Uses for failed lube

[Deedurt]

Hi all,

My first attempt at making homemade boolit lube did not end with desirable results. I ended up adding more ingredients on a few different occasions and now have a significant amount of my useless concoction.

Does anyone have any good uses for such a thing, I hate to just throw it away? It is mostly Paraffin, with equal parts patrolium jelly and lithium grease. I think there's a little Lee Alox and some crayons in there also.

Thanks

[ShooterAZ]

I did the same thing once or twice, I just ended up tossing it.

[Deedurt]

Yeah the only thing I can think of so far is fire starters, it's too bad I don't own a wood stove.

[ShooterAZ]

I ended up scorching it....gotta watch it very closely with some lubes. I think the lanolin got too hot.

[C. Latch]

What exactly is wrong with it?

[geargnasher]

Take it over to Runfiverun's house in Soda Springs, he'll find a use for it. It actually sounds like a fine mix with maybe some beeswax thrown in, at least for pistol lube.

Gear

[Deedurt]

Yeah I was intending to use it for pistol lube only. Initially it wouldn't stay in the grooves when I pushed it out of the solidified lube paddy. So I added more wax and more wax and now it's so brittle that it stays in the grooves initially but then cracks out before I can get it loaded. I was thinking about adding lanolin since I've read that makes in more sticky and then offseting the brittleness with something but I am hesitant to invest more money in something that doesn't appear to be working.

[D Crockett]

well gentlemen what you have there is more fluxing agent that you can use in a month I have been using mine for about 5 years now oh I also melted and added some pine saw dust real fine kind that comes out of a belt sander so it would not be so tack and I am here to tell you that is the best flux you can use D Crockett

[357maximum]

Personally I would take Gears advice and add some beeswax to it, and maybe some extra beeswax and lithium grease, until it feels/acts like normal lube.......then shoot it in non-demanding cartridges/guns......next I would follow a good posted recipe like Felix/Ben's Red/Satan's Lube, or MML. Playing lube alchemist is fun, but the footwork has been done already. Do you think the second feller to walk on the moon felt cheated?

[D Crockett]

and a hint so you don't mess up your homemade lube use a double boiler so you don't scorch your mix and keep the two pot separated on the bottom I use 4 or 5 nuts and not the kind you feed squirrels he he he you just need to keep them 1/4 to 1/2 inch apart D Crockett

[Deedurt]

Haven't read much about it but what's the results of scorching the lube?

[btroj]

Scorching is bad. Changes the properties of the wax and possibly other ingredients. Beeswax doesn't like to be scotched.

[btroj]

Personally I would take Gears advice and add some beeswax to it, and maybe some extra beeswax and lithium grease, until it feels/acts like normal lube.......then shoot it in non-demanding cartridges/guns......next I would follow a good posted recipe like Felix/Ben's Red/Satan's Lube, or MML. Playing lube alchemist is fun, but the footwork has been done already. Do you think the second feller to walk on the moon felt cheated?

Man has walked on the moon? And I missed it? Dang it.

This is good advice. Playing lube alchemist isn't easy, gets expensive, and leads to lots of small bits of lube that suck.

Find an existing recipe and use it. Follow it to a T. The guy who developed the lube made it that way for a reason. Want results like he got? Make the lube he made, not your version. Your version may not work for diddly.

[geargnasher]

It is impossible to "scorch" the mix the OP indicated. It's good all the way to the poof point. Beeswax and lanolin, however, are easily scorched.

Like 357Max said it may need a little more grease along with BW, it just depends on how soft it is with the BW addition. I'd add as much BW as there is paraffin, at least, and go from there.

BTW, Mike, from what I've gathered from several books Buzz Aldrin felt VERY cheated, from the beginning, that he wasn't going to be "first". But in the spirit of your analogy that's his own dadgum fault, I would have been happy to be the 700th or whatever if I had a chance to go. I shoot "Satan's Lube" fairly regularly now (long-term Texas Climate evaluation) and I'm glad that it got invented as well as brought out of your dark basement corner to see light again when we were all riled-up over soapy lubes.

Gear

[Bohica793]

Have you considered reusing it as bikini wax? Just a thought......

[geargnasher]

Have you considered reusing it as bikini wax? Just a thought......

Nah, needs WAY more microcrystalline wax and some carnauba for that.

Gear

[btroj]

Nah, needs WAY more microcrystalline wax and some carnauba for that.

Gear

Woah, hold on a second here. You are knowledgable on bikini wax?

Please tell us you weren't on the receiving end....

On second thought, don't tell us. Information overload.

[geargnasher]

Went straight into the ditch with that one, didn't we? :kidding:

Gear

[btroj]

Why yes, yes I did!

You expected better?

As for failed lube, don't mess around with making unknown lubes unless you are prepared to have lots of failed lubes on hand. I bet Gear has close to 10 pounds of failed lubes. I know I have 3 to 5 pounds. I would melt it all together and see what I got except some of it won't melt at temps below that which others don't like to exceed.

[RoyEllis]

Woah, hold on a second here. You are knowledgable on bikini wax?

Please tell us you weren't on the receiving end....

On second thought, don't tell us. Information overload.

And I, for one, am seriously proud of you both for not sharing any pictures with us!:mrgreen:

[montana_charlie]

Make wax bullets and shoot them with primers or light charges ...
They would be like 'soap loads' but made of wax.
If the 'lube' is too soft for that, add cheap wax until it's hard enough.

[garym1a2]

I would just add a bottle of lees version of alox to it. If that does not work try a little Dextron.

[Elkins45]

Some failed lubes are great substitutes for cosmoline or other heavy rust preventative greases. I keep the latch pins on the tailgate of my mower trailer lubed with "flux". The next time I pull the deck off of my mower I'm going to give it a good cleaning and a rubdown with some leftover experiments. It might make it last longer and make the clippings not stick as much.

[w5pv]

You could probably use it for fluxing,it likely would be a little smokie until the oils burnt off.

[btroj]

Mine has fluxed more than one pot

[Deedurt]

These are all great ideas guys, thanks for the input. I think I will keep experimenting with a small portion of it for educational purposes and use the rest for flux and rust preventative.

[longbow]

You already have lots of suggestions from guys more knowledgeable than me but... (there's that but!) I'll add my $0.02 worth anyway.

I made a lube that turned out okay and no leading but a bit brittle (paraffin) so didn't stay in the lube grooves very well, didn't have lanolin so used a bit of Bardahl oil treatment (like STP) to soften and stickiefy it. That worked and I like the lube, it works well for my uses.

Now, when I added the Bardahl, I took only a small portion of the original mix to experiment with because if one takes the whole works and the new mix is no better or even worse then you have that much more waste. In this case, I was successful.

There may be better things to use but if I were you, I would try to salvage what I made by experimenting with small bits or by using small portions of what you have made in an otherwise proven recipe... but do that on a small scale too just in case.

Me, I'm cheap and not too smart so I would try to salvage it somehow.

Otherwise I think you have many suggestions to get rid of it ~ flux is good, we all need that, rust preventative if you have stuff to protect, bikini wax (don't offer it to your better half for that though... maybe someone you don't like, just don't offer to apply it) or just toss it.

Good luck and happy experimenting.

Longbow

[Crash_Corrigan]

I keep a small round or Altoid tin filled with boolit lube and is kept in my Drill bag. Whenever I am gonna put a screw into wood and lube the screw with a dab of lube. It makes screwing a lot easier and doesn't split the wood as easy. Also rubbed on wooden drawer slides and you car radio mast (telescoping kind) it will make life easier. I also use it on the aluminum track on the patio doors and a big dab goes on my car battery terminals.

Go Crazy with the stuff.

[DrCaveman]

I like crash corrigans advice

From a pretty new (<3 years) caster, my observations are worth...every penny you have spent to hear them

I got into lube alchemy a bit after 'the quest' thread had begun. Maybe $50 worth of ingredients, a few blisters on my hands, and about 2 lb of ruined beeswax later i realized id be better off just watching these guys and then following the successful recipes they produced.

I tallied my 'garbage' lube and saw several pounds of variously colored & textured mixes
Started mashing metal spoons into the containers and melted the spoonfuls together into thick brown soup...some burned beeswax in there, a bunch of vaseline and parrafin, a bit of lithium grease, some red n tacky, some lanolin, some ivory soap, some JPW, some ATF, some STP, some 30 wt motor oil... Everything probably burned at some point during my high temp soap exercises

After all that, i took about 2 cups of that mess, and added several spoonfuls of runfveruns 'simple lube' which i had (amazingly) cooked and mixed properly.

Now ive been using the frankenstein for all non-hunting grade rifle loads (by which i mean plinkers). It is also my choice for magnum handgun loads. Dip lubing is the only way ive made it work, YMMV. Beauty is that i still have most of the simple lube for more discriminating uses

Nice job run with that first recipe. I like that stuff

[ShooterAZ]

I've heard it works pretty good on an annoying cowlick too. Slicks it right down.

[fredj338]

Might make a stinky candle if you add a wick? Also good for lubing wood screws.:wink:

[kweidner]

:popcorn: Btroj killing me!

[ACrowe25]

Why yes, yes I did!

You expected better?

As for failed lube, don't mess around with making unknown lubes unless you are prepared to have lots of failed lubes on hand. I bet Gear has close to 10 pounds of failed lubes. I know I have 3 to 5 pounds. I would melt it all together and see what I got except some of it won't melt at temps below that which others don't like to exceed.

only thing worse than a failed lube is producing "the perfect" lube with unknown unknown ingredients lol.

[btroj]

only thing worse than a failed lube is producing "the perfect" lube with unknown unknown ingredients lol.

Yep. That is why I don't want to mix all my failed lubes together, I a friar they would make a super lube and it would be I possible to replicate.

My failed lubes are largely things that worked well, they just didn't meet a few very specific requirements.

[44man]

Exactly! I had a pile of bad lubes for BPCR so I melted them all together only to find the best lube ever. Accurate as heck, no fouling, no leading, etc.
It is the worst position to find yourself in because you are 100% lost to make it again.

[ACrowe25]

Isn't that the truth. Never made my own lube but as a chemist... I understand the need to write down everything and record anything. I fear the day I wish I knew more about what was in my round-bottomed flask.