Need Help on Lube

[bushwack]

I started mixing up some felix lube today but It keeps seperating. I heated up to 300 degrees and stirred for a half hour then added the soap. That didn't work so I heated it up added more soap and cooked at 200 degrees for an hour. I think what my problem might be is I looked at the ingrediants on ivory soap and it made no referance to sodium stereate or stearic acid. So I used caress which has the stearic acid as the second ingrediant and the soduim stereate as the sixth ingrediants. I started with a cup of baby oil and 1/2 cup of casterol oil and ended up adding a full bar of shredded caress soap. It is still seperating could you give me any ideas as how to fix this problem. Should I start over or just get some ivory and add to it. I don't plan on making this much lube but will store whatever I don't use.

[felix]

The soap you used contains body lotion chemicals, I bet. Use a soap that does not have anything but the stearates. Ivory takes everything out of their natural ingredients but the fat to make only sodium stearate. No stearate can be made more than 70 percent pure using natural means. ... felix

[bushwack]

Thanks felix, I'll throw this out and start over using ivory. Appreciate your help

[felix]

What is your application? Perhaps we can make the lube without as much heat and time. ... felix

[runfiverun]

i would try adding the ivory before i tossed what you got.

[bushwack]

For right now it's just a 9mm

[utk]

I've tried to pre-cook castor oil and mineral oil with pure sodium stearate (which I bought at a high price from a chemical supplier). But after a couple of days, the mess started to separate anyway...

(I used 60 ml "paraffinum liquidum" = baby oil, 30 ml castor oil and 10ml sodium stearate. Cooked for one hour. The result was a light brown semi solid "gel" with a transparent liquid (oil) separating from the gel after a couple days).

Felix - do we really need BOTH castor and mineral oil? Wouldn't castor (or mineral) oil ONLY make a good lube?

[felix]

Castor oil is the problem with any ingredient that is petro based. Castor oil needs to be merged into the oil making larger molecules together so the combo won't leak out of the beeswax cavities. If castor oil is not going to be used, and it is not required for most pistol applications because of low boolit speed in short barrels, there is no need for heavy duty cooking which does the molecule adjustments (making a polymer). You can leave out the petro oils (ATF, baby, vaseline, mineral, etc.) and substitute olive oil instead and use low heat and later add castor oil. But if doing that, do not add paraffin until the lube is already made and had been reheated and cooled several times with time in between. You can mix in lanolin anytime when the lube is no more than 125F. After the lanolin has been included and lube cooled, you can reheat up to 200F and the lanolin will not be cooked which should never be allowed. There is one downside in using olive oil, and that is the lube can become softer in time. This is because olive oil breaks down beeswax. This is very good for a BP application, but not so much for keeping WP loads on the shelf for any amount of time. Always store loaded rounds boolit DOWN, no matter what lube was used. ... felix

[utk]

OK, but my "polymerization" of mineral/castor didn't succeed even with pure sodium stearate and one hour cooking.

That's why I wondered if both oils are necessary. Now, for "heavy duty" rifle use (high speed/long barrel) - can I skip the petro and just use castor oil? If so, can I also skip stearate and cooking altogether? Why use two incompatible oils?

[felix]

Good to hear from you, UTK. Sodium stearate is never pure because it is made from "natural" stuff which is never consistent as you know. Veggie oil? Pig oil? Etc? Those are the feeds for making any kind of stearate. It is just difficult to duplicate lube batches when using anything other than purely synthetic stuff from start to finish.
By all means, try anything you can think up and see what happens. You should only use a glue (binder) only when required, so leaving out any stearate should be on the agenda. If you get any separation during cooking and cooling, something needs to be done to make the stuff homogeneous. ... felix

[utk]

I've read that stearate content can vary between soap batches, that's why I bought the "pure stuff" from a chemical supplier. Like you said, it is probably not 100% pure anyway, but at least more pure than a soap. That was my thinking, and we don't have Ivory soap here (but other soaps, of course).

But one question remains: Why use two incompatible oils (castor and mineral) in your lube? What is your thinking behind it?

Sorry, I missed this:

...Castor oil is the problem with any ingredient that is petro based. Castor oil needs to be merged into the oil making larger molecules together so the combo won't leak out of the beeswax cavities...

Now I see why mineral is necessary if I want to use castor oil.

[felix]

Keep in mind that a stearate is a soap by chemical definition, and Ivory is just that and that's why they say on the wrapper 99 percent pure. Yeah, it's pure stearate, but a perfectly clean stearate chemical formula will not include the stuff resulting from the cheap "soap" manufacturing process using a strong basic solution, even when the latter chemical is 95 percent or better.

Mineral oils (anything petro) are poisons to most home-body microbes. The lube will remain fresh, if not heavily oxygenated via the air, for years. Keep freshly lubed boolits in reasonably air tight containers, like cigar boxes.

... felix

[utk]

Ok, you mean that castor oil is the "main oil" and the mineral oil is there mostly to protect the lube from microbes?
If so, isn't there any mineral oil that equals the lubricating qualities of castor oil? How about STP - the oil-ingredient in California Saeco Green (2 parts Beeswax, 2 parts Paraffin, 1 part STP (Parts by weight)).

[felix]

STP has too much viscosity, and as such is hard to get a good ratio in the lube. Castor oil is good in this regard, because viscosity can be adjusted to be just right. Castor oil can be hydrogenated to get infinite viscosity (castor wax), and this is why they quit making motor oil using it, even with the most fluid kind of Castor oil (virgin press). In other words, it becomes a glue in a motor oil (from heated hydrogen and nitrogen), and a serious one at that. Race cars can get away with it because the engines are drained immediately after the race, and the engines are then torn down. Some racing teams have motor oil made which have no more than 3 or 4 percent Castor oil which gives a much friendly mixture. This is what we want in the lubes for high speed rifles. ... felix

[utk]

VERY interesting... So both oils are obviously wanted. Is there then no other means of polymerization than sodium stearate? Or didn't I manage to get enough of it dissolved into the mix?
Because, when I tried to cook the two oils together with sodium stearate I had some difficulties in getting the stearate to dissolve while keeping the temperature below smoking, it has a rather high melting temperature.
Do you think I could start with castor oil + sodium stearate only? Then I can keep a higher temperature without smoking for melting/dissolving the stearate. Then I lower the temperature before adding the mineral oil and letting the mix cook for half an hour or so...

[Springfield]

Why do you add the paraffin after everything is cooked together?

[oso]

utk - I have used STP and Dexon III in place of Castor oil and mineral oil and avoid the cooking time except to dissolve the Ivory. You can try it and it is still a workable FWFL variant. It seems to me the polymerization of castor oil is by heating while the stearate acts as an emulsifier.

Springfield - the only reason to add paraffin is to harden a batch of FWFL if it seems too soft for you. You don't know how your batch is until it cools and you check it for uniformity. I'd check performance before adding paraffin, never have needed to add paraffin to my FWFL.

[dubber123]

I use Ivory, and find it by far the hardest ingredient to get into solution. I bought a hand held electric mixer, and it's a breeze now. No more stirring forever with a stick!

[utk]

oso - now that you mention it, I think I remember having read that it IS the heat that polymerizes castor and mineral!
Dang! It seems I don't get the temp up enough, at those high temperatures the mineral oils smoke. Now what to do? Of course there are special high temperature oils "out there" but I've got no idea where to get them in small quantities.
But doesn't the emulsifier - sodium stearate - keep it together equally well?

I have several lube recipes but it's the high speed (rifle) capabilities of FWFL I'm after, and it seems the castor oil is the answer. And I WANT to make the polymerization work. I've made FWFL which doesn't seem to separate but this time I wanted to make sure before adding the rest of the ingredients and now I see that the castor/mineral isn't enough polymerized. And the sodium stearate didn't hold it together either, but maybe I used too little or didn't get it into solution.

[felix]

Try Olive oil for sheets and grins, and bypass the stearate. Long term cooking not required then. Everything else the same, including the castor oil. Beware of ANY smoke. When 125F, add the lanolin. Let cool. Next day, bring the lube up to 225F and no more. When water vapor comes off completely from the lanolin, the lanolin is setup good. Let cool, and next day or after test shooting, bring up the temp to 180F to re-mix and include paraffin if needed.

44man, please put down your flavor with through mixing instructions. It seems you have a fail-safe technique that might be easier all around, and prolly the best formulation of all?

... felix

[44man]

Try Olive oil for sheets and grins, and bypass the stearate. Long term cooking not required then. Everything else the same, including the castor oil. Beware of ANY smoke. When 125F, add the lanolin. Let cool. Next day, bring the lube up to 225F and no more. When water vapor comes off completely from the lanolin, the lanolin is setup good. Let cool, and next day or after test shooting, bring up the temp to 180F to re-mix and include paraffin if needed.

44man, please put down your flavor with through mixing instructions. It seems you have a fail-safe technique that might be easier all around, and prolly the best formulation of all?

... felix
I just follow your instructions with the oils just at the smoke point for 1/2 hour, then add the Ivory as fine as I can scrape it. That is the hardest part, melting the soap. Then I add the beeswax and reduce the temp so it melts slow. I have to lift the pan above the lowest fire often but a double boiler might be better when adding the wax. I add the lanolin last.
It is tricky keeping the oil hot because of my propane stove, I can't look away and have to keep lifting the pan to prevent it getting too hot. Kind of a balancing act between too much smoke and none.
Small batches are better then making too much at once.
I use 2 TBS of baby oil, 1 TBS of castor, 1 TBS of FINE Ivory (weighs about 57 to 65 gr.), 8 oz of beeswax and 1 TBS of lanolin.
I have made many, many batches without a single problem.
I pour it into one of those plastic trays from a frozen dinner, the starvation dinners! [smilie=l: The ones cheese and mack come in.
If I want to put some in a lube sizer I just cut strips and stuff it in by hand or a dowel. It will form nicely without making sticks of the lube. But I like to stuff it in the grooves by hand and push through a Lee die to remove excess lube with almost no sizing of the boolits.
I like it soft so I don't add crayons to color it, I am afraid it will change the hardness. Pure color would be nice but the inside of the brass has never rejected what I load! :-P Some is ugly brown from the color of the wax and some is white. I never sit and admire my boolits and how pretty they look with red or blue lube.
I added a TSP of carnauba wax flakes to some batches and it works and feels the same. I can't tell if it keeps the bore shiny or not. It sure didn't hurt anything.
If you want accuracy, you just have to accept the mess in the dies and on the bench top, even the press handles! My Hornady dies have a lot of room in the seater stem so I don't have to clean often. I do have to wipe the brass off after loading but ignore lube on the boolits, just keep them away from dirt. MTM boxes are great.
Now, if I drop a boolit on the rug, it looks like hell from all the dog hair that sticks to it. I can't get the hair off my fingers either so I have to sit and pick at it! :bigsmyl2:
Here is the culprit

[felix]

Thanks, 44man! That fur ball would be nice to cuddle in the middle of winter, eh? ... felix

[largom]

Question for FELIX.
If one wanted to stiffen up FWFL just a little could you add more carnauba wax instead of paraffin? I realize the carnauba is more expensive but if you already have it can you use it?
Larry

[44man]

Thanks, 44man! That fur ball would be nice to cuddle in the middle of winter, eh? ... felix
She is a great dog without all the bad traits the breed is known for. She is calm, hardly ever barks unless playing and loves everyone that comes over. She is always under my bench seat at the loading bench.
The first dog I ever had that never damaged a single thing in the house, she just stayed with toys. I wish I had 10 like her. :Fire:

[Heavy lead]

Gotta love a fellow dog man.