"Holy Navy wax, Batman!"

[Ian]

Fiver is right, we only need to get close. I was most interested to find out that the lower fractions of this stuff are paraffin, and the higher-ups are a mix of lots of stuff, that is a pretty decent clue right there. We could use a little bit of Gulf wax, some mid-140F melt point paraffin, some 160F and 180F microwaxes from Blended waxes and likely be pretty close.

What I'm trying to get are the high boiling point characteristics, the gloss, stretch, and flex of this stuff.

 

[Brad]

If you want flex then microwax is your thing. I see that a blend of melt points of microwax will get us there but with some paraffin added to give some melt point variation.

 

[Josh]

I'm sure they do and would....for a very high fee.

Or a contract for a few hundred lb.

 

[Josh]

Ah ok.

 

[fiver]

is that really 1790cp?
holy Hannah that's a solid.
water usually reads a zero or a one.

plus the 575-f melt temp is beyond most greases, that might be workable if we go back to using something like my E-lube recipes.
remember it done very well using over 50% grease in the mix until the temps broke 90-95-f then it purged.
using a slightly different grease blend, and the higher sodium stearate content this wax [or a mix] could prove out.
remember the sl-61 tests?
the high sodium stearate lubes seemed to need a 'scrubber' like lithium stearate to keep that build up [that caused the vertical stringing] under control.

 

[Pistolero]

Sorry to have missed the original discussion about this navy wax, but I do have to
agree with Ian that this sounds more like a broad temp range fraction from a distillation
column rather than something intentionally mixed up - as he says - not separated rather
than mixed. All those peaks are pretty amazing, and the high temp range is pretty
spectacular.


Do we have any history that may lead to a source? (Probably way stupid question) Clearly
you are looking for a source, but I need a bit of updating - is there a 50 word update that
you can throw out or do I need to go read 3 yrs of another thread......?
Might be able to help. Possibility of getting a GC done on it, if that would help.

 

[Ian]

Bill, this is where it started http://forum1.aimoo.com/cast___boolits__/category/BEESWAX-good-grief-do-we-got-beeswax-1-64119.html

Mr. Williams has been incommunicado for years despite many attempts to contact him. Glenn Larsen bought most of it and used it up, never could duplicate it exactly though he tried. Cast bullet people far and wide bought the stuff and found it to make excellent lube as a "beeswax" ingredient. The analysis I've had done is, as far as I know, the only attempt to professionally discover what it is. Almost everyone other than me has vehemently declared it to be highly-refined beeswax, but as you can see from the boil point graph that "ain't so". The rest of it is years and years of speculation, arguing, declarations of secret knowledge, or that the wax is simply beeswax refined by means known only to interplanetary visitors who know the secret of keeping it from scorching at well over 500F.

I think it may have been chlorinated.

 

[Pistolero]

Ok, thanks. Would a GC run be helpful in defining it better?

 

[Brad]

GC would tell us how many waxes are in the stuff. It would give us a better feel for molecular weight of the various ingredients.
An IR spectra might be nice too, it would give clues about various functional groups. Beeswax would show lots of esters and alcohols. Paraffin and mocrowax won't show those.

 

[Pistolero]

Next time I get a chance to talk to him, an old college friend is a research
scientist with access to a GC and more. Not sure what it would take to run
a sample through the GC, but will ask.

 

[Charles Graff]

My vintage memory tells me Mr. Williams bought a large pallet of this stuff at a government auction. It had been stored outside for many years, and the outer layer was trash. He pealed that outer layer off and sold the rest to us.

 

[Pistolero]

Interesting info. Is there any actual info on what purpose the US Navy
had in mind for this stuff?

 

[Ian]

My theory was that it was a plasticizing/desensitizing agent for the explosives used in the 16" shells. It matches the mil-spec for that pretty well. Could have been a variety of things.

 

[Rick]

16 inch shells? Now your talking, good for anything that is really, truly, seriously in need of being shot. The LASC has a 16 inch bullet from the battle ship Missouri, it sits on a cement slab behind the firing line pointed straight up with a flag pole welded to it's point. It's so heavy that even 100 mph winds haven't blown the pole over.

 

[Ian]

I just about cried when someone told me that dozens of unused barrels for the big guns were being chopped up for scrap after sitting somewhere in AZ for over 50 years. Can you imagine what a flag pole one of the barrels would have made?

 

[Pistolero]

I wondered if the wax was somehow added to the mix in loading the 16" naval rifles, like
I know that they layed a piece of lead foil between the first and second powder bags
for "decoppering purposes" and was wondering if they used wax in a similar way.

If we can find out what it was used for, there will be a military spec that we can
refer to. Unfortunately, sometimes these just say "#3 naval wax as supplied by
Acme Wax Co of Cleveland, Ohio" or similar useless info since "Acme Wax" has
been out of business since 1963 and no clue how they made "#3 naval wax" or
whatever they really called it.

Yes, cutting up those 16 barrels was a real shame.

 

[Brad]

Read up on "Swedish Additive", it could be a source for the wax.

 

[Grump]

Not really that dumb of a question since I wasn't around back when the thousands or whatever pounds of Navy "Wax" was sold...Did anyone try it by itself as a bullet lube? Of course, if so, how did it work?

Maybe no one did since it was thought to be some sorta beeswax.

For that matter, how does beeswax by itself do as bullet lube? Nasty-ish heat to get it through the sizer, but...???

I've tried to read up on all those Alkanes which are likely suspects of components of the Navy mix...does anyone know how to interpret those needle penetration test specs?

Crap, more Google searching...

 

[carpetman]

Maybe it's commode rings. Funny how many substitute commode rings for beeswax because they look alike.

 

[carpetman]

This whole thread reminds me of how felix lube--now FWFL started. Back in 1998 there was a forum called Shooters.com and it had several sections (sorta like AccurateReloading.com). One section was Cast Bullets. There was only a small handful of people posting in that section and the topic of homemade lube came up. Different ones came up with their recipes and there was one guy that would tell them what else it would need, it was obvious he had some education on the subject and seemed to know his stuff. This was felix (Felix Robbins). He gave his recipe and it started getting good reviews. Soon people were dropping in from all over the world that they had heard some guy had a good recipe. Somebody mentioned his lube was world famous. Based on that and a takeoff of how Herters named their product, I named it Felix World Famous Lube (FWFL). Felix tired of having to re-post the recipe and that is how castpics.net got started. Felix had a son named Tommy that was a computer whizz and he could run a site with pictures of the forum members and the recipe. It also had cooking recipes that members submitted. A small donation was taken up to run the site. This would be good experience for Tommy and eliminate Felix having to continue repeating the recipe. Tommy ran the site a couple years and then Sundowner (Corky) a member of this site took over and ran it. It is no longer what it started out as and has sponsors and probably $$$. It was also on that site that someone referred to cast bullets as boolits to differentiate between jacketed bullets and that is where the name for another site came from. Was also where Beagle told of reading about using aluminum tape to enlarge a mold and the term "beagling" came about. Most of you probably know that Felix passed away in the last year, he was a great one.