Making a soap based lube

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Many of the lubes Ian and I have made involve the use of a reasonable percentage of Ivory soap. This makes the lube making process a bit more involved but not difficult, you just need to understand what is happening.

This batch was made with castor oil, Ester 100 AC oil, micro wax, vaseline, 90wt gear oil, beeswax, ivory soap, and for the first time some cetyl ester.

The beeswax doesn't take the heat the way the rest of the stuff can so it and the cetyl ester were added last after removing the lube from the heat.

These lubes need lots of heat and be sure to use a pan larger than you think is needed, they foam up a bit when cooking.

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This is the ingredients as they begin to heat. This is all but the cetyl ester and beeswax.
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As the stuff heats and melts it will begin to foam.
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As you can see the foam builds up quite a bit, this is why the pot needs to be larger than you think. The foaming can be reduced a bit by adding the soap after the rest of the stuff has melted and in small increments. I no longer do that as I have made enough to know what to expect. Stirring a bunch does help keep the foam under control.
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The foaming has subsided and now the heating really takes off. This stuff needs to reach about 450 degrees F to fully melt so don't splash it on your skin, it burns like hell. Stirring often is needed at this point. I also use the spatula to break up the bits of soap to help them melt faster. The finer the soap particles the faster they melt.

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Here the soap is completely melted and mixed in. Take it off the heat at this point.
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I let it cool with stirring until it begins to gel. This is the point where I add the beeswax and cetyl ester. Lots of stirring to get them melted and mixed in quickly.
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I then pout into a foil pan and let it cool. I don't mess with them until the next day. These lubes seem to like to rest overnite before you get a good idea of how they feel.

These lubes are nice in that they leave little residue on the gun. They also are not prone to melting in high temp shooting situations. They are not a lube you can melt and pour into a sizer easily, they need lots of heat the really flow that readily.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Good write-up, the pictures are worth a thousand words.

As wonderful an ingredient as beeswax is, I'm still doing my best to avoid using it in "high soap" lubes, meaning sodium-soap-thickened bullet lubes containing more than about 5% soap. The lube's texture and performance seems best when all the ingredients are fully melted in with the soap and are incorporated into the soap's fibrous matrix. Most of the petroleum waxes can handle the temperatures without issue, and even beeswax can briefly but it will turn a dark, reddish-brown and the finished lube will smell sour. Having experimented with soap lubes where beeswax that is burned but fully incorporated is compared to beeswax added in at lower temperatures but below the gel point of the soap, my conclusion is that burning and blending is better. The less homogenous mixture seems to come apart in the barrel, or at least I speculate that's what happens; first-shot POI is off with under-cooked soap lubes and in revolvers the greasy-gun syndrome is definitely worse when comparing identical formulas where the only difference was the temperature at which the wax was added.

Having spent the past several years making and testing several hundred lube recipes, I've pretty much settled on the basic mix of 1/3 wax (primarily of the branched-chain, micro-crystalline variety but also blends of other natural and petroleum waxes), 1/3 plain old Ivory soap (or 20% Na Stearate, and even Kirk's Castille soap), 1/3 non-slippery softening ingredient (petrolatum, MiG nozzle dip, transmission assembly gel, or even heavy, straight-chain paraffin mineral oil), and 2-5% dynamic film lubricant such as castor bean oil, polyolester oil, Jojoba wax, or some combination thereof). If softer waxes are used, the less softening "middle modifier" is necessary. While I haven't settled on a final formula and experiments such as Brad is doing here to test cetyl esters are on-going, the basic premise of wax/Na stearate/middle modifier/dynamic film lubricant additives has consistently given me the performance I demand from a good lube, and works from very low to very high pressure and speed in a wide range of temperatures from below zero to over 100F.

Bullet lubricants definitely need to have certain properties for best and most repeatable accuracy. The lube must actually provide some friction, but consistent friction under a variety of conditions (high concentrations of soap thickeners provide this), some sort of wax to keep the soap "in suspension" so it doesn't separate from the lube and leave burned deposits in the bore with loads achieving more than about 25K psi), and it shouldn't contain too much in the way of extremely slippery oils. So far I have had very poor luck with any synthetic (polyalphaolephin) oils or greases. The only exception is a lube I call "TnT", which deserves its own thread.
 
3

358156hp

Guest
So is micro-crystalline wax related to dental wax? I read the basics on it, and some of the more conventional apps sound slightly familiar.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Dental wax, like that used by braces wearers, is most likely a microwax. It is soft and sticky like a microwax. Paraffin would be too hard and brittle to work well for that.

I finally broke down and bought 10 pounds from blended waxes. I won't need more for a long, long time.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I don't remember if it is a 165 F or a 180 F blend. I will look tomorrow and see which it is.
 

Hawk

North Central Texas
Is anyone still working or 666+1 lube or did that not work out and you are you going in a different direction?
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I have a bunch of 666+1. I like it pretty well. It is good in handguns, not messy like some other lubes.
I really haven't done enough work with it in rifles to say if it is great or just good there.
 
3

358156hp

Guest
I still need to make the hour drive to meet with you and buy some microwax off ya, and probably talk a half day a way like we did the last time. :) I really want to try soap based lubes, and so does Tom.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I sent a PM to Edd inviting the MI guys over. Pete, I never even thought of him. That wasn't very bright of me, was it.
 

JSH

Active Member
Somthing that may help with the soap to melt a bit better. Use a grater/shredder of some type. These can be had for cheap at second hand stores. As can large heavy aluminum pots. Even the ones with no stick linings, I just take a wire wheel on small grinder and clean them up.
Jeff
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Good. I haven't used it yet. The rainy season had begun. Well, that and my wife seems to have found lots of manual labor that needs doing. I hate yard work with a passion.
 
3

358156hp

Guest
Granular Roundup in the lawn spreader should take care of the mowing for awhile, and a couple of cups of it mixed with the "Miracle Grow" should take care of the rest.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
This is digging out an old retaining wall and two stumps then rebuilding the wall with new wall blocks.
I haven't mowed in years.
 
3

358156hp

Guest
A trip to Home Depot, and a fistful of twenties could deal with that in just a few hours
 

Ian

Notorious member
I think Brad spent all his twenties for a while on lathe stuff :p

Stumps suck, especially when green. I've dug out a few like that myself and the lesson I learned was just hire a backhoe for an hour and grub the damned things up. My Dad learned at the age of 60 not to try to chip post holes in solid, crystalline limestone with a heavy bar, $70K and an L4/L5 lumbar fusion cured him of that. While he was recuperating, his wife hired a local with a rock drill/skid loader combo to punch the 28 picket fence holes required, 30" deep, for $1200 and it was done in half a day including concreting in all the posts.