First lube - pan lube

[SkookumJeff]

Made up my first lube mixture for pan lubing. I melted down some bee's wax and poured it into a Pyrex measuring cup. It filled it to the 2/3 mark. I then added Vasoline until my mixture was just below 1- 1/4 cup mark. I was trying to achive a 60/40 blend of bee's wax to Vasoline. I also added 1 teaspoon of carnuba wax and blended all ingredients in a double boiler. After this was all well blended, I lubed up 50 44 cal 200 grain boolits and let cool. Pressed out the boolits and they came out easy and mostly seemed well lubed. The lube gooves were filled on all boolits, a couple of boolits had an extra small clump of wax that clung to the side of the boolit. It was easy enough to smear it off with my fingers. I'm relatively happy with the outcome. But the lube is slightly softer than I would like. How best to harden it up a bit so it's a little stiffer when cooled? Add more bee's wax? Or paraffin?

[SkookumJeff]

I think I'll try adding a teaspoon of stearic acid to see if that will stiffen up the lube. According to my info, that ingredient should stiffen the wax and help homogenize the mixture as well. If there is any other important ingredient that I should add, let me know. I have lanolin on hand along with mineral and castor oil. I intended to work my way towards making up some Felix lube, depending on how well the current recipe worked.

I've spent many hours reading about boolit lube and boolit lube ingredients. Boolit lube seems like it can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. I was trying to start out simple with the bee's was/Vaseline recipe. That mix seemed pretty popular with boolit casters so it seemed like a good place to start.

Skook

[runfiverun]

the stearic acid will help.
cut back on the vaseline next time..
you can always add a bit more of things till you get them right.
the lube may firm itself up over then next week or two also, i generally make my lube and let it sit for a couple of weeks to see how it will be in the long run.

[SkookumJeff]

Thanks. I was thinking I had too much Vaseline too. After adding the stearic acid to the mix and seeing how that changes things, if it's still too soft I'll add more bee's wax to the mix.

I got the impression that bee's wax/petroleum jelly mixed 50/50 was a tried and true mix for boolit lube. If that is true, I'm curious why mine is so soft and greasy. Perhaps bee's wax vary's in composition from batch to batch and introduces more variability than I expected. If that is true, then that means I'll have to experiment with the formula every time I get a new batch of wax.

[fryboy]

50-50 is universal and does work , IMHO it works best in a lubrasizer or with a kake kutter , i usually end up with 60-75% wax to grease ratio but i also freely admit that i like a harder lube , as five stated the stearic ought to help a lil bit as would less vaseline/more wax , straight carnuba also has some hardening properties but tends to make things brittle if added in mass quantities ,

[Jailer]

Next time try pushing them out while they are still warm. I've found that to be the best way to keep the extra lube from sticking to the boolits.

Personally I like equal parts beeswax, parafin and vaseline with a touch of carnuba. They seem to push out of the cake better for me than just the beeswax vaseline mix and it's a little firmer when cooled.

[WHITETAIL]

Yes on adding the stearic acid.
I would say that a little bit of Ivory soap
will do the trick.
Just use a cheese grater to add the soap.:2gunsfiring_v1: