The continuing quest for "Extreme" bullet lube

[Rcmaveric]

Would pistols and riffles need a different lube? Most of these discussions seam to revolve around riffle use. There is the problem of hot summer suns and long shot string heat have caused me problems mostly with pistols and a couple times with riffles doing load tests. Then there is the problem of loads developed in the summer with riffles in 90+ degree average and then hunting in the winter. Hunting, your frozen to a tree stand with Ice on the barrel, then by noon its in the 80+ and your stripping. Only for it drop to the 30's as soon as the sun starts touching the horizon.

Bens Red worked very well for me and it simply just doesn't lead no matter how hard i have pushed a bullet. When i do something i try to read and learn as much as possible, so I have read and followed your lube quest and try to read and take notes when all of you speak of lubes. I actually have a note book cataloguing lube recipes and ingredients and why using them. While shooting i occasional get a few fliers every now and then. I always attributed it to my poor reloading technique like neck tension and its not bad flyers. I still use it as i have a lot of it. I never figured it would take so long to use 5 pounds of lube. It was not till i was load developing on a hot day and i noticed i had two distinct two different very tight groups from 10 shots for my 30-30. One group dead POA and the other is 3 inches high and 1 in to the left. Then i remember from your other lube article about lube purging. So that's when i started playing with different lubes.

I had made a batch of simple for my pistols and thought why not try it in the 30-30. It tightened up those groups and i haven't tried it in the other riffles since i am happy with their accuracy. I remember when fiver told me of the Carnauba wax on the other forum. If i am not mistaken as long as the percentage stays about 5% or less it wont cause any low temp problems. I haven't tried it yet because i had the H-1 and was curious about its it really high melt point (208*). My simple lube concoction performs great. It did melt a bit and caused a squib while shooting off 500 rounds with friends and family on hot 90 degree day. Had to move it out of the sun. Seamed like after a long shot string it start to lead a bit. I could see it in the barrel but it didn't degrade my accuracy on the plates. I mostly shoot plates with pistols. Once i got home it cleaned out quickly and easily. I have tried other easy lubes and methods of lubing including like PC, but i can not get PC to work for me in plane based pistol bullets, or more specifically 9mm and 380 ACP. Tried some Lee tumble lube and it didn't perform like i wanted. Made some 45/45/10 finally and have a few test bullets loaded to try with SL-68B as well. Just about any lube can and does work, as long as i keep the ammo and gun out of the beating down sun. Just need to find a pistol lube that wont melt in the sun or degrade in hot barrel. I don't like Lee alox mess on my hands, but the 45/45/10 actually made a nice shell that i could handle with out making smell like corrosion preventative compound. I am starting to wonder if a soap lube may be the ticket to prevent the lube from melting or being degraded by the cooking sun and heat. I also plan on making some simple lube with 5% Carnauba.

Took me a awhile to save my lunch money for the Micro waxes but i have the 140*, 190* and this stuff called Paraflint H-1 (i used it like an ultra high melt point micro wax, i am most likely dead wrong, however it flows through my sizer easy enough). Mostly it appears a reverse engineered wax complex sounded or was hinted at being most useful to cover all the bases. How ever reading a Wiki it seamed that all micro waxes are the same and just the mineral oil was added back in to create the various different melt points. I went along with JonB's formula as close as i could to recreate it. I must have gotten way behind in the lube articles because i didn't know of the positive qualities of paraffin wax. I always thought it should have been avoided, i thank you for that enlightenment. I have started lubing tests bullets with SL-68B and it performed great in the 30-30 and made the tightest group i have gotten yet. I haven't tried it in the other calibers because i want to finish shooting off all the Bens Red, but i am thinking it may be the reason i was getting those random flyers. However that is mere speculation and may be the reloader and the jerk only testing and confirmation will either confirm or deny. I look forward to testing all these out and cooking up a batch of the SL-71B. For riffles the goal is to create a lube that wont purge or degrade accuracy during the summer and will put a bullet within 1 MOA of point of aim in the winter on a cold barrel that hasn't been shot recently.

So my experience and knowledge is limited and what i do know is mostly just parroted from what you all have already said. However i have tried to put what i read to practical use and this is what i have learned. Everything has a practical use, just have to learn when to use it. When you say high temperature paraffin, does that refer to a specific paraffin or will any paraffin work? Gulf wax is the easiest and cheapest to get my hands on and i am not sure if its 140*.

I am not good at writing either. I tend to have idea and word vomit. So bare with my poor grammar made worse by a high stress job fueled with dark coffee that has 8 times the normal caffeine content. I also cast and reload for the following caliber: .380 ACP, 9mm Luger, .357 Mag, 6.5 Grendel, .260 Remington, .270 Win, 30-30, 50 Cal Muzzle Loader, and 12 Gauge.

 

[Brad]

I find that handguns are far less picky than rifles. We had a lube that was unreal in handguns and did NOT even think of melting in heat. It was a huge failure in rifles. The longer barrel and higher pressure caused a residue that required a brushing to remove and it hampered accuracy after 10 shots or so. That lube contained ZERO wax, it was essentially a soap and oil grease. It did require heat for lubesizers.

Melt temp of all waxes, even parrafin, matters. Adding a higher melt point paraffin means the lube won't go liquid until a higher temp is reached. Don't forget that not all waxes melt the same. Paraffin tends to go liquid all at once while beeswax has a more gradual melt. By mixing waxes we can get a mix that gets soft as temp rises or goes liquid all at once. Merely altering the waxes and ratios of them can change the temp range in which the wax performs well.

 

[fiver]

here is something to think about.
Parrafin blah blah melts,oil.
but when we add it to a lube to do a certain thing and it has a certain melt point 120-180.
what happens when it mixes in and sucks up those other oils?
it just took a 10$ a lb 180-F melt point wax down to a $1.25 a lb 120 point wax.

that's why you hear us talk about low percentage oils in some of our lubes.
some,,, I say some.
the moly complex lube has about 35% added white lithium grease, but hardens to a plastic like state on it's initial cooling.
it becomes very thixotropic at about 100-F,,,, if it is under pressure.

 

[Ian]

I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night, but I'll take a stab at the wax thing. There are three things I consider about waxes: Oil content, molecular structure, and carbon chain length.

Oil softens wax and lowers the melt point.

The molecular structure is either branched, straight, or a combination. The branched microcrystalline waxes are flexible, stretchy, and will "feather". The hold oils very well and control oil flow. They are also very adhesive as well as cohesive, and increase bore friction in the solid state. In highly-refined states, as in recovered from distilled base oil via the hydrocracking process, the microwaxes tend to have a high melting point due to low oil content and (I think) longer chain length. They are also very brittle until tempered with a little oil. Paraffins are brittle, crumbly, don't absorb oil very well, and are not very adhesive or cohesive. Not being sticky or very reactive is a good thing, but for any kind of hard use paraffin wax must be bolstered with other waxes to both improve the melt point and improve the oil control of the lube. You can see how the attributes of one kind of wax compliment the other. This is why blends covering a wide spectrum of chain lengths and having a combination of both branched and unbranched structure work well in a multi-temperature lube.

The carbon chain length determines the "hardness" of the wax...mostly. It's more complicated than that but if you realize that thin oils have single digit carbon chains and thick oils are up in the teens, while starting about 18 we begin to get petrolatum-like stuff and on over 20 we have soft waxes, by 30 we have harder waxes, you can infer the qualities a wax will have with 100+ repetitions of each molecule in a chain.

I'm going to make a batch of soap lube using the Starmetal recipe to see how close I can get. That stuff should pretty much be the ticket for what you need, and I'll send you some. May send Brad some too if he wants to try it. Pete has shot the original lube at below zero and found it at least wasn't terrible, perhaps he can weigh in with more details. If I could duplicate it exactly it would be the only cast bullet lube that 99% or more of use would ever need, period.

 

[Eutectic]

Starmetal's lube did the best in double digit below Zero cold of any high soap lube with higher Ivory than 7%. Your lube Ian,(SL-68?) also passed at -13° being a little bigger groups than Joe's. My qualifying criteria in bitter cold under -12° is double the warm weather group sizes. As I ALWAYS use MOA or better gun/load combos this is good hunting accuracy! (Except for grouse) My saturated tests are tough and cruel and is basically is a 5 shot group of 'cold starts' with 45 minutes or so between shots! I'll test two or three different gun/ammo combos usually! I wait by the wood stove (or in my shop) between each sequence of firing each gun and another single shot...... but guns and ammo stay out!.

666-1 and 4Q shoot at double digit minus temps ....a l m o s t like they do at 80 degrees warmer. But both will fail the hot end of "Extreme"...

On handguns I agree lubes are not as critical. I have used a Heinz 57 blend for several years which does great. I did take my two most accurate revolvers a couple months ago and tested the Heinz 57 with almost touching shots! (A rare day for old eyes) I cleaned them well, and shot groups on my same 40 yard pistol target...... Same guns, same loads, only bullets lubed with 4Q 3.2...... Groups were better!!!! Temp was 20°..... Not that that matters any....... Over many guns and loads and different lubes I've found a combo that shoots well at say 60° will almost always shoot as well down to about 15°! From 15° down to zero they all follow their own rules...... When you go into double digit minus...... Well I've said it before...... Those temps with fully saturated gun and ammo will "separate the men from the boys!"

Pete

 

[Ian]

Thanks, Pete, you have generated data that not very many people can or will.

My preference for pistol lube is something soft, not too greasy, and not too sticky. Also not smokey and not goober up magazines and cylinders/frames too much. Oh, and heat, the lube has to be able to stand being stored at 150 degrees for a while, or to sit in the sun where the cartridges will burn you if you handle them without gloves. The only way I've been able to get all those attributes was with a brick grease bolstered with some wax. That's exactly what the whole "SL" series is, I made virtually all of those blends from zero to 70 and 71 with all the ".n" variations using what amounted to about 20-25% sodium soap by weight. They be soft, yet have a very high heat tolerance. Luckily, the sodium soap doesn't seem to totally ruin the cold-weather performance of the lube, though it sure doesn't help it. Lithium soap seems to have a failure point as it approaches zero, but that information is second-hand to me.

Soft lube isn't needed for high-pressure, high-velocity rifle loads, but with enough metal soap to hold it all together, it doesn't hurt, either. Fiver's moly complex lube is buttery and smooth, quite soft compared to a lot of the commercial stuff, and just about like most of the soap lubes I make. It's a good HV lube, so we can pretty much rule out the need for hard lube in anything. That's good because hard lube and cold weather don't usually go together very well.

 

[Rick]

Those temps with fully saturated gun and ammo will "separate the men from the boys!" Pete

You got that right and I don't yet have my first pair of long pants.

 

[Eutectic]

Lithium soap seems to have a failure point as it approaches zero, but that information is second-hand to me.

I would think this could be so. I haven't had any kind of competition from it! Our ol' buddy Mike's lube MML goes cold well I have heard. MML has a pretty simple Lithium soap aboard? My tests have had the more complex Lithium thickeners for high drop temps like Lithium 12 hydroxystearate. Not sure that's good in lube.
Lithium and Sodium soap combos have been bad news for me. Cold temp tests bad and 'cold starts' when warm....... squirrely and purge flyers as well with no pattern. I am with the 'Ivory' group unless we learn something new....

Pete

 

[Ian]

RobS's Red 10 lube is a Li grease bumped with Ivory, and paraffin/beeswax for the base, but I never tried it. He was pushing the mixed-stearate idea some of us had a little further. MML is great down into the 20s, I've used it. Below that, I couldn't tell, and I didn't like how it faded after five shots in really, really hot weather. I think Mike used it down closer to zeroF, but I don't remember exactly what he said.

 

[Elkins45]

Fiver's moly complex lube is buttery and smooth, quite soft compared to a lot of the commercial stuff, and just about like most of the soap lubes I make. It's a good HV lube, so we can pretty much rule out the need for hard lube in anything. That's good because hard lube and cold weather don't usually go together very well.

This is a recipe I haven’t seen. Is it posted somewhere?

 

[fiver]

60-40-10 beeswax/soywax/parrafin
30% white lith grease.
15% xlox, the thick stuff
5% #2 grease
1 tbs ATF per 4 oz of total wax.
mix that 6 parts to 1 with polyglycol based high moly content valve lube.
to mix the moly in you heat the lube to the consistency of peanut butter and mix the lube thoroughly with a blender.
let it cool on a cookie sheet and cut it into strips before it hardens.

to make the final mix I over fill the star and let the lube get extruded out the hole after I heat the barrel up to about 85-90* then form it into stick shape.

 

[Ian]

Pro tip: Don't try to melt the valve packing grease in a microwave.

 

[fiver]

god no.
it's fun to heat up a chunk for a minute then hand it to someone not wearing gloves, it takes forever for the moly to cool off.
it's like the hot potato game.... LOL,,, only funnier.

 

[Elkins45]

60-40-10 beeswax/soywax/parrafin
30% white lith grease.
15% xlox, the thick stuff
5% #2 grease
1 tbs ATF per 4 oz of total wax.
mix that 6 parts to 1 with polyglycol based high moly content valve lube.
to mix the moly in you heat the lube to the consistency of peanut butter and mix the lube thoroughly with a blender.
let it cool on a cookie sheet and cut it into strips before it hardens.

to make the final mix I over fill the star and let the lube get extruded out the hole after I heat the barrel up to about 85-90* then form it into stick shape.

I'm confused by 60-40-10 of the waxes. If that's percentages it's 110%. If that's a mix ratio, how much of the wax mix? Is that 50% of the wax mix with 50% of the greases?

 

[fiver]

yep it is 110%
I mix the Bee and soy wax at 60-40 then add 10% paraffin to that volume.
when it's all melted I squeeze in 30% white lith grease, then glop in the 15% xlox.
or half as much as I use of the white lith, they both measure like a liquid, and 8 oz's of wax by weight is 8 oz's of melted wax.
so it would look like this as a measurement.
6 oz B-wax.
4 oz soy wax
1 oz parrafin
3 oz of white lith
1.5 oz xlox.
.5 oz wheel bearing or whatever #2 grease that has some paratack in it [red and tacky is fine] dip the tip of your spoon in some stp, lucas oil treatment or whatever, it's nice to have but not an absolute necessity and you only need a minute amount.
3 tsp of ATF would be enough in this case.

you probably don't have any polyglycol moly valve grease handy so for the V-2 I just threw in a stick of the moly lube from Lyman.
it doesn't make an exact copy but it is pretty close and it works very well from the 10F up to the
90-f range.

don't let the initial cooling fool you, the stuff will be stiff and hard enough to bend a fork.
apply just a little heat and some pressure and watch what happens.
if it fights you going soft just kick it in the pants with a little Vaseline. [very little]
you'll see the lube as a very shiny black wax but with some chocolate brown on the edges that have bent or break over.
that brown color is the wax finally tearing apart after stretching to a thin point.
you'll see it when you extrude it.

 

[KHornet]

The beauty of threads like this and similar remind me of an old yankee saying: "Tain't no such thing as a stupid question if you don't know something!". On the other hand, over the
years I have run into more than a few stupid answers to some very logical questions.

Paul

 

[Eutectic]

"EVI"

Vaseline........ One of our most used building blocks.... We talk about it often. We reminisce about the 'old yellow Vaseline' of bygone days too.
Some like Chris have a small stash of old Vaseline as well..... But it's a non-renewable item unless a couple hunded pounds were found!

So we have the modern stuff. What is it? Mineral Oil and Microwax? I don't think the oil is very viscous; I'd guess Iso 100 or less. It is a food grade "white oil" (old term) with a narrow 'fractionation' range.... Good if you eat it but a lubricant......?? A mineral oil probably used with a lousy V.I. (think thinner hot, thicker cold.) Yet this can be dangerous thinking for bullet lube.

So our old Petroleum Jelly is gone and we have the new stuff! But............ "WHO SAYS PETROLEUM JELLY HAS TO BE MINERAL OIL AND MICROWAX??" I pondered this.

So I make some 'Petroleum Jelly'........... I used Motul 2T 2 stroke ester oil and the 180° Microwax I had. It took a lot of oil! My red colored Vaseline was 70% oil!!!!! It wasn't like what we are used to either.... Squeezed it had an instant thixotropic light oil film on your fingers then it went back to its comfort zone. I don't even know if 'jelly' is a good term. But I had some and thought what the heck.

I'm a fan of Mike's 666-1. (Probably because it is stellar at -20° below zero!) It's a little weak on topend though. Ester 2 stroke oil isn't.......

So I made up some 666-1 with my new petroleum jelly. I used 7% Ivory that was sort of wet. My ester jelly and paraffin jelled hot with the Ivory fine and the Beeswax added when temp cooled.
It seemed hard and dry. Working limbered it up some. Incorporation of mix looked good. Then I learned something! Better give this stuff three days to normalize! It took 72 hours to stabilize!

I worked with a pair of Savage Model 23's. One .25-20, one .32-20. The .25-20 was a full bore 77gr gascheck H.P. at 2300fps. It shot 3 shots into 7/16" at 70 yards. Then if would fling one out for a 1" group. But this is a 1/2 moa gun and load! I changed the bullet.... Still 77grs but only two very small lube grooves. I thought load and alloy would fail but if failing is 3/8" groups at 70 yards including the cold start then I like it!

My .32-20 grouse load has a huge lube supply. 4Q 3.2 doesn't seem to care and it's capable of 'minute of grouse eye' my toughest criteria!
I thought my new mix was going to be OK but every 6 or 7 I'd open 70 yard groups to 3/4" So I changed bullet to an Accurate design of mine 31-108C. Holding about half as much lube it was still too much. We lube cooks get pretty good at 'finger lubing'! I.... (ol' nimble fingers) lubed some with only half a lube groove filled. THIS WAS THE TICKET!

Target attached was my last seven rounds shot at 70 yards 24 hours later. Upper top left is cold start followed by two more below. The three are in 7/16"..... the two in 5/16". I moved the scope........ There is 4 shots in that lower group.... a 9/32" group!

I named the lube as it has merit for further testing. "EVI" or Ester Vaseline Ivory!

 

[fiver]

your getting close to that GEL I made up with just mineral oil and Ivory.
the cross link in it is so tough it looks like your tearing fiberglass apart if you pull a chunk off.


I can guarantee the old/new Vaseline is different I'm down to one full jar and one partial jar of the yellow stuff.
the newer jar of yellow was imported from Mexico, and it makes a world of difference in simple lube, it has more tackiness and the Lanolin isn't needed.
one more little note.
I used the xlox and paraffin above as a semi replacement for Vaseline, I wanted the extra stearate but didn't want more grease or a higher lith content and the closest you can get to the old alox 350 is by adding paraffin to the new stuff.
you get side effects from every little addition.
your doing it for one reason then it creates another by combining with another component.

 

[Eutectic]

6 oz B-wax.
4 oz soy wax
1 oz parrafin
3 oz of white lith
1.5 oz xlox.
.5 oz wheel bearing or whatever #2 grease

What if you used castor wax instead of soy wax Lamar????????

 

[fiver]

I don't know what would happen.
I have a feeling the castor wax would add a lot more slickness, but I haven't seen or touched any so I really can't predict how it would work.
now, you could use it and cut the oils and go to a wax only mix similar to what carnuba red uses.
maybe subbing it for the paraffin and dropping the xlox totally would be viable also.