Copied from a 2004 post to the Cowboy Action Shooting Forum
http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/ind....html#msg14447 , Reply #15
"Beeswax consists mainly of free cerotic acid and myricin (myricyl palmitate), with some high-carbon paraffins. What that means in practice is that it melts and softens over a fairly wide temperature range and as it melts, the consistency and viscosity change slowly. With these characteristics, it does not run away as fast, and being somewhat tacky, it sticks where you put it. It will hold on to some dissolved oil, but will sweat some of the oil out with time. It is so much a mixture that it is somewhat amorphous rather than crystalline.
Paraffin wax is from the fractional distillation of petroleum. When I worked for the now defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines doing petroleum analysis, I saw plenty of this stuff. It is mostly a mixture of straight-chain hydrocarbon molecules with closely related molecular weights. Its crystals are large and it has a relatively sharp melting point. Being a straight chain paraffin, the viscosity of the melt changes rapidly from thick to super runny. The rapid viscosity change means that it melts fast and runs away fast. It is not really sticky when hard (it is crystalline) and so does not stay put as well as beeswax. The large crystals do not hold onto oil well, so it sweats out oil that is mixed in easier than beeswax.
Microcrystalline wax is extracted from the residuum from petroleum fractional distillation. Refined gunk. I really do not know a lot about this stuff, except that being microcrystalline, it will hold on to dissolved oil better than paraffin wax and mixtures sweat less oil out.
Soy wax is probably just a plant wax with physical properties much like beeswax, and is probably cheaper. This is a similar situation to Jojoba oil (which is actually a liquid wax) being used as a plant substitute for Sperm Whale Oil (also a liquid wax) because Sperm Whale Oil is no longer available. Automatic transmission fluids, once made of Sperm Whale Oil, are now mostly synthetic liquid waxes. Many lube makers have experimented with Jojoba oil, but it has not caught on. In the 19th century, some cartridge manufacturers used a mixture of beeswax, tallow, and Sperm Whale Oil as a lube, and it worked well.
Crisco is a vegetable oil (fixed oil) that started out unsaturated. It has been hydrogenated (saturated) nearly completely. It is white because they whip in a lot of air to bulk it up. It is now so saturated that it resembles a stiff paraffin oil quite a bit. It melts sharply, runs fast, and will not hold oil in a mixture. It is soft and sticky when solid and has a low melting point--a summertime problem.
Tallow is the fixed oil rendered from certain species of animal, like deer, cattle, sheep, and the fat used to produce it is from specific areas of their bodies. It is the bovine equivalent of lard, but is slightly different. It is an animal fatty oil and solid when cold. The product is quite a mixture and therefore not very crystalline (somewhat amorphous) at all. It is relatively gooey and sticky, but suffers from a narrow melting range and a rapid viscosity change when hot. It runs away fast. It can serve as a holder for other oils (like the paraffin oil commonly called mineral oil), or can fill the role of an oil itself if the temperature is right.
Natural product soaps, like sodium tallowate (a.k.a. Ivory Soap, and others) and sodium stearate are fine in bullet lubes and can carry a lot of other oil. They are also slick in their own right, but grease makers discount this and characterize them as carriers only. Castile soap, usually made from olive oil should be OK, too. Potassium salt versions are liquid and sodium salt versions are solid. Murphy's Oil Soap is made from stuff like that.
The soaps in petroleum greases, like chassis grease and waterpump grease, are bad actors with black powder, and this may be where petroleum products got their bad reputation. They are lithium, sodium, and insoluble calcium soaps, generally, although aluminum soaps are used, too. They work fine for smokeless powder. Alox is essentially a calcium soap of this type--great for smokeless loads, but bad for Holy Black. Ammonium soaps are known and are often found in smokeless powder bore cleaners these days.
Peanut oil, olive oil, safflower oil, and the like are fixed oils from plants. They are liquids at normal temperatures because their molecular chains are either partially unsaturated or short, or both. They are chiefly useful for lubrication when there is a carrier available and for adjusting the consistency and melting point of the mix, say, to compensate for temperature. They are the plant's equivalent of lard and tallow, but are liquid at normal temperatures, and so mix with tallow well. They mix with other things like beeswax and paraffin wax just fine, but will occasionally sweat out.
Mineral oil, usually the heavy version, is an ultrapure version of motor oil. It has no additives, good or bad. It mixes ok with beeswax and paraffin, but sweats out some. It is chemically akin to paraffin wax, motor oil, and gasoline, except that it has shorter chained molecules than the paraffin wax. Many of the commercial black powder patch lubes and bullet lubes contain some of this and work just fine. This, apparently, is not part of the petroleum-blackpowder problem. There is a lighter version of this that could be used where the viscosity difference would help. Most baby oils and many lubricating oils for household use are very much like Light Mineral Oil, many of these things are just that. I use it for sharpening knives, but it has no rust preventatives added to it, so I do not use it for rust prevention. These oils, like all straight-chained paraffins, change viscosity very fast with temperature changes and run away easily or would sweat out of a mixture fast in the heat.
Hope that helps."
I just happened to run across this, and found it interesting.
Mark :coffee:
