Elkins45
11-23-2014, 11:15 PM
I have been experimenting with Glass Glow palm candle wax as a lube base because I came across a big box of the stuff for cheap and I figured I could always flux with it or perhaps even make a few candles. The stuff has a pretty high melt point and cools harder than the tongs of hell, but it has a bunch of properties they are just plain weird.
They call it Glass Glow because it forms a frosted, granular crystal structure when it cools. Supposedly it is quite pretty in a transparent glass container she used to make candles. Interestingly it retains this crystallizing behavior even when diluted significantly with other stuff. My first use of it was to harden a soy wax based lube I made last year that would practically liquefy when left sitting in the sun. I will have more about that particular concoction at a later date.
Thursday night I was in a mood for alchemy, so I ran out to the laboratory (otherwise known as the garage) and melted up a simple lube consisting of 8oz of palm wax, 2oz of Vaseline and a tablespoon each of ATF and STP. I poured it into my lube stick molds and came back a couple of hours later to remove them. They were so brittle and hard that every one essentially shattered when I tried to pull out the center rod. So, to soften it up I remelted it and added 2 more oz of Vaseline and another tablespoon each of STP and ATF. Same result...the sticks were brittle and the break shows a distinct crystallization pattern. It was weird because the lube felt greasy and hard at the same time. I got tired of messing with it and figured I would give it a try anyway.
Tonight I emptied my 4500 and loaded in some of this stuff. Because of the slight pink tint from the ATF I named it Rosy Palm lube, if anyone remembers that old middle school joke :) Here's where it got weird: I pushed the center rod of the die down and cranked on the plunger to shove the last of the old lube out of the die holes. As soon as the new lube started flowing through it came out as almost a granular powder. Weird, but as soon as I started putting bullets through the die it behaved normally. Or so I thought until I paused for a couple of minutes. When I looked back at the die opening there were bubbles and a tiny drop of liquid oil on the top of the pusher rod. It appears that the pressure of shoving it throughout the die is somehow separating the oils from the wax matrix, but there seemed to be more oil than one stick of lube would have contained. Wonder if the pressure was liquifying the oils in the Vaseline?
It was strange, and quite messy.
I dumped all of the Rosy Palm and am going back to the drawing board with my next palm-based lube. I think it's safe to say I won't add nearly as much liquid next time no matter how hard it seems when it cools. Hardness in stick form, it seems, can be quite deceiving.
They call it Glass Glow because it forms a frosted, granular crystal structure when it cools. Supposedly it is quite pretty in a transparent glass container she used to make candles. Interestingly it retains this crystallizing behavior even when diluted significantly with other stuff. My first use of it was to harden a soy wax based lube I made last year that would practically liquefy when left sitting in the sun. I will have more about that particular concoction at a later date.
Thursday night I was in a mood for alchemy, so I ran out to the laboratory (otherwise known as the garage) and melted up a simple lube consisting of 8oz of palm wax, 2oz of Vaseline and a tablespoon each of ATF and STP. I poured it into my lube stick molds and came back a couple of hours later to remove them. They were so brittle and hard that every one essentially shattered when I tried to pull out the center rod. So, to soften it up I remelted it and added 2 more oz of Vaseline and another tablespoon each of STP and ATF. Same result...the sticks were brittle and the break shows a distinct crystallization pattern. It was weird because the lube felt greasy and hard at the same time. I got tired of messing with it and figured I would give it a try anyway.
Tonight I emptied my 4500 and loaded in some of this stuff. Because of the slight pink tint from the ATF I named it Rosy Palm lube, if anyone remembers that old middle school joke :) Here's where it got weird: I pushed the center rod of the die down and cranked on the plunger to shove the last of the old lube out of the die holes. As soon as the new lube started flowing through it came out as almost a granular powder. Weird, but as soon as I started putting bullets through the die it behaved normally. Or so I thought until I paused for a couple of minutes. When I looked back at the die opening there were bubbles and a tiny drop of liquid oil on the top of the pusher rod. It appears that the pressure of shoving it throughout the die is somehow separating the oils from the wax matrix, but there seemed to be more oil than one stick of lube would have contained. Wonder if the pressure was liquifying the oils in the Vaseline?
It was strange, and quite messy.
I dumped all of the Rosy Palm and am going back to the drawing board with my next palm-based lube. I think it's safe to say I won't add nearly as much liquid next time no matter how hard it seems when it cools. Hardness in stick form, it seems, can be quite deceiving.