Questions about black-powder lube....

[Harry O-1]

When I first started casting, I used NRA 50/50 lube for everything with reasonably good results. When I first started using black-powder (BP), it was a disaster. Very hard fouling and poor accuracy. Straight Lee Liquid Alox was worse. It appears that petroleum products do not play well with BP.

I bought some SPG lube and it worked well with BP, with two exceptions. The first problem was cost. I have since found a recipe that gives a very good imitation of SPG (roughly equal parts beeswax, lanolin, and canola oil), so cost is not as important now. It even looks and smells the same as SPG. The other problem is its low melting point. I still have that problem. When I go to my monthly CAS shoot any more, I have to chill the cartridges in the refrigerator for a day and keep them in an insulated cooler until they are shot. Before I started doing that, I often had misfires or hangfires on really hot days.

Does anyone have any experience with a BP compatible lube that has a higher melting point than SPG? I am thinking that anything with a petroleum base will not work, but I am no expert.

 

[Ian]

Petroleum in BP lube can work well or not, depends on what you make with it.

I use a modified Emmert's lube for most everything, cutting the canola cooking oil in half and subbing in lanolin for it. More to the heat issue, I made a small batch of stuff using Canola grease made from sodium soap, and mixed it with beeswax. Basically it was about 25% Ivory soap, 35% Canola oil, and 40% beeswax, heavy on the "about". It takes heat, but the only occasion I've had to use it was a couple months ago to seal round balls in my 1860 Army. Worked like a charm for that, but what doesn't? Only thing I can say is it wasn't melting and dripping out of the remaining chambers after the first couple of shots like most things will.

 

[JWFilips]

OK I'm Old School here! They only thing that touches my bores of my Flintlock ML's is Beeswax / Mutton tallow 50 /50 mix. I don't know the Science but I have 33 years shooing them with that mix. No cleaning between shots and a quick water clean up afterwards....The more you shoot the better they shoot! Again as Always just my humble opinion!
Jim

 

[Brad]

I think adding some soap like Ian mentioned will do the trick. It will not hamper accuracy but will let the lube handle heat far better.

Make a grease from the canola oil and soap first, cool it a little, then add beeswax. Might only need 5-10 percent soap.

Only downside is that it won't be easily melted to pour into a sizer.

 

[Ian]

I probably over-soaped it. If beeswax was bumped to 50% and the soap cut back to 10-15% it would be like thick gravy at around 225'F and easily pour into a sizer, but not be runny at any normal shooting, handling, or storage temps. The really cool part about the soap lube is the easy water cleanup.

 

[Dale53]

I shot Black Powder Cartridge Rifle Silhouette along with side pistol matches with a black powder .45 Colt for fifteen years. I used a modified Emmert's lube. I used 50% pure natural beeswax, 40% Crisco, and 10% Anhydrous Lanolin (instead of the 10% Canola oil). When I shot on very hot days, I would keep my cartridges in a cooler just to avoid possible problems. I didn't refrigerate them before (I have a central A/C at my home, like most people). Frankly, when using smokeless powder and "back in the day" used NRA 50/50 lube exclusively, I, on occasion had problems with extreme heat. So, the black powder precautions with a cooler were also useful when using smokeless.

Now, for smokeless, I use Carnauba Red and don't worry about heat (it DOES take heat in the lube sizer to use this lube). If I were shooting black powder, tomorrow, I could NOT ask for a better lube than modified Emmert's.

FWIW
Dale53

 

[Harry O-1]

I think I have everything I need to try a small batch of modified Emmert's. The sodium soap you are talking about is just Ivory bar-soap isn't it? Many years ago, I tried making some Felix lube with Ivory soap and had problems getting it to melt and go into solution. I had some oil in the double boiler (I don't remember what kind, but it may have been mineral oil), heated it up, and then slowly added thin shavings of Ivory soap while stirring -- and stirring, and stirring and stirring some more. It just wouldn't go. Any idea what I was doing wrong?

 

[Brad]

Yes, use Ivory bar soap.

Ditch the double boiler. You need way more heat.

Start with the canola in a pan. Put it on real actively high heat. Oh, do this outdoors if married, trust me on that. Add the ivory in shavings if still damp. It will foam a bit as the water in the soap is driven off. Be sure to use a pan larger than you think you need, the foaming can be very significant. I wouldn't want less than a 2 quart pan. This is for lube batches of less than a pound total.
Ok, keep stirring as the stuff foams. Adding the soap slowly lets it foam some, then the foam subsides. Then add more.
Once the foaming is largely done the soap will still be unmelted. Stir as it gets hotter. It WILL smoke a bunch as it get really hot. We are talking 450 F here. The soap will slowly melt in. Stir on heat until all soap is melted. The stuff will become very liquid, until this point it will have a slight bit of thickness to it.
Once fully melted remove from heat and keep stirring. It will begin to thicken and gel. Once it starts to really gel add the beeswax and stir. The residual heat will melt the wax easily. Stir until all wax is melted. Pour into a foil pan to cool.

Be careful, the stuff will burn like hell if it gets on your skin. I think it is worse than lead as it doesn't cool as fast. I have a few small scars from the stuff.

Ian will probably mention adding the wax in a slightly different manner but this is how I would make it.

Might take 20 minutes for a batch after it is all weight out and ready to go.

I like to let it cool until the next day then evaluate the firmness.

 

[Ian]

There are a couple of ways to make sodium grease and get it to go in with beeswax, but I think the method Brad outlined is a good one. You have to use the oil, which can briefly take the heat of fully melting the soap, to make grease and then add the wax at a lower temperature so it doesn't scorch. Beeswax fries badly at temperatures over 350F.

A safer way is to add the beeswax when the sodium grease is at a lower temperature (around 250F), but it will be very lumpy and be difficult to get the clearish soda grease lumps to dissolve. The solution is to let the mix fully cool in the pot and solidify, then re-melt it very slowly over low, direct heat. Stab the "cake" in the middle with a spoon and work it around in circles against the bottom and sides of the pot. Keep doing that until the entire cake is melted, and take your time, being careful not to scorch the wax. Pull the pot off the burner if it starts to get smoky and turn the wax brown. You don't want it thinner than goopy gravy. If you still have a few lumps after that, rinse and repeat. This will make a lube of very fine consistency.

 

[300BLK]

I'm a little late here, but if you want to sapponify your blackpowder lube, use Murphy's Oil Soap. Heat your oil enough to melt the beeswax and slowly stir in the Murphy's. It will react and seem to boil, but doesn't smell bad and has a nice texture. It doesn't melt as in for pan lubing, so needs to be cut into strips and pushed into the lubrisizer. Its been 20 years since I made a batch of that stuff, so I'll have to see if I can find the recipe (Paul Matthews lube).

SPG did melt far too easily and was one of the reasons I didn't like it. I used a locally sourced lube and then found Shaver's BP Moly, all of which I pan lubed with, before moving on to making my own.

Two variations of the same lube that worked well for Blackpowder Cartridge Silhouette were both in the same proportions by weight. 7-3-3 beeswax, anhydrous lanolin, and either Mobil 1 15W-50 or Dexron III ATF. Both work nicely through a lubrisizer without bleeding oil (like SPG or Shaver's BP Moly) and are just a bit tacky. They might be a bit too tacky for pan lubing. The Dexron III versions attracts and holds more moisture in the barrel when using a blow tube. Neither caused tar like fouling often associated with petroleum products and blackpowder fouling. With the Goex powder I shot then, the fouling could be pushed through the barrel with a DRY patch after using the blow tube as normal.

One of the guys I shot with pan lubed AND wiped between shots, so I made a stiffer batch 16-3-3 specifically for him, and that is all he used afterwards.