"Four Quarters" bullet lube

Barn

Active Member
I have started falling in love with the SL-71B and you have to post another lube recipe! Looks like I will be making some more lube.

The more I use the SL-71B the more I like it. My SL-71B turned out a lighter color than Gman's. I suppose that it has to do with the crash cooling. The night before I made the lube I filled my lube cake pan half full with water and put it in the freezer. Just before making the lube I lined the lube cake pan above the ice with aluminum foil. After adding the melted beeswax I gave the mixture a quick stir and dumped it into the lube cake pan. As the lube cooled it took on a lighter color.

My question to Ian is which lubes should be crash cooled on top of ice?
 

Ian

Notorious member
Only those containing beeswax. The whole point of crash-cooling (invented by JonB by the way, out of kindness to the work of the bees when he added a portion of beeswax to SL-68.somethinoruther, and he used his readily-available copious quantities of snow for cooling) was to prevent the scorching of the beeswax.

Scorching beeswax has haunted me with the soap lubes since I began trying to make it. I was told beewax, soap, Vaseline, and a dab of castor oil and that's it, heat carefully and don't burn it. Well, that AIN'T it and it took about three years and SL-1.0 to about SL-50 something just trying to crack that nut, then I finally learned how to make the stuff backwards by adding beeswax after I'd made soap/vaseline/castor grease at full temp and cooled it about 200 degrees while stirring. This made an opaque, lumpy goo but with enough stirring and re-heating at relatively low temperature it came out ok and shot reasonably well. THEN I figured out the beeswax wasn't beeswax, and that whole drama started and I began experimenting with microwax...which lead to SL-67 and on up because the petro waxes can withstand the 460° liquidus threshold of the soap, no crash-cooling needed, and you can even make fabulous hollow sticks with it if you use metal tubes and rods, just pour the liquid into moulds and let it cool naturally into a nice, translucent, homogenous, waxy grease.

Now here's a real kicker of a truth dart: It doesn't matter if you scorch the beeswax a little. It smells horrible, and keeps smelling horrible for a long time (burnt, SOUR smell, imagine if you will putting a rosebud torch to a gooey, house cat turd and you're most of the way there) but I'll be danged if lube made suchly doesn't shoot quite well. Sure, it's dark reddish-brown like Chicory coffee and raises stench to the heavens but actually the scorching doesn't seem to affect the chemical properties of the beeswax negatively, at least not for the purposes of bullet lubricant.

I still think it's a good idea to pre-melt the beeswax and dump it in liquid near the end to minimize the scorching, and crash-cooling will nearly stop the scorching altogether, but more important in my mind's eye is how does it shoot and how hard is it to make. Your call.

If you don't need a hot-weather lube I'd give Pete's 4Q a try, if he says it's good you can take that to the bank. Soap wasn't for accuracy, it was for durability and being able to make a more versatile, functional, soft lube for both hot and cold weather which would also withstand extreme pressure in the barrel without blowing the obturation and still jettison at low pressure. Universal lube for hunting and self-defense ammo in Texas weather conditions was the main goal, not everyone needs those qualities.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
burning the beeswax just adds a bit of carbon.
I would bet it is a very similar carbon chain to the ones used in ATF and 2 stroke oil.
it being surrounded by the natural ester alcohols of the bees-wax would make me tend to think it closer to an off shoot, totally mis-balanced ATF mix.
but nonetheless [shrug]
 

300BLK

Well-Known Member
It smells horrible, and keeps smelling horrible for a long time (burnt, SOUR smell, imagine if you will putting a rosebud torch to a gooey, house cat turd and you're most of the way there) but I'll be danged if lube made suchly doesn't shoot quite well.

That sounds like the experience of a sick mind.:eek:
 

Ian

Notorious member
I haven't actually ever done that, but if you scorch beeswax and soap trying to melt them together, it does conjure and image!
 

Grump

Member
Oh yeah, no soap in 4Q. I should have noticed and realized it probably melts like the old 50/50 Alox/Beeswax I grew up with. Not horribly melty but a bit too much for those times when the shade moves away from the box of ammo. I like its simplicity and would venture into the neverboughtthatstuffbefore territory of scaring up some Assembly Goo.

Now Barn, you have me befuddled by more choices again. I've found your SL-68 (no B) variant, and an SL-68B.2.

Then there's SL-71 with and without beeswax. So how much better is it with the beeswax? I like the less fancy cooking for the 4Q+ but for heat it seems like soap lube remains the way to go.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
soap requires the hot cooking temps so it binds everything together.
look at felix lube it's on the low temp side for making a homogenized lube and it shows in the end result with a sticky soft mix.
add carnuba to it and you shift the flow/melt point to the right.

bumping the waxes, the heat, and the soap amount even more and it leads back to a harder more homogenous end with a higher melt index.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Grump, first thing you need to do is decide what is most important to YOU.
Ian needs a lube that handles heat. Pete needs an extreme cold first shot lube. Trying to decide what to try without first understanding what you need is a good way to end up unhappy.
Pete's 4Q lube hasn't been tried in heat yet, he doesn't get those temps very often. Doesn't mean it can't handle them some, we just don't yer.

Until you try something yourself it is impossible to really know. All that matters is that a lube work with your ammo, in your guns, in the shooting conditions/situations you generally find yourself in.
 

yodogsandman

Well-Known Member
Here we go again! All I need is the assembly goo. I won't shoot when colder than 0*F or when the sweat flows into my eyes over maybe 90*F. Think I can use my slow cooker, crock pot?
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I would think a slow cooker or crock pot would work. The waxes will all melt below boiling point of water.

I need to get some of this made to see how it handles some heat.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I never used a snow bank, just a cool water bath. Hell, I even ran cold tap water on the outside of the pan to cool it faster. Some of us just make do.

Let me know how that crock pot works out. Might be a good way to make it, certainly not likely to scorch anything.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
it takes quite a while to melt wax in a crock pot.
when I make the moly complex lube the last mix [of the two wax blends and the moly stick] is done in a crock pot because I don't want to melt everything.
I just want the waxes to get soft and almost peanut butter like so the moly doesn't fall to the bottom.
I just need the waxes soft enough to run the blender beaters through everything.
 

Eutectic

Active Member
4Q loves a double boiler! You don't need some fancy store bought unit either. One pot that can be supported inside a bigger pot and handled safely will do... An extreme example I use for experiments is a small old teflon coated skillet that my wife threw away. For a new test lube or a formula tweak I don't want a pound of lube! A couple ounces will tell me what I want to know.... (with finger lubed bullets) 1/2" of water boiling, a clean tuna can, needle nose vise grips for a handle, weighed components and go.... Stir with a clean Popsicle stick..... You 180*F microwax will be the last to give up as you stir. When melted carefully set on a flat surface and unsnap Vice-Grips. You will have a nice homogeneous lube when it cools. Wait at least 24 hours to test it; a few days is even better.

Two pots together have to have generous clearance on the sides like 1" or more (or you will get a steam engine demonstration!) Something in the water pot to hold your smaller pot up is a convenience.

I will even make hi-temp soap lubes in 4oz batches in a very small stainless container (no tuna can here!) This is how I have a shelf of almost 100 lube experiments that I can retest again if something creates the need!:confused:

Pete
 
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Grump

Member
I'd love to see some accuracy testing of Four Quarters, SL-68, SL-68B, SL-71, SL-71B, and 666+1 (Don't really have that formulation in my notes, but I have the variant from here called 4Q green + 3.2 which also adds PAG oil...).

Even though some testing last year (?) over on the Bullseye forum showed no real accuracy difference between lubed and powder coated boolits, two things make me hesitate abandoning lube in favor of those fancy colors:
1. The 50-yard Ransom Rest accuracy level for both lubed and PC from both .45s used was barely below 10-ring size. Other testing of lubed bullets often goes into the low 2 inches to sometimes mid-1s.
2. The PC bullets were coated and THEN sized through a Star. All those extra steps and time and baking and such, only to STILL need to pick every one of them up and run them through a sizer??? No thanks. If the results are not statistically different, I'll just pick 'em up once and lube-size 'em and be done.
 

Barn

Active Member
I have not made or tried Four Quarters lube. It looks like a cold weather lube and I am not going to drag my old body out in that type of weather.

I do not remember whether or not I have make any SL-68 lube. I have not made any SL-71 lube.

The most accurate lube I have tried is SL-71B which gives better results than SL-67B which gives better results than 666+1.
 

Ian

Notorious member
There were five versions of SL-68, not counting the "B".

I used up the last of the SL-68.1 in one of my sizers a couple weeks ago and refilled from a big batch of SL-71B made by mixing three other lubes together. I won't get a chance to test it hot this year to see if it holds up as well as 68.1, but so far so good. The small batch I made last year did fine in everything I shot it in, which is why I opted to make a big batch to fill the next hungry sizer.
 

JonB

Halcyon member
I'd love to see some accuracy testing of Four Quarters, SL-68, SL-68B, SL-71, SL-71B, and 666+1 (Don't really have that formulation in my notes, but I have the variant from here called 4Q green + 3.2 which also adds PAG oil...).

Even though some testing last year (?) over on the Bullseye forum showed no real accuracy difference between lubed and powder coated boolits, two things make me hesitate abandoning lube in favor of those fancy colors:
1. The 50-yard Ransom Rest accuracy level for both lubed and PC from both .45s used was barely below 10-ring size. Other testing of lubed bullets often goes into the low 2 inches to sometimes mid-1s.
2. The PC bullets were coated and THEN sized through a Star. All those extra steps and time and baking and such, only to STILL need to pick every one of them up and run them through a sizer??? No thanks. If the results are not statistically different, I'll just pick 'em up once and lube-size 'em and be done.
I'll gladly supply a sample of SL68B to you or anyone else wanting to do some accuracy testing, as long as you post results here in the forum for all to see.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Two kinds of Assemblee Goo, green Firm tack and blue Light tack. Which are we talking about here
in the recipe?

Bill