Crayons? For lube?

[frkelly74]

I was looking at another post and saw that some posters called some hard lubes crayon lubes. So not wanting to hijack that thread I am writing this one. As it happens we have a supply of broken and abused crayons in the house and I was thinking about whether these might make a usable lube for bullets in some way or another. Pan lube comes to mind first. Melting and cutting the melt to soften it also occurs to me to make a tumble lube. Would it be possible to make this work? I am presently using LLA and it has worked every time as long as the bullet was big enough to fill the bore. I throw it open for discussion.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Frank,
A friend that has helped me with some of my Lube questions had mentioned to me
that Crayons and only crayons were a fine lube for low power pistol loads.
I'd assume you run them through a lubesizer with some heat applied.
I have not tried it. I hope others chime in with some experience as to
whether it works and what additives can be blended to make it better.

I use a crayon or 2 to add color to my experimental lubes I am trying.
it makes it easy to remember what lube blend is on what boolit.
jon

[870TC]

I have heard of people taking "as cast" pistol bullets, heating/warming them and throwing a crayola brand crayon in with them and shaking them around to coat the bullets.
Crayola brand is made of paraffin, some other brands are soy based or other misc waxes.

[fryboy]

crayons come in many forms ( and of course colors ) please note that some are more waxy than others and some perhaps arent even wax - all combined with various pigments of course , like many i use a few to umm tint lubes , i also use what those in the trade call " keel (s)" or lumber crayons , the latter especially i have had mixed results with ( ditto for some non-toxic regular crayons ) some havent dissolved or when they do ( such as a red one ) separated and settled on the bottom no matter how much i stirred and/or left chunks/blobs etc , to be fair it did impart a pink color but also turned a batch of decent lube into flux , the carbon black keel will assuredly turn anything it touches black including fingers ( i liken it much to the " lamp black " lyman uses in their ideal lube ) some colors will work better than others and i'm sure that the pigment is the culprit . i'm not sure that a mix of a whole box would work even as good as plain old paraffin no matter how much other stuff is added to soften it but if you have the time and the crayons ...... try adding crayons to a jar of vaseline until you get the consistency that you desire , for what it's worth ? i havent been able to color very will with any of the lubes i have made :P

[mold maker]

Like everything else, crayons are made in china, and may have anything in them. Many now days are even a form of plastic. You can bet the ones that restaurants give your kids to entertain them, are the cheapest available, and would be the worst things children should handle, before eating.
That said, about 1989 I traded 25 new boxes to a school teacher for her box of broken pieces. I still have a paint can full. It doesn't take much to tint your lube for id purposes and the color last forever.
I haven't tried to use 100% crayons, but the old Crayola brand with a little petroleum jelly should do fine for pistol.

[stainless1911]

^, yeah, watch that china stuff, we bollit casters wouldn't want to be exposed to lead ya know :P

[frkelly74]

I forgot about the china angle. Shouldn't do that should I.

[870TC]

Found the reference I mentioned above. It was in a Jim Taylor article.

Dad and I did a series of tests years ago to find out what would work for bullet lube. We wanted a lube that was easy to make and use. It was for loads under 950 fps in sixguns - practice loads. We experimented with a number of things and found that you could lube a bullet with a number of substances. For instance, I took some cartridges which had the bullets loaded "dry" - no lube on them. I would dip the nose of the bullet in motor oil, shove the cartridge into the chamber, roll the cylinder around and fire. They worked just fine...except the gun got slick after a little while. I tried Vaseline, brake fluid, Butch Wax... it all worked OK if you fired the cartridge right away. Left too long the oils would "creep" back into the case and kill the powder. But it did show what would keep a barrel from leading.

Eventually we settled on crayons. Yep. We melted crayons in a skillet, tossed in a handful of bullets, rolled them around until they were covered, dumped them out on a newspaper and let the wax harden. I would shoot these in the .357 and .45 Colt at speeds up to 800 fps without any leading.

[frkelly74]

[QUOTE=87

Eventually we settled on crayons. Yep. We melted crayons in a skillet, tossed in a handful of bullets, rolled them around until they were covered, dumped them out on a newspaper and let the wax harden. I would shoot these in the .357 and .45 Colt at speeds up to 800 fps without any leading.[/QUOTE]

That is what I was wondering about!! Thank You.