Aluminum-based food grade grease?

[Elkins45]

I stumbled across a blog where the writer was discussing gun lubricants. He made a pretty good case for one of the AL-based food grade greases as a gun lube. That got me to wondering if anyone has tried an Al grease in a bullet lube?

The particular Lubriplate brand product he mentioned is about $14 a tube, so I don't know how economical it would be in volume. Are there particular characteristics of an Al soap that would make it a good/bad/indifferent choice?

 

[9.3X62AL]

OK--I'm no expert on lube constituents by any means. But I gotta go on record here and say that the term "Aluminum-based FOOD GRADE greases" gives me some pause, and makes me wonder just what the ^%&$ I'm sitting down to eat at a dining establishment.

That is all.

 

[Brad]

Food grade means it is safe to use on things like grinders, slicers, and other food handling equipment.
Al based grease is also less likely to wash out with water exposure.

I don't know how well Al grease would work in a lube, never tried it. I bet Ian or Lamar will have more info. I do believe Al grease doesn't play well with many other grease types.

 

[RBHarter]

In a particular lube thread elsewhere there are several Lubriplate bullet lubes . While I can't speak to aluminum based I do know they are lithium based .

For what it's worth a compound of 50/50 Lubriplate /STP is the alternative assembly lube called out in Continental, Lycoming and Pratt & Whitney air craft engines . It's thick ,slick and sticky.

As for what's in the food chain we're probably better off not knowing ,we'd starve to death avoiding everything that might be tainted with something bad for us.....

 

[fiver]

aluminum stearate is what was used to make the grease.

I have most of a can of it here, but it doesn't lock up the oils in quite the same way as a lithium or sodium or the one that starts with C does. [calcium stearate DUH!]
but it will gel the oils at a much lower cooking temperature so has a much lower viscosity rating for a grease [flows in cold temperatures]
quite often it's used in high speed [tight tolerance] type applications to keep the oils in place without as much fling out.

you can combine stearates to work together.
the lube I'm using right now has aluminum, lithium, and sodium stearates in it.
but it also has about 1500 other oils and waxes in it too.
I have been slowly adding more and more wax to the initial mix and noting the results as I go along.
I even bound it all up with more sodium stearate and more beeswax.
starting out soft and wet and manipulating the lube with different additions [mica, micro-talc] added to the lubed bullets to soak everything up
it still comes down to wax content as far as the firmness and oil dump.

I have had the lube dump out inside the gun and not leave a lube star. [but for sure wetted down everything else in there]
and had it go down the barrel and not leave a lube star.
but smoke like crazy with each shot because the powder gasses were burning it off the inside of the barrel.

okay well I got to wandering there.
anyway.
I wouldn't bother spending the extra money.
just get a tube of Mag-1 #2 chassis grease for 2-3 bucks and add about 35% to your melted bees-wax by liquid volume and stir it all together until it cools too much to stir.

 

[Jeff Michel]

Lubricants containing lithium soaps or any lubricants containing atomized metals to reduce friction or to impart "anti-seize" characteristics is not permitted even for incidental contact with food or food contact surfaces. Lubriplate makes a ton of different types of lubricating oils and greases, I am only aware of a couple in their lineup that are approved food food contact, They would be clearly marked "H1" on the container if acceptable in food processing. This "H1" classification apply's to all food grade lubricants. Most of your approved lubes for food is identical to "crisco" shortening, only without soybean oil which is an allergen if not hydrogenated.

 

[fiver]

there are other 'gellants' besides the stearates but they lack [or contain different] property's than the stearates have.
some need to be mixed with a napthenic fluid such as acetone to make a slurry that will mix with the targeted oil like flax seed, mineral, or safflower oil.
others rely on long carbon chains, chemical reactions, or actual fibrous material to bind everything tighter together. [cross linking]
and some just basically absorb the oil like a sponge and act much like a boolit lube.
these usually don't make a grease such as most think about it.
but make a 'thicker oil' with clingy property's to avoid washout or caking or temp drop out where the gelling agent either locks up the oil or drops it all out of suspension.

 

[Brad]

Yikes. Acetone isn't napthenic. A great solvent, yes. Napthenic, no.
Napthenic compounds have a cyclic structure in them, acetone does not.
Glen could explain far more so I won't bore you more.

I have learned way more about grease from a couple of yahoos here than I ever needed to know. They know who they are.

Fiver, Ian and I have all pretty well decided that a key to a good lube is the wax carrier and what it is made from. A mix of waxes seems best as it lets each wax bring someing to the dance and help balance out flaws of other waxes. Actual lubricants play a pretty small role. Satan lube doesn't even have a real lubricant but it sure works!

I plan to see how BR works in my rifles this summer. I have a few tweeks I have discussed with Ben I want to test too.

 

[fiver]

the word solvent wouldn't come to me for some reason, and I was thinking of more than one type of gellant.
so I kinda lumped everything together trying to keep things simple.
that's a good catch though.

 

[Brad]

I was trying to find a photo of a good, dry lube star. It was on my 336 using dry shoot it lube. I think it was one of the early lube tests, even before tranny gel. No problem telling the rifle is microgoove

 

[fiver]

ummm I just got a 5 gallon bucket of blue colored calcium based marine grease today.
that ring any bells?
I know the soft version takes 1 tsp of Vaseline per stick to make it from the hard version.

 

[Brad]

Hmmmmm

 

[Ian]

Add microwax and Ivory and you got something there. Straight Ca and Na stearates play well with each other most of the time.

As for the aluminum stuff in the OP, Aluminum does some interesting things. It is the only grease base that re-gels after being pushed beyond it's drop point (the melting point of the metal salt). Could be good, could be bad. Residuals on remelted bullets would be a decided negative. A known fun feature is the Al won't play well with Ca salt residue in bores and more or less makes a combination asphalt/bathtub scum in the bore due to the reaction in a hot barrel. Most H1 greases are made with paraffin oil instead of branched-chain brightstock oils due to the lower cancer risk of the straight-chain stuff. I've had far better consistency on target from bullet lubes made with paraffin oil than those made from the modern engine or gear type lube oils.

 

[fiver]

I was thinking about adding the ivory just a few minutes ago.
it shouldn't take very much, the less the better.
but the normal add the grease and melt, then the ivory, and then the wax should make a nice lube.
I'm thinking 35% grease but only about 3% ivory, a smidge [10%] of soft candle wax to help with the feathering and the bulk bees-wax.
basing the numbers of the others on the amount of wax used.

 

[Ian]

Ca is a fine and greasy molecule. Na is fibrous, coarse, and comparatively large. I don't know what the correct proportions would be to get them to nest nicely together, but I do know that to a certain extent one fixes the problems of the other. Adding Ivory fixed the Ca fouling in one lube I made with Shell trailer bearing grease, Li grease cured the Na fouling in TnT, still have and use some of that batch in one of my sizers and have about a pound of refill for it. Wax cured the Na fouling in most of the soap lubes as well. Nothing except Na that I've tried cured the Ca fouling from Alox, not counting the polymer stuff in BLL that keeps the LLA salts from accumulating.

I never did figure out how to cure the Ca sulphonate and moly fouling from Mobil Centaur grease.

 

[fiver]

I still haven't started on the zddp stuff yet.
it is still rolling around in my head, but I'm trying to keep my lubes to a useful two-three for a bit while i work out the wax base thing better.
the too hard homo-lube fiasco of a bit back might not be the bad thing i was thinking it was.
the more i work with it the harder #2 and #3 batches are actually looking like they might turn out to be a better option.
a 50-50 mix of medium soft #1 and hard #2 seems to tighten groups up over just #1 alone.
now i gotta work on another caliber and set a base-line load and go to #2 alone and see how it affects things.


I did work out a better coating/preservative replacement for NU-finish in the tumbler though.
Mc Guires gold polymer car wash lays down a nice coat and works into the media faster.
it's also cheaper for a gallon of that than a little bottle of the NU-finish.
it also works in the wet tumblers as a replacement for the dish soap.

 

[Elkins45]

I had to order some stuff from Grainger and I couldn't resist adding a tube of the CRC version of Al-based #2 food grade grease to my order. It's white and the first listed ingredients are zinc oxide and mineral oil. So if it doesn't work as a lube you could always use it as a sunscreen and/or skin softener.

I am going to set most of it aside to try as a gun lube, but I am going to mix up a stick worth of 50/50 with beeswax just for giggles. Maybe in 2-3 years I will get around to testing it.

 

[fiver]

add a little glycerin and you'd have a nice sunscreen-skin moisturizer combination.

Zinc is one of those things that's still on my lube making to-do list.
I had nabbed a bottle of mineral oil base with ZDDP in it some time ago but little girl used it in the differentials on her expedition.

 

[Ian]

Zinc oxide is best used on your nose or in paint.

 

[Elkins45]

Curiosity got the best of me and I mixed up a couple of ounces 50/50 with beeswax. The result was a lemon yellow glop with a consistency kinda like silly putty crossed with banana pudding. I remelted it with some Gulfwax to 33% of each and it still isn't as hard as the average alox or lithibee stick. This Al-based grease is one humdinger of a softening/plasticizing agent!

I've heard of lubrisizeer heaters, but this stuff may need a lubrisizer chiller! I know I should just throw it away but the tinkerer and hoarder in me just won't let that happen. I think I will at least load up some 45s with the stuff--I have an old Argentine Sistema that wouldn't be much harmed if the bore got zinc plated by my nanner puddin lube.