Homemade Lube, Geargnasher's SL68 recipe

[geargnasher]

Bruce is the one who brought up the BHT thing back about post 118. Greases and oils may have things in them to keep themselves from oxidizing, and also additives to help reduce oxidation of the metals they lubricate. I remember spending hours, no DAYS, reading up on the dazzling array of the additives that used just in lubricating greases. If that's the only problem we have, it should be simple to fix with Bruce's expertise.

Gear

[bruce381]

""Are you sure your GL-1 oil is free of EP additive?"'

LOL that what i told gear.

yeah BHT is a anti oxidant with medium temp evap range, in that over time at hot temps (forgot hor hot) most all of it will evaporate out of the lube BUT there are other AO's that will stay at high temps used in Jet engine ester based oils.

A nother real good one is TBHQ used at about .1%wtworks real well in veg oils like potato chip making etc.

Have to look up is in my Ciba Lube book.

That and some are both yellow metal protectors aswell as AO.

Lot of addivtives avalible IMHO for a wax BHT would be used is cheap and food grade, takes around .5%wt to get a good boost.

simple just try some, Gear Ian email me will send some prettty easy to try out.

[bruce381]

Antioxidants eh? Why not a touch of tocopherol? Great antioxidant is already in an oil.

not really (vitamin E) is added to food grade mineral oils is not natural to them, maybe is in seed oil tho.

[btroj]

I was looking at the fact that most vitamin E is in a gel cap form in oil. Vitamin E oil is also readily available.

I will certainly not argue with the actual oil guru.

[geargnasher]

Bruce did ask me, I checked but the supplier oddly doesn't have a data sheet on this oil. It's definitely GL-1 Spec mineral oil, but no other info. It's a medium caramel color and has the distinct stench of the old gear greases, not the modern GL-4 or 5 oils.

Still waiting on an email from Blended Waxes regarding wax analysis.

Got a sample of mil-spec beeswax in the mail yesterday to test as well, it smells like real beeswax, looks like it, and has the white dust on it like beeswax gets, I expect it will fry but will test to see for sure.

Gear

[wlc]

I figure if I found this that some of ya'll lube chemists had already found it but thought I'd throw it out. I was digging around looking for something about the Navy wax that's been talked about here and found this:

"It was found that heating the modified beeswax to 150°C has no influence on the characteristics. Moreover, no oxidation takes place at this temperature. Heating the product to 250°C for 2 hours did not adversely affect the colour."

250*C is 482*F

Here is where I found it: http://www.google.com/patents/EP0319062B1?cl=en

The process is probably more that any home brewer would want to undertake, but if a sample could be found and lube made with it, who knows...... I have no idea if this info is of any use, but there it is.

[Grump]

Interesting, that's notably higher than the approximate 400F reported as beeswax's limit, only 33F less than the reported stink but not burning reported here, and 22F higher than the 460F melting point of Sodium Stearate...

Might be a winner for a great component that CAN be obtained. Now gotta get the price. Undoubtedly more than $.50 per pound???

[wlc]

Grump. what I googled was "modified beeswax" as for some reason I couldn't remember "navy wax" when typing. The first few hits that came up were for the above patent process. Don't have a clue where the stuff would be sourced from though.

[Grump]

Contact the patent holder? Dig into the application and find the patent attorney/firm. That's where I would start if I were going to try to start selling the stuff. Or organizing a group buy if testing proves it out. No time right now, gotta get back to the day job...

[bruce381]

or just add a small percent of alkai to the beeswax and cook to 150C to drive out water and nutralize any acid?

[Grump]

What's the variability of "free acids" in beeswax? Does it run tight enough to have hope of calculating a balanced (umm...not ansiotropic...forgot the big wurd...) equation, or would it just be dump in too much base and remove the un-reacted stuff that *should* settle to the bottom...???

Easy purchase would still be first choice. Cooking the wax (and processing out the junk) before cooking the lube doubles the work.

[geargnasher]

"Stoichiometric".

It's more complicated than that, removing the free acids involves cooking with another substance that will react with them in the presence of the base catalyst. On a brief skim of the patent, it appears to be a similar process where stearic acids are removed from animal fats as part of the biofuel making process. There is a "base" method for separating the stearine that involves Lye and methanol.

Gear

[willie_pete]

Chemical engineer here: you could add some base/water, heat to melt, agitate and then cool and drain off the aqueous portion. Then do that again with water as a rinse for any excess base. That's assuming the base wash isn't doing anything strange to the wax.

I've made some biofuels before; fairly simple from an engineering POV. Caustic soda, methanol and cooking oil. Heat agitate and separate off the glycerine. What's left is biofuel.

WP

[geargnasher]

OK, update time. I received some beeswax, 9160-00-253-1171, part number C-B-191C, technical beeswax. It's yellow, looks like beeswax, smells like it, and chews like it. Rather than do specific temperature evaluations of it, I just made Starmetal lube with it tonight. It fried. The result was exactly the color of light chicory coffee, that is, distinctly reddish brown for those of you who haven't spent any time in the south. It smells like cat feces. BUT, it made a very nice lube that seems to have the attributes of Starmetal lube pretty much exactly by feel, how it does on the wear tester, the feathering, the glide, overall viscosity, etc. I did bring it up to 455F to fully liquify it, though it scorched at around 360. I actually made three small batches, first one I melted the soap, Vaseline (brand) petrol jelly, and castor together to fully liquid, then took off the heat and tossed in a chunk of beeswax right away, which began to turn the mix brown right away. The second batch I did more per Starmetal's instructions involving adding powdered, dry Ivory to the melted wax/Vas/Castor. The longer the wax stayed above 360F in solution, the worse it burned, and it takes a while to melt the soap powder in. So just tossing in the chunk of wax into the fully melted other things and raising the heat so it all went liquid again.

The third batch worked the best, what I did was another Starmetal tip involving pouring melted wax into the melted soap/vas/ivory mix. Got a second burner going and poured 325F beeswax into the melted other stuff, which quenched it to the jelly stage for a short time, but I had the burner up again and quickly re-liquified the whole mix and then got it poured out into a cool mould as the beeswax was darkening by the second. They all burned, but all actually are usable.

In conclusion, this wax is no better and no worse than any of the other three or four grades of beeswax I've tried before. Neither can I figure a way to get this fully liquid (an important part to making a truly smooth, homogenized grease of it) without toasting the beeswax. The thing to discover is whether toasting the beeswax really matters or not to how it shoots.

The formula tonight was: Two weighed ounces of Vaseline brand petroleum jelly, 1/2 large bar of Ivory soap, two weighed ounces of beeswax, and a half-tablespoon of USP castor bean oil. It's just about perfect except it burnt.

Gear

[willie_pete]

I'll throw out my silly comment for the day. Would adding hotter stuff to cooler wax work any differently. Like tempering eggs when you cook. The wax wouldn't see the hotter material as long and may be less burnt?

wP

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

The third batch worked the best, what I did was another Starmetal tip involving pouring melted wax into the melted soap/vas/ivory mix. Got a second burner going and poured 325F beeswax into the melted other stuff, which quenched it to the jelly stage for a short time, but I had the burner up again and quickly re-liquified the whole mix and then got it poured out into a cool mould as the beeswax was darkening by the second. They all burned, but all actually are usable.

So if I were to make SL68 with part beeswax/part Microwax, it sounds prudent to keep the 'other' ingrediants on the burner as they enter the clear stage, near 460º, add the melted beeswax, expect gel stage from the beeswax cooling the mix, stir quick and continue to heat til blended well, then remove from the heat and have a quick ice cooling crash setup ready... and expect some scorching, which will be nice to have some color, but hopefully not damage the components in beeswax that we need (whatever they are ?)

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

also, I have three different high melt temp microwax samples, from different sources...none of which, I may be able to get more of...So I'm thinking of blending equal portions of each into the recipe, making a possibly more desireable complex wax base, and prolonging my stash...and then if I were to runout of the one wax I use, I wouldn't have the fear of change to the formula due to that. Make sense ?

Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse, but that is what I tend to do.

[btroj]

What happens if you make the grease from the vaseline, castor oil, and soap first. Let it begin to gel and cool a bit the. Add the wax as a solid. Let residual heat from the pan and gelled grease melt the wax. That is sort of how I made most of the beeswax containing SL series lubes to prevent the scorching.
I don't see any advantage to heating beeswax that high.

[geargnasher]

Jon, complexing the microwaxes you have will probably only make it better, I think you have the right idea there. IDK if burning really hurts it, doesn't seem to at all, and the result of fully liquifying all the ingredients makes a beautiful, smooth, translucent lube.

Brad, we can make this stuff just like you say, it's just not quite the same with the beeswax not fully integrated into the grease matrix. You get little pinhead-sized lumps of clear soda grease and a rough, grainy texture to the lube when adding the BW in at a lower temp. It works, but not as well. Also, the BW tends to start weeping out of the mix above its melt point, I suspect due to the sodium stearate web not keeping it "wicked" together.

I'm going to switch gears for a bit and start using the best batch of the stuff from last night for all my shooting to see what happens. If it shoots fine, I guess I don't really care if it's a little scorched.

Gear

[btroj]

I have a neat little device at work I might need to try. Ever heard of an Unguator? Lots of shear force applied by a spinning blade in there. Might let me mix the beeswax and sodium grease better without burning the wax.

I will need to give it a shot.