a syringe.  The lube is soft enough to squeeze from this tool.  I still get the best results from my C'nB guns greasing on top of the seated ball.  It IS messy, but there's always plenty of lube for the ball, sealing the chamber, and most importantly, keeping the fouling soft.

This spring, when I broke out my reloading stuff, I gathered all of the items I needed and noticed that the bullets I had cast & lubed from over 2 years ago, had partially "dried up" lube.  I decided to shoot some to see if the lube still did the job.  Well, it  did with no problem. I had cast & pan-lubed the boolits, then kept them in (relatively) well-sealed Zip-Lock bags and some in Dillon "parts boxes."  Of course, the ones that were in the "not-really-very-well-sealed part boxes had dried more, but they all shot well, and the remaining lube "re-constituted" upon firing, and so continued to do its' job.

The other thing I've had that "dried up" before it got used was the "Waterglass" (sodium silicate) I use to seal my Brass 12 ga. BP shotgun rounds.  It took about 8 to 10 months to dry out completely to where I had to re-seal them.  Re-sealing brass BP shells isn't a big deal and is easily fixed in about 5 minutes for a box of 25.

The joys of BP loading ... and shooting.  It ain't for the faint of heart ... But when your shooting Pard lets loose with a full load of BP and you see that big red, white 'n yellow flame, plus the beautiful cloud of billowing white smoke and hear that deep B*O*O*M! you'll know WHY  you go to all the trouble to load your shells with that most wonderful of all shooting powders!

[Noz]

Yes ...
40% Mutton Tallow
40% Paraffin - an alkane, a saturated hydrocarbon of the methane group
20% Beeswax
(1943 recipe in American Rifleman)
Aids fouling control is cold or hot weather and never had any lead fouling

If I recall correctly, that is the formula that was used during the Original unpleasantness with England.
Been around a long time.

[flyingcollie]

Not to be a pissant, Noz, but I think paraffin is a petroleum wax, prolly wasn't around for the Spirit of '76 . . .

Thanks for all the input . . . what I gather is that beeswax is "the stuff", needs to be made a bit softer with tallows or vegetable oils, and if hot weather poses a problem, paraffin will stiffen up the melting point.

FWIW, if you're rendering animal fat for the tallow, a tallow that goes rancid isn't fully rendered out. I'd guess mutton tallow may be handierr than some other animal/vegetable oil choices, just because it tends to set up with a waxy consistency . . .  best part of it, you can use your bullet lube for home lighting (beeswax and tallow makes good candles), shoe grease and mustache wax !!