Cold weather lube additives?

[Eutectic]

From what I've been able to gather by lurking over the past several years, a lube should be formulated for cold environment, and then adapt a warm environment version by modifying the lube with a very hard wax like carnauba red. Or have two completely different lubes, one for cold and the other for warm.

One of our main objectives in the huge "Extreme Lube" thread above was a boolit lube that would span all temperatures. Then it soon became apparent that maybe our goal was a 100 degree span. Even then, some would prefer that to be 20° to 120° and others like me would go for -20° to 80°...... -40° below to 120° is still in our dreams though!

So yes, two variations of the same basic formula for winter and summer is a 'fix' some of us employ to get by until the formula is found. I would prefer to formulate for winter and modify for summer as you described.

Eutectic

[geargnasher]

20 to 110 is good enough for me, as long as it can hot-store at 150F without sweating out any oils and is soft enough to flow through a sizer at room temperature. What's even more important to me is being able to lube a 2600 fps rifle bullet and a 700 fps pistol bullet with the same lube and have them both perform well. Another factor is how the lube does after 20 or 100 shots, and how it does in gas operated SA rifles.

Interesting to me is the observation that high-velocity, high pressure rifle loads fire from hot guns in hot weather need much of the same thing that loads fired in super-cold guns have: Not too much slippery stuff. That means Vaseline held together with microcrystalline or beeswax and just a tiny tich of a reliable high-strength lubricant. Oh, and some sort of metal soap thickener to help manage viscosity breakdown of the waxes from the high heat and shear. I still think we can do ten below and ten above 100 and meet all the criteria we've set, at least reasonably well. Mike's 666-1 is close, but it needs the proportions swapped around a little to get it to perform well at 100+ degrees.

Gear

[NVScouter]

I agree most people dont want to be, live, or shoot in my chosen conditions! -40 happens and worse with artic blasts and wind chill. The last deer i shot on Dec31 it was -23F and -42F corrected with wind chill. I shot her at 80y with my grandfather's 30-06 about 1/2 mile from the truck. I tagged her then went to the truck for the Jet Sled, came back gutted her and by the time I had her at the truck her eyes were frozen solid and white. By the time I got her home she was too frozen to skin, had to hang her overnight shaped like a Jet Sled cashew to thaw out.

I dont perform that well in those conditions and dont expect a wonder lube to either

I took 3 ladles of my lube and added 1 ladle of white lithium grease and 1 table spood Diesel Kleen since I had those in my shop. It softened the lube a bit but I didnt get a chance to try it out. It was 55F Sunday and I got to wear shorts, t-shirt and sandles for the first time since October!

I'm going to make a batch of that LLA/Carnuba/Oil/Dextron free lube and try it head to head. Its going to be in the low 20s next week so its a start.

[NVScouter]

NVScouter,

We 'lube' cooks seem to develop an addiction to lube formulation! We even have our own language it seems as we always 'feel' our new lube. This is an on-going thing as we 'finger lube' most experiments and are almost as fast as a Lubrisizer at doing it. We have our own words to describe what we feel in our new formulation..... Special words like glide, feather, are used for exact 'feel'!

Eutectic

Isnt this the truth! Its also how I built my Frankenlube. I started off with a common formula and modified it by feel. Too sticky add parafin, too flakey add LLA, too oily add carnuba, too soft add carnuba, too hard add dextron or gear lube It took me about 1.5 years before I stopped messing with it and no formula exists but I have about 12lbs of it left and it goes slow.

The 10% carnuba estimate is likely high, I like my bourbon but 2-3# of trimmings I'd need to go to meetings so rethinking maybe 3-5% at best.

[taco650]

20 to 110 is good enough for me, as long as it can hot-store at 150F without sweating out any oils and is soft enough to flow through a sizer at room temperature. What's even more important to me is being able to lube a 2600 fps rifle bullet and a 700 fps pistol bullet with the same lube and have them both perform well...
Gear

Glad I found this thread because I have a similar situation to NVScouter. Also, Gear's criteria for lube match my own.

I have home brewed lube that started out as 2 sticks of RCBS pistol lube, then had 2 10" long skinny Christmas candles added along with about 3tbs of moly grease from Walmart and about 1/4 cup of LLA. It has worked fine as a pan lube but now I want to run it through my heater-less Lyman 450 and its 40 degrees in the garage where I do my reloading. It's still in the cake pan but solid and my plan is to warm it up to liquid tomorrow and pour it into the 450. Think I'll stir in a tsp of 2-stoke oil and see what happens. This really is voodoo science isn't it???

[R3104D3R]

This really is voodoo science isn't it???

Nope, it's still a proper scientific method. However, I believe you could improve your methodology.

The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."

Park uses the term voodoo science as covering four categories which evolve from self-delusion to fraud:

- pathological science, wherein genuine scientists deceive themselves
- junk science, speculative theorizing which bamboozles rather than enlightens
- pseudoscience proper, work falsely claiming to have a scientific basis, which may be dependent on supernatural explanations
- fraudulent science, exploiting bad science for the purposes of fraud

Park criticizes junk science as the creature of "scientists, many of whom have impressive credentials, who craft arguments deliberately intended to deceive or confuse."