Ian
Notorious member
Some things I've discovered myself or because of the ideas of others, in my guns that may be of interest. Not carved in stone, and in no particular order:
1. Too slippery is bad. This means most synthetics. This means anything with uniform molecules from a slice of the spectrum.
2. High viscosity index is over-rated. Some of the best lubes I've shot had oils in them with a VI of around 45.
3. Paraffin wax makes lots of smoke when shot. It also adds some consistency to bore condition when cold.
4. Solids are of little use. Some like moly disulphide, graphite, mica, etc. in their lube, I don't. The only exception from my testing has been hBN in the 5-micron range, and organo-metallic zinc and moly compounds, but those are so small as to not be considered particulates. One thing I never did test was acetylene black, that one might show some promise. Generally, if it won't stay suspended in molten lube, forget it.
5. Lithium greases are a double-edged sword in lubes. Lithium stearate is a much more effective "lube" by itself than some other stearates (sodium in particular), but it is a very small molecule and doesn't hold the lube concoction together very well in very hot weather, high-velocity, rapid fire scenarios unless it's boosted with another stearate or some good microwaxes. My mileage.
6. Sodium stearate is very useful in all sorts of lubes, but is also a double-edged sword. It has been shown in some instances to improve and extreme cold-weather lube, but I feel it's principle benefit is keeping things consistent in hot weather. SS is a huge molecule, almost a fiber. I think it physically scrubs itself out of the bore and, like all the metal salts, is highly polar and really holds on to oils and melted waxes well. It seems to work best with NON-polar, straight-chain paraffin oils and branched-chain micro-crystalline waxes. Drawbacks are moisture absorption and narrow list of ingredients that play well with it.
7. Consistency Of Residuals Encountered (term coined by Eutectic from the CB and other forums) is the absolute most important characteristic a lube can have. Simplest way to have consistent bore condition is for the lube to leave very little behind, but still leave enough to even-out rough or pitted bores so they shoot as consistently as do hand-lapped, stainless-steel barrels.
8. Lube has to go liquid to work. I've made a variety of lubes that either didn't melt or didn't change state at all and got lube streaking, sometimes leading down the last part of the bore. Never good. Gummy bores and dynamic CORE don't make for good shooting. Several heavy, full-synthetic, non-melt greases I tried and one type of copper-based polybutene brake caliper slide grease rounded out my non-melt lube quest and results were dismal without a wax component. Even then, not good to have high amounts of non-melting ingredients. This is one of many reasons I never pursued the DuPont Krytox non-melting oil and grease line, no point to even test the stuff, particularly considering the toxicity and $200/ounce price tag.
9. Lube can be made to go liquid under pressure alone or by heat. I think we need a little of both, but mostly the pressure thing. You get this with certain oils and using some sort of metal soap and wax.
10. Calcium soap sucks at high velocity and/or pressure. That means Alox and most marine greases. The calcium drops out and builds up in the bore like soap scum in a bathtub, requiring frequent cleanings to maintain accuracy. Short version, it is anti-CORE.
11. Calcium sulphonate also sucks. Not sure why.
12. Alternative thickeners like wood flour, powdered paper, Metamucil, corn starch, baker's cake flour, and a few others I'm probably forgetting have all been dismal failures that caused leading at any speed.
13. Leave the lanolin and Carnauba wax OUT if you shoot in temps below 40'F. Never use more than 5% of either one.
14. I have found exactly zero benefit to any of the traditional "EP" or extreme pressure additives in bullet lube. Lead alloy bullets are too soft to benefit from the way these lubes work in steel-on-steel applications. In fact, about the only reason I can see to use an automotive grease in lube is for the lithium soap content, the color dye, the tackifiers, and the anti-oxidant and/or anti-corrosion package. Tackifiers are easily obtained without grease (Lucas oil stabilizer, bar and chain oil, bird repellent gel, etc).
15. Ester-based oils will blend with just about anything, and help other types of oil blend with each other. Just be careful of the esters because they are scary slick and 1% is sometimes too much. Same with castor oil being slick and very much polar, except you have to stand on your head to keep castor oil from weeping out of finished lube.
16. "(lube) either needs to all stay or go at the muzzle"---Runfiverun. All go is much easier to achieve and is more predictable through the spectrum of lube groove designs, rifling dimensions, type of gun, caliber, twist rate, and velocity, says me. If I only shot one gun all the time, within a 40-degree temperature window, very little of this would matter and I'd just make a custom-fit lube. If lube doesn't all go, accuracy suffers badly, even with large-bore revolvers at 15 yards. At 100 yards with rifles it can make an inch or more difference if some chunks of lube are hanging on long enough to splat on the paper. I've seen too-sticky lubes take a gun/load that does a 3/4" ragged hole at 15 yards and turn it into three inches, and turn it back to 3/4" within one two or three shots of going back to a softer, less sticky lube. Seen it more than once, in more than one gun. The only kind of sticky I like is that which beeswax and microwax impart, and it goes right away by the time the bullet is through the rifle's throat. Not so with some tackifiers. This is why lanolin sucks in the cold, and too much polybutene gets you into trouble.
17. Lube doesn't have to be "hard" for high velocity, but it does need to be "soft" for low-velocity. If all your "soft" lube is getting blown off the bullet before it gets in the barrel, check your loading techniques, not your lube. A lube needs to act like a viscous, super-strength dynamic film forming lubricant as the bullet engraves in the bore, then it needs to thin out and become a super-high-speed film a few inches later. It needs to maintain just enough viscosity at the muzzle to keep up obturation as the pressure on the bullet base drops. The characteristics of lube to meet this need, of course, vary widely with gun and load. Something a titch softer than NRA 50/50 has suited ALL my needs from 500 fps to upper 2K fps quite well.
18. Beeswax is still excellent for bullet lube.
19. A small to medium addition of micro-crystalline wax tends to reduce first-shot flyers, generally.
Lamar, Brad, any other bullet lube cooks, your turn!
1. Too slippery is bad. This means most synthetics. This means anything with uniform molecules from a slice of the spectrum.
2. High viscosity index is over-rated. Some of the best lubes I've shot had oils in them with a VI of around 45.
3. Paraffin wax makes lots of smoke when shot. It also adds some consistency to bore condition when cold.
4. Solids are of little use. Some like moly disulphide, graphite, mica, etc. in their lube, I don't. The only exception from my testing has been hBN in the 5-micron range, and organo-metallic zinc and moly compounds, but those are so small as to not be considered particulates. One thing I never did test was acetylene black, that one might show some promise. Generally, if it won't stay suspended in molten lube, forget it.
5. Lithium greases are a double-edged sword in lubes. Lithium stearate is a much more effective "lube" by itself than some other stearates (sodium in particular), but it is a very small molecule and doesn't hold the lube concoction together very well in very hot weather, high-velocity, rapid fire scenarios unless it's boosted with another stearate or some good microwaxes. My mileage.
6. Sodium stearate is very useful in all sorts of lubes, but is also a double-edged sword. It has been shown in some instances to improve and extreme cold-weather lube, but I feel it's principle benefit is keeping things consistent in hot weather. SS is a huge molecule, almost a fiber. I think it physically scrubs itself out of the bore and, like all the metal salts, is highly polar and really holds on to oils and melted waxes well. It seems to work best with NON-polar, straight-chain paraffin oils and branched-chain micro-crystalline waxes. Drawbacks are moisture absorption and narrow list of ingredients that play well with it.
7. Consistency Of Residuals Encountered (term coined by Eutectic from the CB and other forums) is the absolute most important characteristic a lube can have. Simplest way to have consistent bore condition is for the lube to leave very little behind, but still leave enough to even-out rough or pitted bores so they shoot as consistently as do hand-lapped, stainless-steel barrels.
8. Lube has to go liquid to work. I've made a variety of lubes that either didn't melt or didn't change state at all and got lube streaking, sometimes leading down the last part of the bore. Never good. Gummy bores and dynamic CORE don't make for good shooting. Several heavy, full-synthetic, non-melt greases I tried and one type of copper-based polybutene brake caliper slide grease rounded out my non-melt lube quest and results were dismal without a wax component. Even then, not good to have high amounts of non-melting ingredients. This is one of many reasons I never pursued the DuPont Krytox non-melting oil and grease line, no point to even test the stuff, particularly considering the toxicity and $200/ounce price tag.
9. Lube can be made to go liquid under pressure alone or by heat. I think we need a little of both, but mostly the pressure thing. You get this with certain oils and using some sort of metal soap and wax.
10. Calcium soap sucks at high velocity and/or pressure. That means Alox and most marine greases. The calcium drops out and builds up in the bore like soap scum in a bathtub, requiring frequent cleanings to maintain accuracy. Short version, it is anti-CORE.
11. Calcium sulphonate also sucks. Not sure why.
12. Alternative thickeners like wood flour, powdered paper, Metamucil, corn starch, baker's cake flour, and a few others I'm probably forgetting have all been dismal failures that caused leading at any speed.
13. Leave the lanolin and Carnauba wax OUT if you shoot in temps below 40'F. Never use more than 5% of either one.
14. I have found exactly zero benefit to any of the traditional "EP" or extreme pressure additives in bullet lube. Lead alloy bullets are too soft to benefit from the way these lubes work in steel-on-steel applications. In fact, about the only reason I can see to use an automotive grease in lube is for the lithium soap content, the color dye, the tackifiers, and the anti-oxidant and/or anti-corrosion package. Tackifiers are easily obtained without grease (Lucas oil stabilizer, bar and chain oil, bird repellent gel, etc).
15. Ester-based oils will blend with just about anything, and help other types of oil blend with each other. Just be careful of the esters because they are scary slick and 1% is sometimes too much. Same with castor oil being slick and very much polar, except you have to stand on your head to keep castor oil from weeping out of finished lube.
16. "(lube) either needs to all stay or go at the muzzle"---Runfiverun. All go is much easier to achieve and is more predictable through the spectrum of lube groove designs, rifling dimensions, type of gun, caliber, twist rate, and velocity, says me. If I only shot one gun all the time, within a 40-degree temperature window, very little of this would matter and I'd just make a custom-fit lube. If lube doesn't all go, accuracy suffers badly, even with large-bore revolvers at 15 yards. At 100 yards with rifles it can make an inch or more difference if some chunks of lube are hanging on long enough to splat on the paper. I've seen too-sticky lubes take a gun/load that does a 3/4" ragged hole at 15 yards and turn it into three inches, and turn it back to 3/4" within one two or three shots of going back to a softer, less sticky lube. Seen it more than once, in more than one gun. The only kind of sticky I like is that which beeswax and microwax impart, and it goes right away by the time the bullet is through the rifle's throat. Not so with some tackifiers. This is why lanolin sucks in the cold, and too much polybutene gets you into trouble.
17. Lube doesn't have to be "hard" for high velocity, but it does need to be "soft" for low-velocity. If all your "soft" lube is getting blown off the bullet before it gets in the barrel, check your loading techniques, not your lube. A lube needs to act like a viscous, super-strength dynamic film forming lubricant as the bullet engraves in the bore, then it needs to thin out and become a super-high-speed film a few inches later. It needs to maintain just enough viscosity at the muzzle to keep up obturation as the pressure on the bullet base drops. The characteristics of lube to meet this need, of course, vary widely with gun and load. Something a titch softer than NRA 50/50 has suited ALL my needs from 500 fps to upper 2K fps quite well.
18. Beeswax is still excellent for bullet lube.
19. A small to medium addition of micro-crystalline wax tends to reduce first-shot flyers, generally.
Lamar, Brad, any other bullet lube cooks, your turn!