Felix Lube - South Africa

[Sloffie]

So I hunted around for the ingredients. The biggest battle was the replacement for Ivory Soap since we do not get it here.

My ingredients are ready for the pot:

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa65/Mr_schark/Casting/FelixLubeIngredients.jpg

The only soap I found that contains sodium stearate was Dove Beauty Soap. It smells girly but what the hell... :-P

Lanolin was also quite hard to find. You get it in a nipple cream, but it is HELLISH expensive. This tub I have was also not cheap. ZAR130 ($16). But it is 500g so it will make a lot of lube.

Luckily there is a honey shop close to my house that has ample stock of beeswax.

Now I wonder, could one make a Black Powder version by replacing the mineral oil with Crisco (here in South Africa it is call Holsum)?

[ilcop22]

Do you have access to Amazon.com shipping? I buy most my stuff there on the cheap.

[OneSkinnyMass]

Now I wonder, could one make a Black Powder version by replacing the mineral oil with Crisco (here in South Africa it is call Holsum)?

well, just like others here, I think crisco is "Wholesome" myself :bigsmyl2:

Skinny

[fryboy]

ummm the soap part doesnt bother me as much as the lanolin , your tub reads " Hydrous " when what you really want is anhydrous , hydrous usually has about 30% water added , anhydrous is water free ( as would be liquid lanolin ) i would suggest gently warming some to umm refine the water out of it , once melted they should separate , allow to cool and drain the water off the bottom , it is temp sensitive so if you can do it at a low of a temp as possible would be best
not sure about the black powder aspect by switching to vegetable shortening but vegetable oil (usually canola ),beeswax and vegetable shortening is the basics for emmert's lube ( which is a fine black powder lube
i do know that the mixed oils for felix lube can be changed a bit as i've read that some folks have used auto transmission fluid as a replacement

[btroj]

It will take more than melting the lanolin to eliminate the water. The water is bound to the lanolin in some sense. I am not sure if there is an easy way to remove the water and make it into anhydrous lanolin.

I would try making a batch. See how it works out. That's the he's way to know if what you got is going to work.

[MBTcustom]

My first batch was made with BagBalm in place of lanolin. I read somewhere that it was 50/50 lanolin and petroleum jelly, so I mixed in 150%-200% more than was necessary and it worked like a champ. The mineral oil and caster-oil held together with the soap is the part that really has to be right as I understand it.
Also, ditch the crayon. I tried mixing blue crayons into my last batch and I ended up with OD green lube with a 1/8" layer of black crapp on the bottom of the pan.

[geargnasher]

Dove soap has a LOT of glycerin and other stuff (1/4 moisturizing cream, whatever that is!). Irish Spring or any of the other plain bar soaps should be better. If you're stuck with the Dove, use about twice as much as the recipe calls for and try to boil off as much of the water as you can.

The "hydrous" lanolin should be just fine, it isn't "wet" in the normal sense, in fact the soap is much wetter.

The Vaseline stuff you have there will probably be ok too to substitute for the mineral oil, or you can use just about any kind of automatic transmission fluid.

For black powder recipes, check out the "recipe" sticky in this section, or "google" search for Emmert's lube. Veggie shortening, a little olive oil or canola oil, and a little bit of that HYDROUS lanolin is really good for keeping black powder fouling soft. You want a bit of water content in your BP lube.

Gear

[runfiverun]

even anhydrous lanolin has water in it.

mineral oil can be found in baby oil,or enema's.
it is also a base in most greases.

i would be more concerned with the soap also.
your local pharmacy might could get you [or have] stearic acid. [my bad sodium stearate]
dunno what i was thinking.

the stearate is a binder for the castor oil and polymerized mineral oil base [it is also a lube] to keep it in the b-wax better.

[Sloffie]

You reckon I should give the Dove soap to my wife and get something else instead? :bigsmyl2:

I will try and locate some stearic acid at the pharmacy. But then how much should I add if it is pure stearic acid?

[geargnasher]

NO NO! NOT stearic acid, you need sodium stearate. We made lube with stearic acid, and it failed the test of time at my house. It rusts bores if you don't clean them and oil them right after shooting (many of us try to preserve the "season" in our bores through minimal cleaning, this makes accuracy more consistent in a lot of rifles), and it turns copper and brass green (as in gas checks and the inside of case necks when ammo is stored for a few months).

Stearic acid is reacted with sodium hydroxide to make Ivory soap, and without a "base" to turn the stearic acid into an inert salt (stearate), the acid is reactive to metals.

Gear

[Sloffie]

Ok, so no stearic acid but sodium stearate. Can one buy that? Or is it a product in animal fat soaps.

Thing with the Dove soap, it does contain sodium stearate and a host of other stuff. Will that other stuff not mess up my lube?

I also read that Anhydrous Lanolin does contain water. http://www.herbs2000.com/h_menu/lanolin.htm
But hydrous contains even more. Wonder if that will change anything. I will heat some and see what happens. The hydrous Lanolin was the only Lanolin I could find. Most pharmacies said that they have not seen the lanolin oil (anhydrous) for years.

[geargnasher]

Sodium stearate should be obtainable by a pharmacist. Any common bar soap that doesn't have a lot of moisturizing additives (usuall excess glycols and fats) will work. If you have a pharmacy, they should have soaps similar to Ivory, what do you folks bathe with over there? Irish Spring, Coast, all of the plain bar soaps (aside from the heavy scents) have basically the same stuff in them.

Don't sweat the lanolin, what you have will do just fine.

Gear

[Sloffie]

All the soaps I looked at that are on the shelves do not contain sodium stearate. They all contain palmate and other funny things.
We over here bath with whatever is on the shelf. ;)
But the soap is no good unless it contains sodium stearate.

Oh yes, I think this hydrous lanolin will make a GREAT black powder patch lube just by itself. ;)

[Sloffie]

Seems like I have been missing the pot the whole time here hunting for a soap with sodium stearate, meanwhile I would just as well grab any cheap soap off the shelf that does not stink too much. True?

[geargnasher]

Don't go by the ingredient list, even Ivory soap's first ingredient is "sodium tallowate", whatever that is. Mainly, they list those things to tell you what the stearic acid is derived from, sodium palmate is a fatty acid derived from palm oil, sodium tallowate is stearic acid derived from beef fat.

When these "ingredients" are saponified, they make other chemicals entirely that aren't listed on the ingredients, like sodium stearate. Soap is actually made by reacting sodium hydroxide (lye) and stearic acid (derived from many vegetable or animal sources), and the resulting sodium stearate, glycerin, and water from the reaction are what make the soap what it is. Use any bar soap that doesn't have a lot of moisturizer junk in it and you'll be fine.

Gear

[geargnasher]

Seems like I have been missing the pot the whole time here hunting for a soap with sodium stearate, meanwhile I would just as well grab any cheap soap off the shelf that does not stink too much. True?

You posted while I was typing, but yes, TRUE! You're looking for a plain bar soap of any kind, it should have enough sodium stearate in it naturally to do the job in the lube.

Gear

[Sloffie]

Cool. Just because a soap does not state it has sodium stearate in it does not mean it does not have it. I checked the ingredients for Ivory Soap, even there it does not state it contains sodium stearate.
I will trade the Dove for a Lux or Sunlight soap or something.

[btroj]

Ask your local druggist/chemist/pharmacist or whatever you guys call them if he can get sodium stearate. I got 500 g for about 17 dollars a few years back. It is a fine powder and worked quite well in my Felix lube.

[runfiverun]

where did i come up with the stearic acid from.??
glad you guy's caught that.

[geargnasher]

Wiljen got together with Felix on that a while back for the big lube ingredient group buy. Stearic acid makes the lube much easier to make as it goes right in rather than having to cook it half to death to get the soap to melt. Carnauba was added to "FWWFL" to make up for the lower melt point of the stearic acid. I made and used a bunch of it but two of my rifles got a case of the rusties with it, gas checks and brass corrodes, and it turns the inside of the cast iron luber/sizers very black, and the junk comes out in the lube in the grooves as black streaks. Never had ANY of these issues with original FWFL. At first I thought it was the carnauba rusting the uncleaned barrels due to soaking up moisture from the air, but I have one sizer that stays full of FWFL +Carnauba and it never rusted or corroded anything. I went back through a few dozen boxes of lubed GC boolits when I moved into my new reloading room this spring and every one of the batches lubed with FWWFL was green and white in the groove above the gas check. Even fired .30-30 brass using the load had bee stripes inside the case necks from the FWWFL. Loaded ammo I pulled down had verdigris BIGTIME inside the case neck, nasty stuff. I cleaned it all out and am done with it, I made a fresh batch of the good stuff with a dash of ATF for summertime lube.

Gear

[HDS]

On the stearic acid thing, what would you do with a soap that says it has stearic acid in the ingredients list? It also has Sodium stearate. It's a Dove and it was the only one here in Finland I found with Soidium Stearate listed.

I am not sure if these hundreds of (so far unloaded) bullets I've made with my star are safe to use anymore now?

[geargnasher]

On the stearic acid thing, what would you do with a soap that says it has stearic acid in the ingredients list? It also has Sodium stearate. It's a Dove and it was the only one here in Finland I found with Soidium Stearate listed.

I am not sure if these hundreds of (so far unloaded) bullets I've made with my star are safe to use anymore now?

Second paragraph, post #15 above. After they make soap out of the ingredients on the label, it isn't stearic acid any more. If it isn't rotting your copper or brass, don't worry about it.

Gear

[HDS]

I had a good chance to test it as I put some on a patch and ran it through my 629s bore a month ago when I first made it, haven't shot the gun since and I checked the bore, still shiny.

[Sloffie]

I have done a test with the hydrous lanolin. If you heat it then the water and lanolin separate. It does not take much heat to melt it so it is a quick fix. Might just as well do it.

I got some cheap soap today that I will use. It seems to be very very similar to Ivory Soap, so it will work. Plan on cooking up my first batch sometime this week.

[runfiverun]

dry that soap out and grate it fine.
then make sure you stir it till the fizzing stops.

when i add lanolin i try and do it right at 150-f much more and it wil burn any less and it won't bubble out any of the moisture.

no matter what we do, all of our lubes will have some water content.
even greases have a moisture content up to @ 3%.
the trick is to keep the moisture low the ph under control [neutral 4-7] and the salts to the very minimum possible.
and then balance the lubes viscosity with the temperature it will be used in.
you manage to do that and you will have a good lube.

[geargnasher]

+1 Runfiverun.

Cook the oils for at least 30 minutes at 300F (just at the point where it gives an occasional light whiff of smoke), 45 minutes is better, stir the whole time, then add the soap. Stir and work the lumps against the sides of the pot with a spoon until they're all melted in, then let the mix cool slightly. It should start to gel a bit, getting almost like thin vaseline. You have now made sodium grease! Melt in the beeswax without burning it, it scorches at much over 200F, so when your grease is just starting to gel, it's about right to add the wax. After the wax is all melted in and everything is smooth and liquid (stir lots), cool it until the edges just start to turn solid (the point where the meniscus freezes), then add your lanolin. Stir it in well and pour your mix into stick moulds, ingot moulds, or just leave it in the container you made it in, it can be remelted GENTLY and slowly and poured directly in a lube/sizer, or around the boolits in a lubing pan if you don't have a sizer.

Gear

[Sloffie]

So I decided to face the lube pot yesterday and try my hand at cooking up some Felix.

All went very well, just time went by very slowly for the first 45min of cooking the mineral and castor oil. Now one question that kept popping up is how much heat? I kept the oils at a temperature so that they just smoked, if they smoked too much to my liking, I turned off the heat.
The soap was a mission to get to dissolve. First it formed a layer of foam that took forever to subside. Everything looked fine. I then let the sludge cool for a while, then double boiled it up to heat again and added the beeswax. Then when melted I took it off and let it cool a bit before adding the lanolin. I managed to remove some of the water from the hydrous lanolin and it seemed to have worked.

The final product is very hard when it is cold and it is slightly sticky to the touch. Also a darkish brown colour like beeswax... duh.. ;)
After it completely cooled I noted that there are still tiny bits up undissolved soap in the lube, but I guess it will not do any harm.

It seems that this batch was a success. I really do not know how to judge if it was a success.

[runfiverun]

if the oils stay in the lube you done good.
your description also sounds right for making the lube.

it will become more homogenous as it gets worked and remelted a few times.

the best way to judge how it turned out is to go shoot it.
if it's slightly tacky,and somewhat bendy,and you can poke at it with your finger.
it's good lube.

[Sloffie]

As per your description, it seems like its good. :)

[geargnasher]

Let it sit for a few days, and gently remelt it in your double-boiler, the soap lumps will eventually dissolve, but they won't hurt anything if they don't.

Going by the smoke point is a good way to tell the temp, you want it to be near the smoke point, but not constantly letting off lots of it. A little wisp every few seconds is fine. I use a candy-making thermometer from the grocery store to tell the temp, it's very inexpensive and has the proper temperature range for this. 290-300F is about right for the polymerizing stage.

If the lube doesn't "sweat" beads of oil after a few days, it's good to go.

Gear

[Sloffie]

Will do that thanks. Will keep an eye on it. I am dying to test it, but my mold has not yet arrived for the Lee Enfield. Sofar I have only been casting for the Muzzle Loader.

[Blublister]

Sloffie, what soap did you end up using for your lube? I am also situated in Pretoria and I am facing the same problems you had. Where did you manage to get the lanolin from, as the only lanolin I have seen here is the Lansinoh HPA nipple cream in the purple pack. Will this work for Felix lube and swage lube?