Koolax / Esso Galena for lube?

[Red River Rick]

Has anybody tried/used the railroad hotbox sticks (Koolax or Esso Galena) for bullet lube? Good, bad?

RRR

[HORNET]

RRR, Where the heck did you find that stuff? The railroads down here stopped using it before my Dad retired 25 years ago. I haven't used those brand names but have used a lot of Texaco Hot Box Coolant. Very dark brown, extremely sticky stuff in sticks about 1"x 1/2" and about the consistancy of caramel. Extremely good boolit lube and was mentioned as such by Paul Matthews in Handloader before he went to using those BPCR's. I use it for most rifle boolits including 225438's at full throttle in the .22 Hornet. It gives me better accuracy than I've obtained from Lee frog snot or NRA Alox mixes ( Lyman or Tamarack). I usually cut it into chunks aand stuff the cylinder on the lubrisizer. It takes a bit of pressure but it'll work without heating. If you can come up with a supply, I might be interested, depending on price.

[softpoint]

I have some grease that is used to pack oilfield high pressure valves that I bet is similar to railroad grease. Very thick and heavy, doesn't change consistency except at wide temperature variations. I have been planning on trying it as bullet lube for a while. Also, what about the synthetic greases like slick50, maybe combined with something to stiffen it up a bit?

[Red River Rick]

HORNET:

I have 16 boxes (2 sticks/box) of the Koolax and 3 boxes (4 sticks/box) of the ESSO Galena. I also have about 100 round sticks of this stuff mixed 50/50 with beeswax. The round sticks (15/16" dia x 3") will fit into a luber-sizer, no holes in the middle.

The ESSO Galena is nice and clean, so are the round sticks. The Koolax however, has a thin coating of what appears to be some form of dry graphitic lube?

Here's a few pics.

RRR

[stocker]

Haven't used either as a lube but I have a sizeable stash of galena that I use when glass bedding rifles. Use it to fill magazines, holes you don't want glass in, inside of the receiver to keep glass out of feed rails etc. Have used it for over 40 years for that purpose. it is hard to find now but our railroads used it extensively on older freight cars that were restricetd to on line service. All roller or ball bearings now.

[Frank46]

Back when I worked for a living we had some sticks of lubericant we used on flexible expansion joints on steam lines. The sticks were inserted into a high pressure grease gun and had a special tip on the gun that locked onto the various lube points on the expansion joints. Very tacky at room temp. And also a grease that was used on plug valves for fuel oil tanks. Every so often the plug valves had to be greased and the grease acted as a sealant to prevent them from leaking. I think they were called jorgensen plug valves. Whenever the valves leaked you would get an unexplained increase in the tank level, grease the valves and leakage would stop. Frank

[DanM]

Here is an interesting thread discussing old railway Koolax use. They do say that it contains sulfur: http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=107905&highlight=&sid=caa4a7c74e4d823bf83c1f6f463e5fe7

[HORNET]

RRR,
That could be a graphite coating on the Koolax. The Texaco stuff comes with each stick wrapped in a waxed paper so they don't stick together (very sticky stuff). As with any other lube, try it and see what it does. I'd bet that you'll like it. You might want to tumble the sized boolits in something like motor-mica, corn starch, or talcum powder to keep them from sticking together and from getting the stuff on your hands. It does NOT come off easily. It will come off with mineral spirits when you're ready to clean the barrel or sizing dies.
Wonder how they got that to mix with beeswax? Only time I've seen the stuff get liquid was when remelting lubed boolits. Seems like that'd be way too hot for the wax.

[Maven]

On very rare occasions I've run into a few sticks of hot box lube, usually at the very bottom of a storage box on either a caboose (remember them?) or locomotive. However, the one time we needed it, it was already too late as the Babbit ("brass") had already melted, rendering the trailing truck and locomotive (a steam loco, 2-8-2) inoperative at Sparta Jct., N.J. Unfortunately, the replacement bearing was in Binghampton, several hours away. Once we got the replacement, installation went pretty quickly---maybe 2 hrs. The good news is that I got a nice chunk of enrichment metal for my bullets. And until reading this thread, it had never occurred to me to use hotbox coolant as a bullet lube or bullet lube additive.

[Red River Rick]

Hornet:

Your right about the time frame, I've had this stuff for at least 25 years. Got it from an older (then) gentleman who worked for the RR. This guy did lots of handgun shooting and swore that Koolax & Galena where the best bullet lubes. I also have his old Lyman sizer, it's full of Galena as well.

I shoot .38's & .357's lubed with this stuff out of my S&W 19 and haven't had a problem with leading at all. It's messy as hell, but seems to work fine.

Your right about the Galena sticking to everything, like s@*t to a blanket. The Koolax isn't as bad, seems a bit more stiffer and not as sticky. I have a bunch of .38 bullets lubed with the Galena, and it all over the place. I'm sure the talcum powder would put a halt to that in a hurry, on a new batch of bullets.

I have lots here. If someone want's to try some out, I'd be willing to part with it.

RRR

[HORNET]

Sheesh, go offline for a weekend and completely lose the thread..
Maven, the hotbox coolant works almostperfectly because it's basicly the same application. Lead alloy in sliding contact with polished steel under high pressure- sounds like cast boolits or railroad journal bearings. It's just kinda stiff going through a lubrisizer. BTW, any idea what the composition is on that babbitt? Dad was a Car Repairman and brought home a few hundred pounds that he'd salvaged from hotboxes.

[13Echo]

With a name like Galena I have to wonder if it contains some lead or lead compounds such as lead stearate.

Jerry Liles

[felix]

No doubt, Jerry. ... felix

[felix]

Lead based babbit, Rick. It's the best antimony augmenter when you have tin available. ... felix

[Maven]

Hornet, No idea of the composition. It was an irregularly shaped ~6oz. pc. that I later used as enrichment metal. The resulting CB's were perfect, though.

[Bad Water Bill]

Since I have a very good contact at a large R R repair yard is there anything available today to match either product? BWB:castmine:

[nitro-express]

RRR, Where the heck did you find that stuff? The railroads down here stopped using it before my Dad retired 25 years ago. I haven't used those brand names but have used a lot of Texaco Hot Box Coolant. Very dark brown, extremely sticky stuff in sticks about 1"x 1/2" and about the consistancy of caramel. Extremely good boolit lube and was mentioned as such by Paul Matthews in Handloader before he went to using those BPCR's. I use it for most rifle boolits including 225438's at full throttle in the .22 Hornet. It gives me better accuracy than I've obtained from Lee frog snot or NRA Alox mixes ( Lyman or Tamarack). I usually cut it into chunks aand stuff the cylinder on the lubrisizer. It takes a bit of pressure but it'll work without heating. If you can come up with a supply, I might be interested, depending on price.

Today 2018/03/25 at a gun show, someone had 4 boxes of Galena, I asked what was it used for. He said it was bullet lube. So I bought all 4 boxes for $10. That is how I ended up at this post, trying to find out what the heck this stuff was.