Question on fwfl. Large batch-cooking oils.

[MBTcustom]

I was wandering if There is any disadvantage to making a large batch of FWFL or at least cooking the casteroil and mineral oil in a large batch, adding the ivory soap and storing in that plasticized state, or do I need to cook it completely, one batch at a time until I have the amount that I need.
The first batch I made works great, but its not enough to fill a cookie sheet to cover the lube grooves on my boolits.
I want to be able to use the whole sheet and do 200 boolits at once. I also want to make enough to last me a few years, and I want consistent, reliable lube over that time.
This is my favorite lube, seems like it does everything under 2300 FPS.

[nanuk]

GS: I think it was GearGnasher who said he too cooks large batches of oils and stored the polymerized oils separately

what this does apparently is allow you to make a batch of lube, but you can make it at a lower temp, so no risk of scortching it.

Interesting thought, melting your soap in it in advance.

[MBTcustom]

Well, as I understand it, you need to melt the soap into the oils to polymerize them together. (I could be wrong?)
I just thought it would be nice to get that time-consuming step out of the way in one fell swoop right off the bat. Then when I need more lube, all I have to do is buy the bees wax and lanolin etc,etc, and mix it up. I thought I read somewhere that you cant mix the oils in large batches. You have to mix them in small batches. It doesn't seem like it would matter to me, but I am no chemist.

[geargnasher]

The objective of heating the oils for an extended period of time is to polymerize the castor bean oil, that's it.

Castor oil has tiny, short-chain molecules and will sweat out of the finished lube in droplets unless it is plasticized. Heat and time cause the hydrocarbon chains to link up and make fatter molecules which will stay suspended in the microcrystalline structure of the beeswax without leaking out.

Cooking the oils together doesn't make them homogenize, and they will separate after a while if cooked and stored in a big batch. If you add soap, you'll need to heat the mixture to get it back out of a bottle because it gels somewhat upon cooling depending on how much soap you were able to get to dissolve in the mix.

Premaking a big batch (like eight total ounces) is a good way to go, store it in a sealed bottle and just warm it and shake it up well before measuring out what you need to make a finished batch of lube.

Cooking the oils enough is, like I mentioned, a function of heat and time, so less heat and more time works. 250 degrees for an hour worked for me, and I feel is better on the oils, although 275 is still below the smoke point and probably better still. Constant agitation is important, too. Yes, it needs to be stirred the whole time! You really can't overcook the oils unless you use too much heat for too long.

Gear

[MBTcustom]

I'm sure you have talked about this stuff until you are blue in the face, but please bear with me.
Does the caster oil polymerize all by itself? I was under the impression that it had to have the mineral oil added to make the transformation, and the soap is necessary to make sure the two stay in solution and dont separate. Is that right, or is the mineral oil and soap added at that point just out of convenience? I just want to get the long cooking part over and done with up front.
Also, my sister gave me this bottle of pure lanolin oil. (She makes soaps, and lotions) It has a small note on the side of the bottle that says: Water extracted. Is that a no-go or will it work? If its the wrong type of lanolin, is it possible to "cook" the water out of it?

[FirstBrit]

I'm sure you have talked about this stuff until you are blue in the face, but please bear with me.
Does the caster oil polymerize all by itself? I was under the impression that it had to have the mineral oil added to make the transformation, and the soap is necessary to make sure the two stay in solution and dont separate. Is that right, or is the mineral oil and soap added at that point just out of convenience? I just want to get the long cooking part over and done with up front.
Also, my sister gave me this bottle of pure lanolin oil. (She makes soaps, and lotions) It has a small note on the side of the bottle that says: Water extracted. Is that a no-go or will it work? If its the wrong type of lanolin, is it possible to "cook" the water out of it?

Hi, The castor oil dosen't polymerize on its own. It requires elevated temperatures although I'm not sure how high the temperatures need to be for this to take place. As with most types of chemical reactions temperature influences the speed of reaction so the higher the temperature the quicker the polymerization occurs. Having said that, caster oil is susceptible to air oxidation ( the unsaturated carbon bonds get oxidized) but this is a completely different reaction than the polymerization. This "oxidized" product is also known as hardened castrol oil but is not longer an oil but a wax.

There are certainly chemical species which can catalyze ( i.e. accelerate) the polymerization of castor oil but I'm almost sure that the mineral oil has no role to play in this process. In my view the soap does help to bind all the ingredients together, but more importantly ist makes the lube much tougher and tenacious without becoming sticky. In the same way we refer to steels as being tough i. e. just not hard and brittle.

When one refers to Lanolin in the context of bullet lubes then usually we think of annhydrous Lanolin which normally has a yellow/orange colour and at normal room temperature ( 70°F) is a sticky wax. It melts very easily at just over 100°F. The annhydrous means that water has been removed. Lanolin is a complex mixture of various chemical species and can be separated into various fractions by distillation for example. Now maybe this pure Lanolin oil is one of those fractions. I am assuming that the text " water extracted" means that the oil is annhydrous and that water has been already removed. But on the other hand in another context could it mean that this fraction of oil was gained by water extraction as in a steam distillation? Probably this lanolin oil is not a real substitute for the annhydrous Lanolin.

Best regards,

Adrian - Germany.

[felix]

Adrian, anhydrous is a misnomer in the case of lanolin. What it means in this situation is that all excess water has been driven off. Therefore, chemistry wise, no "natural" lanolin can be water free on the molecular level. If so, it would be considered an oil, or something like that. Even natural lanolin will saturate itself to a water dripping stage. Like you already know, it's really hard to make a 100 percent grain alcohol (ethyl) and keep it water free.

Also, hydrogenation of oils converts oils into waxes, not oxidation.

... felix

[nanuk]

I think it was explained some time ago on another thread, that the mineral oil sacrifices some atoms that are taken up by the Caster oil during the polymerization process.

at least that is what I gathered from the posts.

is it needed? I dunno.... but it seems to work

[MBTcustom]

This is the lanolin I would like to use.

Is this any good or should I just pass this one on by?

[btroj]

I would toro the store and get some anhydrous lanolin. Once you have some you will see why it adds some stickiness to the lube.

I have a stirrer/hot plate t work. I may need to see how well it holds a specific tep. That would allow for easy mixing and cooking of the oils. Hmmmmmm

[MBTcustom]

There is not a store around that sells "anhydrous lanolin" Heck they dont even know what lanolin is. The last batch I made I used bag-balm for lanolin (50/50 lanolin and petroleum jelly) and it worked quite well, I still got sticky lube.
What I would like to know is what does the hydrated lanolin do to ruin the batch? What is the downside? Is there a way to test a lanolin product for function short of making a batch and shooting it? I know I should just bite the boolit and get some from Randyrat but my sister will give me this stuff for free so I just had to ask.

[btroj]

The hydrous lanolin will introduce water into the lube. The water will not be in a form where you can just cook itof easily either. I think this may lead the the lube wanted to grow stuff and get funky over time.
Anhydrous lanolin is one of the most tenacious, sticky things out there. It is way thicker than Vaseline. I am not sure what exactly isin liquid lanolin.
I look at it this way, a pound of lanolin will make many lifetimes worth of lube. I bet ou can make 30 or more batches of the basic FWFL recipe with one pound. That is a heck of a lot of lube.

As for knowing how it will act, don't know. I think making it and shooting is the best answer.

[Grandpas50AE]

There is not a store around that sells "anhydrous lanolin" Heck they dont even know what lanolin is. The last batch I made I used bag-balm for lanolin (50/50 lanolin and petroleum jelly) and it worked quite well, I still got sticky lube.
What I would like to know is what does the hydrated lanolin do to ruin the batch? What is the downside? Is there a way to test a lanolin product for function short of making a batch and shooting it? I know I should just bite the boolit and get some from Randyrat but my sister will give me this stuff for free so I just had to ask.

The last 1 lb. tub I bought was from my local Pharmacy. A pharmacist will know what it is and if they carry it.

[C.F.Plinker]

The last 1 lb. tub I bought was from my local Pharmacy. A pharmacist will know what it is and if they carry it.

I got mine at the pharmacy in the Alberson's grocery store. They knew what it is, ordered it for me, and it was in the next day. At $11 per pound it was the cheapest I could find locally. I don't think RandyRat was selling it at the time. I got my pound of beeswax from a candle supply house here in town. I only wanted a pound to get started with and it was as cheap as Randy's once I included his shipping.

Now I would order a pound of lanolin, 2-3 pounds of beeswax, a pound of carnuba, and as small an amount of the stearates as he would sell from
Randy. That would be a good basis for a lot of lubes. Oh yeah, if I was interested in speed green, I would get some of his zip lube also.

[btroj]

I looked around on,one to see if I could find what else was in the liquid lanolin Goodsteel showed. No dice.
I am sure it contains some actual lanolin to to make it a liquid It must have a pretty high oil content of some sort. I would worry aout the extra oil bleeding put of the lube. It also would not increase the stickiness near as well as anhydrous lanolin would.

I would just order some from Randy. Makes a great sizing lube too.

[MBTcustom]

Yeah, thats probably what I will do. Especially because Mrs. Goodsteel found the bottle and tried it. I think she has commandeered it for the duration.

[mroliver77]

I cooked a large batch of polymer. I don't use soap anymore but use RR strearate in place of it. When ready to make a batch I melt the beeswax, add the polymer and stearate, take off heat and add the lanolin.

If I had a supply of the oil I would try a batch with it keeping in mind the viscosity difference in the two. It might be good to add to Eds Red as a rust preventive also.

I used a lanolin that was not dehydrated and it made the lube look kind of like an emulsion but the water eventually cooked out of it! I thought it would be good for black powder lube.

[geargnasher]

Nanuk, that was probably a post I made years ago speculating on the mineral oil being a hydrocarbon donor to the reaction, but I never was sure. I do know that castor oil will polymerize all by itself, in fact if you heat it high enough and long enough it makes a pretty decent and useful solid plastic.

Goodsteel, "lanolin oil" is the dregs of the process of refining wool. Lanolin (sometimes called wool fat or sheep grease) is chemically a wax and resembles amber wheel bearing grease. It is mechanically separated from the wool itself, and basically is in a natual state. The "oil" that you have is chemically stripped from the wool and the solvents are then cooked off as a final part of the wool cleaning process. Most of the "goody" for lube purposes is in the waxy stuff. Get some from Albertson's pharmacy or from Randyrat as has been mentioned. I got several pounds of it in a group buy some time back, but Randy would be my source if I needed any more, he's a first-class guy to do business with and I buy all my beeswax from him.

As for the function of each ingredient, Felix explains it in some of his original writings on the subject in the Castpics archives. Everything is there for a distinct reason. Beeswax is the carrier, castor oil is the real lube, mineral oil is there as a lubricant also (and viscosity modifier as well, I believe), the carnauba wax (optional) adds stiffness and has some bore conditioning properties, the lanolin makes it stick to the boolit, and the soap "binds the whole mess together" as I remember he put it. Knowing what each ingredient does has helped me "tweak" the lube for different applications, one of the things I like best about it.

If you want to know the whole story, there's about a day's worth of reading over at Castpics and in the FWFL sticky, but basically all you really need to know is in the paragraph above and in the first post of the sticky.

Gear

[MBTcustom]

Thanks Geargnasher! Yeah, I was reading through the sticky, I made it about halfway twice and kept flaming out. This time I wanted to know specificly about the casteroil and if I could cook it ahead of time and add it later. I am sure it was covered in the sticky somewhere, but it was starting to feel like a thousand yard crawl over broken glass to find that specific piece of info. Thanks for lining me out. I think you answered the other big questions I had about this stuff in your post above.

[ubetcha]

If you have a Walmart or Walgreens pharmacy or any pharmacy near you,look for a produce named Lansinoh HPS lanolin.It's refered to as Nipple Cream,used to soothes chapped breast nipples for breast feeding mothers.It was a little weird going into a Walgreens and asking the lady if they carried nipple cream.The funny look she gave me only lasted a couple of seconds.As stated before, you can order lanolin from RandyRat too.The tube from Lansinoh is small and can be hard to get out.It can be expensive too