I'd stay away from the "Woodcutter" version if it were me MJ....
What little I saw on their vague base oil specs I didn't like.
"Woodcutter" is probably cheaper? The specs seem to say so.
Eutectic
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I'd stay away from the "Woodcutter" version if it were me MJ....
What little I saw on their vague base oil specs I didn't like.
"Woodcutter" is probably cheaper? The specs seem to say so.
Eutectic
FELIX
This may sound a bit smarta$$ed....honestly not how I am meaning it by any means:
Are you saying that modern day industrial man is not as capable of reproducing things the same as billions of honeybees spread over an entire continent? I can taste different "feedstock" when I eat honey...I can only imagine that "beeswax" has to vary quite a bit if I am going by the same token. I have seen enough difference in beeswax I have gotten locally from two independant beekeepers to make me think that the microwax stock would be a bit more dependable (lot to lot)....am I barking up the wrong tree in that thinking?
No, you are NOT barking up the wrong tree! You are right on because you are observant enough to detect the differences. The continual hope is that only small batches of lube are made with new feed stock no matter the source. To make matters worse, some combos do not come out as advertised when a batch size is increased. Found that out specifically when the "big batch" was made and it took several HOURS to fix (compensate for) it. Pat, my wife, said so in advance, so I took other stuff to mix "just in case". Pure luck was with us that day that we did not loose 1500 bucks worth of feed stock. Corky and I said, "never again" would we be chefs for a boatload of hungry folks. ... felix
It's not a matter of "can't" with industrial products, it's a matter of "don't matter enough to justify the cost of exact". The sort of things that a company like Blended Waxes markets may or may not be precision down to the last molecule due to application. Some things matter, but things like "container candle wax" tend to be found at the end of a garbage disposal pipeline coming out of a hydrotreating tower in a refinery making their bottom line off of brightstock.
When it comes to lube, I think there really is a lot of room for variance here, but we should try to keep our sources relatively consistent. Beeswax is usually pretty consistent at similar refining levels just as earwax produced by humans is all very similar in composition, and lanolin produced by sheep is pretty consistent. There may be slight differences due to region, climate, sub-species, and nutrition/diet, but it's still pretty close. Petroleum is another matter, although modern refining can make just about any crude into very consistent lots of base product if the effort/cost is put into it.
Gear
food comes out the same way.
cafeteria food alway's tastes like cafeteria food though [no matter where that cafeteria is]
i don't know how they do that.
Chili's is the same way, everything from their fish to their hamburgers to their Soutwest Eggrolls somehow has exactly the same flavor. The food analogy is absolutely spot on for describing the challenge Felix was referring to.
Also, ever notice the difference between scrambling three eggs and a whole dozen? Big batches just never cook the same, even in a bigger pan.
Gear
I've done my best to keep up with this thread, but I must have missed the page where you tested the boolit lube properties of earwax.
Sooo. . .no real difference then between the earwax of nubile Polynesian virgins versus that of eighty-year-old Scandinavians? I'd have thought the lutefisk diet would make it smokier. . .:kidding:
That very well could be; however, with the right proportion of homemade grease, what's wrong with just good ol' beeswax?
I like beeswax. It's tough, sticky, elastic, relatively inexpensive and ubiquitous. I suppose if it's not processed correctly it's qualities might suffer; however, good quality beeswax is well... the bee's knees. :mrgreen:
MJ
Don
Never said there was anything "wrong" with good ol beeswax...It is the base wax I still use the most of pound for pound. 1. it's available to me locally, 2. it is cheap 3. it just plain works.
I was merely saying that some of the "issues" we see when trying to cover the whole "lube gamut" ..... are beeswax related some of the time. Truth be known I could use my modified lithi-bee lube the rest of my life and be happy. By adjusting things a bit MML will cover anything/everything I need. I still believe also that the Lord of the Lubes (one lube to rule them all) is impossible or very improbable. Heck I could get by just making plain ol lithi-bee without the microwax 430 if I had to. A dry lithi-bee (base lube) adjusted with a touch of petroleum jelly will also cover 99% of what we require from a lube. If that was what alot of us wanted however, this thread would not exist. Some of us merely feel the need to "PLAY"
The dry lithi-bee base + the Trenton petrojelly (thick vaseline) lube I have on hand will shoot everybit as well as the old LBT soft blue lube. My MML will do the same and without "knowing" the two lubes are made using a different recipe the end results are basically idendical. If I add a touch more soap/blue candl dye to either lube I could pass it off as LBT soft blue to most of the casters here and few would know the difference. LBT soft blue is my accuracy standard factory supplied lube..... if it was not for the price and the fact that I like to play, I would simply buy a lifetime supply of it and be happy. Seeing as that is NOT the case I prefer to make my own psuedo version and be happy.
I never said that "I" was going to not use beeswax no more....just the opposite is true in fact.
Ok, now I'm running into problems. Bar and chain oil. Fantastic stuff, blended 3:1 with ester two-stroke oil and two parts Ivory soap it makes a wonderful grease that is just about as good as I've ever tested on my wear tester. comes out about the consistency of toilet bowl wax, not quite firm enough to use by itself, but doesn't start to un-gel until about 300-350F. That's the good part. The lousy part is it isn't working with beeswax for some reason, tried multiple batches at various proportions and it's just a doughy mess with lumps of hard grease.
So I started messing with shaping wax and slack wax and this sodium grease, that seems to be a better way to go, but I'm back to needing just the right wax again. Paraffins don't have enough spine for this, microwaxes must be the thing. Something like cheese wax........Here we go...Sighhhh.
Gear
This sounds like a 'base' for a great lube to me; maybe along another thought we have shared. That being mixed with an inert flour-like (but not hygroscopic) substance to stiffen yet reduce powerful 'working' components some as well.
I'm not sure what to use.... only that I want to try it. It will come to me!
Is it too thin to hand lube a few boolits to try without added wax? Might see if 'Slick' or 'C.O.R.E.' rear their can be ugly heads in a bad way as a preliminary....
With that un-gel at 300-350 it might work as is if it stays on the boolit without a lot of painful effort? (and doesn't bleed)
Charge on Gear!
Eutectic
Yes, the grease will handle well enough to shoot just like it is, it's slightly rubbery and exactly the consistency of modeling clay. It feathers to a clear, greasy film quite easily, but can be worked a bit before getting really soft. I did this with lithium stearate and a similar-viscosity base oil, shot it without the wax, and it didn't fare too well in the leading department, same as soap/oil lubes I've tried in the past, but we'll just have to see how it goes. maybe I'll run it through one of my pistols first.
At nearly 45% stearate and gobs of polybutene I don't think there's a chance in heck it can bleed.
Gear
That was Felix's idea. I'm looking more at Joe's and LBT Blue Soft, equal parts wax and soap with enough plasticizer to make it like refrigerated peanut butter, and stay like that to well over 200F while being slick on the surface when frozen due to small quantities of ester-based oil.
Gear
try remelting the b-wax mix again, slower and just breaking the lumps up.
this same thing happens even when just mixing regular lith grease in.
a little carnuba might help the wax situation.
Roger that, Lamar, after about six more hours cooking lube I figured out what the deal was, it's the cruddy bar oil I was using. Makes great grease, but goes to heck when mixed with wax. The solution ended up being our old friend Lucas Oil!
So I learned a lot tonight, and will learn a lot more tomorrow evening when I get to play with all these soap lubes I made tonight and see how they settle in.
The big thing learned tonight, aside from Lucas making super-duper soap grease if combined with a little Vaseline and Ester oil, is about WAX. Microwax is the answer. Here's why: Most any grease mixed with beeswax or paraffiny wax makes a lube that's rock hard when it cools, but breaks into a thin, slippery mush when worked. Microcrystalline waxes don't do that. Now that might not come as much of a revelation to some, but I've been fooling with BW 431 (180 melt point) for dang near a year and never made it work until now. I melted some with Lucas oil, some with vaseline, some with slack wax, some with the new, lousy paraffin Shaping Wax, some with just two-stroke ester oil, and then mixed a bit of each with the other and finally got it figured out. Lucas oil plasticizes the wax, but it has to settle in for a few hours before it really becomes flexy. The next challenge was to figure out how much soap, ester, vaseline, etc. is needed to make a lube that's fairly soft yet has the right glide without being too sticky or leaving a film that's too gummy or too thin/slippery. I'm not sure I have it perfected, but at least I'm on the right track.
I'll give another report tomorrow when this stuff has settled down. One thing I know right now, beeswax can be made to work with the soap and Lucas, but it breaks down much thinner than the same proportions of the BW 431, leading me to think the microwax has the edge for making a viscosity-stable lube with wax.
Gear
so a variation of that lube i pm'd you about looks fully do-able then?
might need a trickle more lucas,if you flip the wax and the b-wax amount.
OK, this was the recipe, let me think out loud.
1 tsp oil sup I'd bump that to two TBS.
1tbs min oil
1tbs vaseline
2tbs ground ivory I'd just weigh from a fresh bar, at least one ounce. Slice it in and let it foam and dissolve before cranking the heat and gelling. It's both easier to measure and easier to melt that way.
3/4 oz that shaping wax
1 oz b-wax Melt all the other stuff together first and after the foaming dies down cook it until it's smoking like crazy and fully liquid, almost clear. That last little bit of scum on top takes a couple minutes to dissolve in. Pull it off the heat and stir constantly until the stuff begins to thicken slightly, then throw in your chunk of beeswax and let it melt in before the grease gets too thick. I did this tonight after letting the soap mix cool to about 400F while stirring and letting it gel and then tossed in the bw chunk to cool it off, made a nice smooth mixture like honey and butter by the time the chunk melted in and didn't fry the bw.
It's easy to make this too dry, and the heavy oil in the Lucas is all that's doing any real work when this stuff gets smeared out thin, as it will out near the muzzle, that's why I recommend using more at first.
Gear
Gear......
Lots of good experienced opinions here....
But let's see what "One third of a mile per second.. down the spiraled tube." has to say.
:kidding:
Eutectic
half a mile per second will tell you a bigger story.....one third mile/second should only be a starting point for something called "EXTREME"
Most of this thread could be titled "HOW TO MAKE GREASE"
Not saying that is a bad thing as alot of interesting thoughts have surfaced here, but alot of it is a how-to on making different greases......you can buy grease already made. The main answer lies in the basewax in my opinion, the grease is very likely a secondary concern. Not posting this just to sound different..just my opinion and I am expressing it the best as I can, WARNING.... I am not the brightest bulb on the string and I tend to try to simplify everything for my own understanding.