How much Carnauba?

[Marlin Junky]

To those of you out there making your own lube and using carnauba, how much do you add per pound of beeswax? Is half an ounce of carnauba too much? I have about 1/4 ounce of carnauba flakes melted in my lube which consists of a pound of beeswax, 3-1/2 ounces of Vaseline, 3/4 ounce (by weight) of Jojoba oil and I'm thinking about adding another 1/4 ounce of T3-Carnauba to harden it up a bit. I usually shoot in the 1700 to 2100 fps range but if I ever run across a .35 that'll handle more velocity, I'd like to have a lube that's good to 2400+ fps.

MJ

[44man]

Hard to say! Since it is a good hardener, just try small batches to get the hardness you want first. I just make Felix so I can't say what your mix will need or how hard will work.
I would try and match Carnauba Red's hardness to start.

[Bullshop]

When I get a request for a harder lube than speed green I add 1 oz of carnauba flake to one lb of speed green for a fairley hard lube. Speed green will flow through a lube sizer without heat but speed green with carnauba (SGC) will require heat.
I found it works best to pre melt the carnauba by itself before adding it to the lube, and not just adding the carnauba flake to the melted lube.
Blessings
BIC/BS

[Marlin Junky]

Thanks for the input.

Bullshop,
Does that much Carnauba make the lube brittle? In other words, after pan lubing it into a form about a half inch thick, does it snap in two when it is bent?

44man,
I realize this is a subjective question but on a hardness scale of 1 to 10 where Javelina is 1 and pure yellow beeswax is 10, how hard is Carnauba Red?

MJ

[Bullshop]

No Sir at 1 oz carnauba to 1 lb speed green I would not call it brittle. It still has flexability. It does then need heat to run in a lubrisizer at a pressure that wont keep blowing the seals. It mainly reduces the tackyness to nearly nothing. There is a certain amount of brittleness there but still plenty of flex. What I would consider brittle is straight carnauba.
One the scale you mentioned I would say 8 for SGC.
Blessings
BIC/BS

[44man]

Bullshop has the best, why don't you try Speed green?
Carnauba Red needs a little heat when it is cool in my basement. I have to use the heat gun for model airplane covering to warm the sizer. But it is not brittle. I have warmed it in my fingers and rubbed it in the grooves but got a few blisters. :mrgreen: It is a great lube though.
Darn, just spilled a drop of home made stout on the keyboard! :drinks: I can only say to stay as far away from a brittle lube as you can. No quicker way to ruin accuracy. Why don't you add some lanolin to your lube?

[Marlin Junky]

If I didn't already have an investment in lube components I would definitely try the Bullshop lubes and probably the Carnauba Red as well but I have 5 pounds of T3-Carnauba, over 50 pounds of beeswax, 12 pounds of lanolin and enough pure sodium stearate for at least a few more batches of lube. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about my 2 gallons of Jojoba oil!

Most of my bullet lubing is done by pan so the heating part of this equation cancels out. The only use my Lyman 450 gets is to apply GC's and occasionally lube a friends plain base bullets with Javelina.

So here's the next fundamental question: Is tackiness a good or bad characteristic with respect to high speed (over 1700 fps) lubes? Lanolin will make a lube tacky and my plan was to stay away from lanolin at this time just for that reason.

MJ

[buck1]

As long as its not so tackie that the lube sticks the bullets together and pulls the lube from the groves, its fine. At least thats beem my results through at least 2400 FPS in my .308 with sub MOA groups. In fact I like a slightly tackie lube.
Too much Carnauba in the mix has brittled my lube before so do add it slowly.
And dont over look the value of a crockpot in making lubes.
Good luck!///Buck

[44man]

A little lanolin will keep the lube from getting brittle without affecting the hardness you want. It also makes the lube stick in the grooves. Lube that breaks and falls out of the grooves is bad. That can happen when the boolit is shot. Any that stays in one side throws the boolit out of balance. I feel that ALL the lube should spin out at the muzzle or ALL should stay on the boolit. There are no in betweens.

[leftiye]

If you can get the tackiness right, lanolin is a really super high pressure lubricant ( stops galling in swage dies, draw dies for case production, etc). I am starting to suspect that a lot of lubes don't lubricate, rather (I'm guessing) they stop lead separated from boolits from adhering to your barrel. This isn't as good as the lead staying on the boolit (ya think?). The outsides of boolits are much more fragile that the general theory says. There are things happening to our boolits that are undetectable because the sudden stop most boolits experience covers up the previous damage. Anyway this would explain why things like paper patching, and card wads, and fillers (tilet paper and COW) result in much reduced leading, undisturbed boolit bases, and improved accuracy. M.J. Sounds like you've got all the makings of a super lube. I'm in pretty much that place now myself, and am doing research on how to combine the ingredients so as to work best. IMO Felix lube is a good starting place, to be modified. I've heard all the views about how clean barrels/powders don't matter, and I still can't believe that no crud isn't better than some or a lot of it. I'd say ya got lucky, if the crud in yer barrel didn't cause problems. Coating the bore with carnauba with Moly mixed in might be the holy grail (maybe).