Great results with Johnson Paste Wax

[Ohio Rusty]

As a follow up report to my first experience lubing with a 50/50 mix of JPW and beeswax, it turned out well and I learned a few things. This was done over my coleman stove outside on the lowest heat setting. After 24 hours, the lube has hardened alot more than yesterday. Yesterday it was still soft on the boolets and would wipe off the boolets with the fingers, not so today. Pan lubing was an utter failure as when the bullets would come apart, the lube would pop out of the grooves and not stick well. The best method was to warm the lube to a liquid, put the boolets in the metal pie pan and let the boolets get warm also. If they went in cold, the lube would immediately harden around the bullet in a big chunk. As the bullet warmed, the lube would coat the bullet evenly and set in the lube grooves as expected. It worked out really well doing this with my cast .429 round ball and rolling them around in the pan to get an even coat. All the lead bullets were put on wax paper to dry. I sure am please with the results so far, and I'm grateful to the list for the great advice. I hope to get a chance to load some rounds and fire some of these this weekend. I'm most excited about shooting the round ball and working up a good load for it. I can see me shooting thousands of these RB loads over the summer just for the fun of it. I'll report on that later .....
Ohio Rusty

[WHITETAIL]

Ok boys and girls, here is a no fuss way of lubing with JPW.
Get yourself a small jar. Like a cherry jar.
Then putin your boolets say 50 at a time.
Then add a1/4 spoon full of JPW to the jar.
Set the jar on a heat unit. such as a heater or wood stove.
When the wax melts swirl the boolets around in the jar.
Then take the boolets out with a pair of tweesers.
And place base down on a sheet of wax paper.
Let sit overnight.
Now they are ready to load.

[NSP64]

I bought mine at Ace Hardware for about 5 bucks a can. It's the type they use on floors. I remember buffing floors with it back in my Army days.

Yesssss, those were the days!!! used to bend a coat hanger around them and light them. put the lid on to extinguish, then pour on floor in small puddles. spread with buffer brush, let dry then polish to high shine with cotton towel. mirror shine. Until some idiot had to polish commanders office on the weekend and lit the curtains on fire. Monday, pulled all the JPW out of the building. Floor never looked the same. never thought about shooting it. have to lube some R.E.A.L. boolits and go launch them.

[HEAD0001]

It never ceases to amaze me the stuff you guys come up with. This is a fun site. Tom.

[beagle]

These are still the good old days. My conference room had a maroon tile floor and we'd heat and mix Kiwi Cordovan shoe polish in with Johnson's paste wax. Got to watch messing with it as it's flammable as all hell. Then get a good private that knows what he's doing on a buffer and an old towel and he'd make it look like glass.

As sundog says, "The Sergeant Major is awlays right"./beagle

Yesssss, those were the days!!! used to bend a coat hanger around them and light them. put the lid on to extinguish, then pour on floor in small puddles. spread with buffer brush, let dry then polish to high shine with cotton towel. mirror shine. Until some idiot had to polish commanders office on the weekend and lit the curtains on fire. Monday, pulled all the JPW out of the building. Floor never looked the same. never thought about shooting it. have to lube some R.E.A.L. boolits and go launch them.

[USARO4]

AAHHH, thanks for the memories Beagle, I had forgotten the towel under the buffer trick. I also remember my first experience as a buffer operator, seems like the thing had a mind of it's own. I remember chasing it all over the Dayroom floor. By the way I too use Leftoverdj's and 35remington's method to apply the JPW to boolits. Its not messy at all and evenly coats the bullet with a thin layer of wax.

[opcon4]

won't the wax eat away at the barrel?

[pdawg_shooter]

Any one try JPW as a lube for paper patches? Most anything seems to work ok, but JPW sounds neat and clean.

[Ricochet]

How would wax eat away at a barrel? Nothing corrosive in it.

Wonder how Cordovan Kiwi Polish would work as a boolit lube?

[leftiye]

Ric, Nice Color!

[Scrounger]

Wax allows moisture to collect unseen under it. Shooting wax coated bullets is OK, just make sure you clean it good afterwards.

[Bret4207]

I think if moisture in my barrel was a concern I''d either use a moisture displacer like WD-40 or warm the barrel with a blow dryer enough to get it "warm and snuggly" as my 3 year old says. Then once the moistures gone the JPW should seal the bad stuff out.

Ah, floor buffing. A subject dear to the heart of any Marine. There was a time when the best looking floor four weeks in a row got you a 4 day pass. Did you guys know that you can sneak a bit of sand into the floor wax supply? Got to buy your own supply on the sly but it was worth it as there was this girl at the time and she and I .....

[44man]

I found out long ago that water would get between the barrel and stock of my flinters and soak the pan powder. I put gobs of paste wax in the barrel channel and force the excess out when I replace the barrel. Polish it away and the gun is water proof. After years of this bedding, the metal is still like new too. I have used wax on many guns for protection when hunting in the rain. It makes a good release agent for bedding epoxy too and I fill the screw threads with it before tightening down a bedding job.
The stuff has a million uses.

[USARO4]

Does wax allow moisture to collect unseen under it when used on a car's finish? Seems to me it repels water and protects the finish, maybe it has the same effect on a barrel. Anybody have any long term experience in shooting JPW coated bullets and its effect on the barrel?

[Ricochet]

If Johnson's paste wax on boolits collects water under it and rusts barrels, so does the beeswax, paraffin and carnauba wax in just about every other boolit lube formula used by shooters on this board. That's ludicrous.

[Scrounger]

If Johnson's paste wax on boolits collects water under it and rusts barrels, so does the beeswax, paraffin and carnauba wax in just about every other boolit lube formula used by shooters on this board. That's ludicrous.

I suppose you're right. The pressure of the bullet against the barrel, and the heat, would probably disspell any moisture. I was basing that assumption on a fellow who used to wax the outside of his guns; he did get some rust problems there.

[Ricochet]

The problem there is if you wax over existing stuff that'll trap moisture, like salt from perspiration. I'd really worry about that with shooting waxy lubes over corrosive primers, but that's seldom a problem except with mxing cast boolit loads with old milsurp ammo as I often do. I have had rust form in my Colt Walker's chamber mouths when I used Pyrodex (which has potassium perchlorate in it) and greased boolits with automotive grease that was hard to wash out completely and trapped some of the corrosive salt even though I thought I'd thoroughly washed it out with hot soapy water and rinsed it with hot water, dried and oiled it. Wasn't enough.

[rroberts]

JPW is just as good on the outside as it is on the inside. Here in the deep south where humidity and sweat are a constant, many folks put JPW on the outside of the gun. Clean the gun very well, wax it down and wipe it off. It is an excellent rust preventative. It repels perspiration, rain, and make the guns easier to wipe down.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

Calling ludicris is a pretty bad rap. He, He!

[44man]

Thats the secret to wax. Clean off everything else before putting it on. Doesn't do any good to try to put it on top of grease, oil, sweat or anything else.