The continuing quest for "Extreme" bullet lube

[fiver]

no,,,, no,, it doesn't.
unless your willing to make concessions and use multiple lubes, or multiple versions of the same lube.
one of the things we did learn was how to manipulate various lubes for different situations, and how to make them work in broader windows.

this is pretty much how the moly complex lube come about.
I started with various waxes and narrowed things down to what was easily available to me.
but that wasn't really good enough, just cause I could get it didn't mean it was gonna work, of course I could order waxes from all over the world but what was that really going to gain me?
I mean 6 different B/MW or BW copies really were just 6 versions of the same thing.
so what were my real options, well,, using a couple of different types of waxes would probably be my better option but what to use.
beeswax for sure it just has and does more than just about anything else out there.
paraffin is everywhere and has the ability to go into an instant flow situation, so does Ozokerite, but paraffin is easier to get and leaves behind a lot less gunk when it melts.
the other issue is if I use a high amount of paraffin I need a way to plasticize it or it become brittle so that limits my oil choices.
what else is available? well soy wax is easy to get, it actually helps beeswax become less grabby and mixes super easy.
I had my wax choices laid out and decided on a 60-40 mix of bees wax to soy wax to start with.

my knowledge at the time was a lot more limited than it is now and so my wax choices were a bit more limited.
I might have ordered up some bayberry wax or something else had I known about them at the time.

I will move on to the oils and such at a later post.
then the modifications to the initial lube and why I made them.
it's kind of funny now that I look back on it and think about the recipe for simple lube taking me all of 20 minutes to figure out, make a test batch, and post on the Boolits site when asked about an easy simple lube recipe.

 

[Rcmaveric]

Wish i had something to add. Simple lube is good, just dont leave it in the sun. Bens Red is good but caused problems for me on hot days. I try to read and follow all of these due to the nature of Florida wheather.

 

[fiver]

you know it would take us like half an hour to put together a recipe for just hot weather shooting.
it would take less time to just add 3-4% carnuba wax to the simple lube.

 

[Rcmaveric]

You guys get plagued enough with questions. I need to learn to do it myself.

 

[Brad]

You guys get plagued enough with questions. I need to learn to do it myself.

Never stop asking questions. The question you ask, and the answer you receive, may well help others gain a better understanding.
What you see here, and on the other site, is the tip of the iceberg. You can't imagine the number of private discussions we have had about this.

 

[fiver]

questions are why we start these threads.
the alloy thread and this one are our way of opening a line of communication,, we want everyone to participate, observe, and report.
it doesn't matter if your using storebought lube, the main thing is to actually look at what it is or isn't doing for you and when it is doing it.

 

[Ian]

One of the reasons I cast my own bullets is because I enjoy being able to make stuff on my own, and in some cases make better stuff than can be bought. I bought a few sticks of Lyman Alox and quickly found it wasn't all that great for some things, so per my usual MO I set about blending my own. Wanting to stick with a proven DIY formula, the first smokeless-powder bullet lube I made was Felix lube, and I really, really liked how it performed. One day, in slightly cooler than normal weather, I was exercising my favorite .30-'06 hunting load and it wasn't grouping as well as normal. After examining the 100-yard target up close, I noticed little curls of lube stuck to the paper...and a light bulb came on. I went home, remelted some of the lube, added some Vaseline, hand-lubed some bullets, and re-shot the group under similar conditions. The groups returned to their warm-level normal, and there were no more lube flecks on the target. The concept of the importance of lube jettison was forever ingrained in me at that point, and the find/fix mindset continued as I found faults with various lubes and sought to repair them.

So here we are. Felix lube has two problems for my uses: It melts and runs away at about ~145°F, which means that for about half the year in Texas I can't leave ammunition in a vehicle in the sun. The other is that the lanolin which makes it so effective for shooting in hot weather makes the first shot (or two really) go off in colder weather, and not all that cold either (below 40°F or so), and that is simply not acceptable for a hunting rifle on a frosty December morning. Adding some Vaseline fixed the cold-starts, but only do a point, the lanolin was still a liability. Taking the lanolin out made a very negative warm-weather effect, with antimony wash and purge flyers starting to creep in.

Polybutene is just about as good as lanolin for hot weather, and doesn't seem to be as bad as lanolin in the cold, but it has some drawbacks too. After playing with a whole bunch of stuff I began to come to the conclusion that most experienced lube cooks do and take on the philosophy that "less is more". Fewer ingredients, fewer variables. Pick the good stuff that works well together in all seasons, has the physical characteristics that works in a broad range of guns, and work with that.

I'm pretty happy with beeswax, but I need a lube with a little higher melt point, so a microcrystalline wax in the 160 or higher melt range helps bolster it a little for my purposes, though that tends to make the lube too tacky, so a paraffin wax helps to modify that, and has the advantage of better cold weather performance. Sodium soap has so many advantages for me as a binder, and so few drawbacks in the kind of cold weather I experience (rarely below 20F) that it's a no-brainer for me to keep using it in every formula I try. I'm also very happy with castor oil in very small percentages for helping lubricate HV rifle bullets. That leaves only one thing for me to "fix" really, and that's the plasticizer. Comparing my best soap lube to Felix lube for groups in Felix lube's ideal operating range tells me I haven't perfected the soap lube yet. Too much soap content, lack of lanolin, and not a good enough middle modifier to work happily with the soap seems to be the issue, but it's all a guess really, based on a little bit of "feel" obtained from shooting a whole bunch of different lubes in a whole bunch of different guns in a wide variety of weather conditions.

 

[pokute]

Can you clarify what "middle modifier" is? I thought you were using it to mean "emulsifier", but you distinguish between "soap" and "middle modifier", so clearly I am misunderstanding what "middle modifier" is.

 

[Ian]

Middle modifier is something like Vaseline. It's a component which plasticizes the waxes and bridges the viscosity gap between the oil and wax components.

The sodium stearate is a metal salt used for gelling grease. It serves in the same capacity in soap lube, controlling over-all lube viscosity and oil bleed once the lube is hot enough to melt the waxes. The sodium has a melt point point of around 460°F and drop point around 375-ish and keeps the lube from turning to an SAE 5 weight in the hot-spots like driving side of the lands.

 

[pokute]

Got it. Thanks! What happens if, instead of melting the sodium stearate, you dissolve it in water and then mix it continuously with the oil and wax as you slowly heat it until the water is gone (signalled by lack of bubbling)? I'm assuming you've tried this, and I was wondering how it affects the result.

 

[JonB]

Got it. Thanks! What happens if, instead of melting the sodium stearate, you dissolve it in water and then mix it continuously with the oil and wax as you slowly heat it until the water is gone (signalled by lack of bubbling)? I'm assuming you've tried this, and I was wondering how it affects the result.

I can't explain the chemistry...but when making SL68B, during the cooking/blending, I have used both, fresh/wet Ivory soap, as well as 2 year old dried Ivory soap (did that just last February). If the dry Ivory soap is powdered enough, it blends in ...or transforms into soap grease faster, but if the dry has some small chunks (meaning you didn't grind it enough), it will take longer to blend/transform during cooking, then fresh/wet Ivory soap. Heating the moisture into steam from cooking the fresh soap will certainly speed up the breakdown of chunks, more so than the Dry. The big factor with all that is, measuring the correct amount, as you are weighing water with one and not the other. whatever amount you want to use, you need to make it repeatable.

But as to your question, I didn't see having some water in with the sodium stearate have any effect either way with the end result, as long as all the water gets cooked out.

https://www.artfulbullet.com/index.php?threads/sl68-continued.104/

 

[pokute]

That is interesting. It also explains something that was bugging me, which was my mis-assumption that "Sodium Stearate" referred to what you would get, for example, by buying Sodium Stearate on Ebay. Very low moisture Sodium Stearate powder would probably work very poorly compared to Ivory Soap for lube making, without adding water.
I suspect that dissolving the Ivory Soap in excess water would probably get the maximum temperature required to incorporate it into lube down well below 400 degrees.

 

[JonB]

TSNIP...

I suspect that dissolving the Ivory Soap in excess water would probably get the maximum temperature required to incorporate it into lube down well below 400 degrees.

Boy, I don't have the chemistry chops to say that it will or it won't?
That'd be something I'd have to try. Depending on how much water you are adding, it could take a long time to steam off...judging from my beer brewing experience.

 

[Brad]

But will the lower temp allow the grease matrix to fully form? Don't know. If it doesn't then some oil bleeding could occur.
Making the sodium stearate grease based lubes isn't that hard. It takes a little caution due to the heat involved but so does casting.
Introducing water that needs to be boiled off just seems like a way to slow the process, not speed it up.

 

[pokute]

Yes, it might. You also might have to stir it the whole time, which could be a drag! I'd say just enough water to make the soap mushy.

 

[pokute]

But will the lower temp allow the grease matrix to fully form? Don't know. If it doesn't then some oil bleeding could occur.
Making the sodium stearate grease based lubes isn't that hard. It takes a little caution due to the heat involved but so does casting.
Introducing water that needs to be boiled off just seems like a way to slow the process, not speed it up.

The "grease matrix" is the result of partial saponification of the oil/wax mixture by trace residual alkali in the soap. This process REQUIRES the presence of water. Normally, the residual water in the Ivory Soap is enough. But I believe that if the maximum temperature is reduced, the quality of the lube will be more repeatable, which is a requirement for a lube recipe that you intend to be the, uh, magic bullet for everybody who tries it.

Just like burning alloy, overheating oil and wax causes it to lose some of it's properties. The "bleeding" of oil is due to only getting the emulsifying benefit of the soap, without the saponifying aspect. Getting adequate saponification from REALLY dry soap could be a real trial.

 

[Ian]

Don't get wrapped around the axle.

The "soap lubes" some of us play with are made backwards. The grease matrix has nothing whatsoever to do with saponification, nor the presence of water, it has to do with heating the metal salt to its melting point (460°F) so it will form a solution with the wax/oil ingredients. When the solution is cooled slightly (450°F), it begins to gel as the distributed metal salt solidifies, forming a matrix throughout the solution. Also, we are making a grease with components which mostly are solid at room temperature, as opposed to lubricating greases which are made with oils at room temperature. At 200°F the waxes are fully melted, but the sodium stearate salt keeps it at about an NLGI #2 consistency if 25-30% total soap by damp weight is added. About 20% dry sodium stearate will do the same thing as 30% fresh, damp Ivory bar soap will, except the SS is one hell of a lot more difficult to get to melt due to not forming a water emulsion first which dissolves the soap into microscopic bits.

20% is a fairly common stearate percentage in sodium lubricating grease. Lithium 12-hydroxystearate used in most automotive bearing greases ends up being around 7-8% by weight for an NLGI #2 consistency.

Now, if we were to do this RIGHT, we'd be mixing wax, oil, etc. in a vat at 250°F and reacting sodium hydroxide and stearic acid together with it in correct molar quantities to yield a complete reaction, stir it until all the water and CO2 from the reaction was boiled off, then either doing an acid/base treatment or just cooling it to separate the glycerin, then mill it at 200°F and it would be finished. Since the soap components will react and form the metal salt a much lower temperature than the re-melt temperature of the salt, this could be done with no danger at all to scorching the beeswax, just like making grandma's lye soap but carried one step further and using a melted oil/wax base instead of a water base.

I don't do it that way because saponification values for sodium stearate are a moving target and residual acid or base is hazardous to tools and guns. So I use Ivory soap which has already been reacted completely, and has a stable, predictable pH. Ivory has some glycerin remaining from the soap reaction, nobody knows how much because a lot of it is siphoned off to make other S.C. Johnson products. I've never found it to be a problem with regard to bullet lube quality. The other reasons I don't make the salt from scratch is that lye is hard to buy anymore because of the dopers, and I can buy Ivory soap at two dozen different shops in my small town and it will all be the same stuff. You can buy it halfway across the country in five years and it will still be the same stuff. Remember, accessibility of components is a priority for "Extreme Bullet Lube" and Ivory soap is plenty good enough for what we need it to do.

Like Jon pointed out, I specify "fresh from the wrapper, damp Ivory soap" by weight and specify the proportion because it's a convenient way to measure, requires no special effort to dry and mill the soap, and is much easier to use than dry soap or straight sodium stearate.

 

[pokute]

It wouldn't be right unless you were trying to saponify all of your oil and wax, which you are not trying to do. You are only trying to saponify enough so that you get a stable emulsion that doesn't weep oil. Using Ivory Soap, which has only trace residual alkali, guarantees that you will never have a dangerous level of alkali in your lube.

It's very confusing that you specify Sodium Stearate in some contexts, and "fresh from the wrapper, damp Ivory soap". Since the purpose of the thread is to get your rough draft moving forward, I'd recommend sticking with "fresh from the wrapper, damp Ivory soap".

 

[Brad]

This is about openly sharing what worked and what didn't. We use terms we comprehend. Sometimes we have made up terms to describe something we have felt or observed.
This is not intended to be a technical or scientific text.
I have personally made at least 15 batches of various lubes using Ivory soap, and some with sodium stearate granules, over the years. These include a variety of recipes and methods of mixing.
That experience has given me a good idea of what works well regarding the mixing of lubes. I'm happy with the results and they are repeatable.
Many here have followed the same procedures and had good results.

I would suggest exactly what Ian suggested to me years ago. Take your idea and YOU try it. See if it works. Let us know how it works out. We await the report.

 

[fiver]

your going to have a water content of about 3-4% in the lube no matter how you try to work it out.
it's,,, well,,, it's just in there.
it's in the grease, it's in the lanolin, the wax,,, etc.
pre, prolonged, or over heating things won't drive it completely out, and it will just get pulled back in again as the lube cools.