Originally Posted by
GabbyM
Oh, I never made the connection. Only the castor gets polymerized. :groner:
I just today used up the last of my cooked oil mix with castor , mineral and Ivory soap.
Have some new oils from vendors. With a bag of stearic acid also. Trying to wrap my head around the reason to not add stearic acid until making the lube. How do you now you've polymerized the castor oil if you don't get it to set up into a gel? Polymerization does not equal "gel", the fully cooked oils will be about the consistency of corn oil. You won't know right away if you've cooked them enough if you add soap/sodium stearate/stearic acid, because the oils will be less likely to separate until the lube is finished and loaded away in your cartridges for a few weeks/months, then the duds will tell you what happened. Making it all gel up into a blob gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. That warm fuzzy feeling doesn't make up for poor chemistry. I know I failed to achieve good polymerization on one batch and ended up with sticky gooey lube that didn't stay in the groves to well. probably not due to under-polymerization, more likely not enough beeswax or soap.That was with half hour cook time with maybe a pint or more in a sauce pan. I cook an hour now and make darn sure it's done. Running the range hood so not to smoke up the house. If it smokes that much you're running it too hot. Try to use a candy thermometer, not SWMBO'S, get your own at Wal-Mart. Probably run this next batch of oil on the side burner of gas grill outside since its summer.
My sticky lube looked and felt fine until it was run through the sizer. Pressure of lube pump would separate out oils from wax and it does not go back in. OIL, singular. It's the castor that wants to evacuate from the lube in the presence of mineral oils/paraffin, etc., that's the whole reason we must cook the oils together to fatten up the castor fraction. If you just use castor and NO petroleum, it won't sweat. At least that's all I could figure out was happening.