if it's both hydro cracked,and de-waxed it's being made into a consistent base.
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if it's both hydro cracked,and de-waxed it's being made into a consistent base.
Took out the 375 yesterday. Shot 20 rounds with my version of the soap lube. Certainly leaves a pretty dry bore. No lube star. No leading. Accuracy wasn't bad but hard to measure as there was a 10 to 15 mph crosswind. Temp was 47.
This lube sure seems promising.
now you see why we are working it from both ends and trying to figure out the right waxes for it.
it WILL work if we can find the right ingredients [err replacement parts]
Sodium soap, though I used to be afraid of it because such a good emulsifier, has proven to be an invaluble viscosity stabilizing ingredient, from the thinnest oil to the highest melt-point wax, it controls flow and keeps things from becoming too wet or too dry at any point. We really do have to work at it from both ends, but I think we're getting closer.
I haven't called BW yet about their waxes because I'm experimenting with the 180 micrwax, beeswax, and various blends to see just what does what, and I need to know more about that before plunking down some bucks. The microwaxes give the stretch, gloss, flex, and smear that we want without being brittle. Paraffins are looking like they better serve us in a more liquid form rather than the crystalline one. The tranny goop soaps up really well, and with a little 180 microwax makes a really tough, durable and flexy substance. Needs a little oil, maybe just heavy mineral oil or a dose of two-stroke oil to make it just right, hopefully I'll have a batch ready to test in a couple of weeks. Gotta work on the .308 this weekend, see if I can make it group well enough with a known-good lube to do comparative testing.
Gear
anybody know where to get pure ceresin??
Going on two days without a single post here?!
I found my Stihl B&C oil and am wondering if I should also order a slab of BW-429 to modify my beeswax... Please don't quit on me now! :mrgreen:
MJ
P.S. Gear... is the 180F Blended Wax you have the BW-431? It looks from their data sheet that BW-431 is pretty hard. Is it as hard as beeswax?
I have been playing with Starmetal's soap lube and actually trying to turn the "directions"/"recipe" for that goobly gook info into something that makes some sort of sense. "A MARGARINE TUB SIZED DOLLOP"....??? really :LOL: I had to add wax to the "thick grease base" a few times to get a friendly acting lube out of it, but I got there after a few at bats.
THE TESTS HAVE ONLY BEEN PRELIMINARY, but ol Joe may have been onto something....maybehaps......we shall see. It is basically a lube modifying Felix World Famous Lube (FWFL) directions and substituting some ingredients a bit. I will call it Starmetal's SOAP Lube in honor of Ol Joe.
A few years back I played with this "super soapy" idea a bit, but I went around the tree a different way than Joe did and I did not entirely like what I made. Some of the discussions on this thread have made me revisit my notes/thoughts...so I said WHY NOT been awhile since you played lube cook :mrgreen: ........ I now have condensed gears regurgitated "directions" for Starmetal's "SOAP" lube into a useable recipe made from KNOWN feedstock that is re-peatable. It needs alot more testing at High Pressure and High Velocity, as well as some testing at low end but at least the ingredients are known and it shows good promise after ONE COLD AND BREEZY range session.
Only one ingredient is out of the ordinary and that is the petrojelly( mineral oil/microwax) part of the lube. I am using a wax tape primer originally for use on underground gas mains/pipes for rust prevention. It reminds me of a thickened hybrid version of vaseline/cosmoline/alox350 without the cosmoline or alox smell. It smeels more like midgrade motor oil and has that motor oil/cosmoline "luminescent" depression glass green sheen with a motor oil colored base to it. It is actually the color of a "MOTOR OIL" plastic fishing worm.
My version of Starmetal Soap Lube:
all measurement are by weight.
1/4 lb of Trenton (brown) WAX TAPE PRIMER available from Trenton Co. - Ann Arbor Michigan
1/4 lb finely powdered/shredded ivory soap (1 bar)
3/4 lb Cappings grade yellow beeswax
You put all of the wax tape primer jelly stuff in a saucepan and heat it till it starts to smoke....maintain that level of heat....now slowly add the soap a little at a time until it is all in there and the lumps/bubbles and such are gone. Eventually aftersome time and vigorous stirring (20min or so)you end up with what looks like a finer grained but really thick and stringy version of the pulled meat the school cafeteria used to serve (sh*t on a shingle)...when you get to this stage remove the pan from the heat and add your beeswax pieces and stir that around till it is melted/gone. When it is gone, put it back on the heat (medium, do not scorch the lube) and stir it for a little while more ensuring for a fact that all bubbles and soap are gone. Pour it into your lube molds/pans/ingots for storage when it gets cool. Mine did not seperate after 3 re-heats and it would likely make a decently friendly pan lube for those that prefer to pan lube it. I am pretty sure it would work great in a lubesizer, but I am smear/hand lubing for the moment just to test the lube....you actually get pretty fast at it when you test alot of lubes as several folks here can attest to I am sure.
Just thought I would share in case someone else wants to test it somewhere that is not frozen at the moment. I will cover the cool weather portion of the testing as I get time...there are already more HighV , MedV, and LowV test rounds waiting their chance to fly.
Mike, you're way off if you're trying to come close to Joe's recipe. I know we all have our own idea of what consistency a lube should be, but if you want it to work like his does, put your own "feelings" aside and follow the tips I've given many times here on how to make it.
The wax and the soap must be pretty close to equal parts by volume, weight is fairly close depending on how dry your soap is. The "Vaseline" component is the plasticizer part, and used by "judgement" to get the consistency you like. To get close to Joe's final formula, use about the same amount as the soap by weight.
I'd also recommend using 50% of that BW 430 stuff in the wax proportion to give the beeswax some more "suds".
Try this to make a small batch: Melt 2 ounces of your Vaseline goop in a pot, and one ounce of your micro 430. Add about half a teaspoon of castor oil to that. Heat to around 300F and slice in half a big bar of Ivory with a knife and "fry" the slices in the hot oil/wax until the whole mess is like foamy, amber shaving cream. Cook it while stirring until the foam dies down, and it will look like grits. Now, HEAT IT. I mean melt it all together. This WILL NOT work unless you heat it until the mix is a clear liquid about like light engine oil. This is the part that I can't seem to get people to understand, you have to melt the stearate or it won't gell the oil properly, and that takes at least 460F. It will be smoking heavily at that point, but as soon as it all goes liquid remove it from the heat and stir until it starts to gel and get thick, which will be very soon after removing from the heat. When it cools a bit, throw in a 1-ounce chunk of beeswax and stir it around until all melted, and let it cool in the pot. Reheat it and remix again to help blend in the beeswax. If you don't use beeswax at all, you can pour the molten liquid right into the moulds and it will set up like Jell-O, but the scorch factor of the beeswax complicates things.
This lube is like a very stiff grease, not like a flexible wax that most of us think of as boolit lube. It's a lot softer than Javelina 50/50, but it works like a champ if you think outside your paradigm.
Gear
Gear,
What about substituting BW-408 for the "Vaseline Goop" and BW-430? Also, I'm surprised you didn't use Chain & Bar lube instead of castor oil.
I've been getting better results (i.e., tighter groups w/ fewer flyers) from soapy lubes with stiff, putty-like consistencies opposed to those that are soft and greasy. Does your new paradigm stay in the lube grooves and have you shot it against Felix Lube, for example? If you have range tested it, do you have some 100 yard targets to post? Four, five shot groups (20 total rounds) starting with a cold clean barrel would be nice to see.
MJ
I've been shooting Joe's soap lube for somewhere around a year now, and compared it to a couple versions of Felix lube (my summer and winter formula, don't ask), so yes, I have a lot of targets. Yes, it jettisons. In fact it just vanishes into thin air, almost no smoke, nothing in the barrel, nothing on the muzzle above about 2100 fps, nothing in the grooves, and only a damp mist on point-blank cardboard. Joe's is a dense, fairly dry grease without too much slick feeling to it. The mineral oil does that. It leaves only a faint film from about 2% castor oil.
I didn't say to use bar and chain oil because Joe's lube flat out works and I haven't proven out any of the bar oil soap lubes I've made in the last couple of weeks, although Eutectic has had good luck with it in his Polybutene Felix lube.
I don't have any BW 430 or 408 so I can't say, but if the 408 will equal Vaseline plus beeswax/BW-430 then I'd say go for it.
I'm not saying Joe's lube is the best thing on the planet, or the only way to make a good lube, but it's as good or better than anything I've every tried, and so far it has worked flawlessly in everything from pistols to rifles. It is what it is, too bad it has too many unknown components (even to Joe).
Gear
Actually, I want to retain the beeswax and just substitute the BW-408 for the "Vaseline" and the BW-430. I like beeswax because of the tack, strength and flex it adds; however, I'm working under the conventional paradigm. I would also substitute Sthil B&C lube for the castor oil. The only thing I need to purchase is the micro-wax. I've got three bars of Ivory drying in the wife's fruit desiccator. :mrgreen:
MJ
there ain't gonna be any water left after you hit the 450-f temperature zone.
the gel i made was like jelly untill i took the temperature up then it went plastic on me.
i can re-heat it and melt it back down to add wax or whatever.
if i take the heat back up it locks up again.
if i keep it low [350-375] it gels again and locks up again, just not like it does with the heat.
Yeah, the water all boils off well below 450, but the mix is liable to re-absorb some after a while from the air. Joe and I have been keeping an eye on this for a while now and haven't seen any evidence whatsoever of corrosion or even darkening of polished brass, copper, iron, or steel. The little bit of rust in my 7mm-08 barrel was my fault, I decoppered it and shot the soap lube in it and let it sit without ever putting anything else in there, or even prepping the bore with a wipe of Ed's Red before shooting. That metal was stripped bare and bone dry, no wonder it rusted.
After reaching the full liquid state and cooling, the gelled grease will remelt at a lower temperature without needing to take it all the way back up to 460F. 300-350 makes it pretty much liquid again and is easy to add wax or modify it at that point.
I look at the soap lube this way: The soap is the main ingredient, it serves as a lube, EP additive, carrier, all-temp viscosity modifier, oil sponge, and provides a temp-stable molecular matrix to hold the other stuff together. The wax, Vaseline, and oil (if any) forms a thick grease which does the lubing and modifies the soap so it can be applied to the boolit. That may be way off, but after making well over 50 batches of this stuff using various components and testing each component and blend on my wear tester (and even shooting a few of them!) that's the way it seems to be playing out.
Gear
If we are going to make sodium stearate the primary ingredient, we might consider a pure feed stock such as lab grade, heaven forbid:
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/...g=en®ion=US
I have used this supply house because they do indeed a fantastic job of delivering only what they say. Some items will not be shipped to a non-industrial address,
so have them ship it to where you work in your name. I do think school names work especially if they have a chemical lab. Should get to know the science boss
there anyway because he would have other suppliers who provide discounts to schools in particular. Counts as a double deduction on their taxes in some cases.
... felix
Sidelines: It take about 500 degrees to melt sodium stearate into solution. Using Ivory slivers as flux, beside all of the junk whatever smoking off at lower temps, I have noticed uniform carbon inclusions stemming from the stearate in the final boolits. Hopefully, that is from fluxing at 750 or above, and will not happen if mixing stearate in a simple solution at 500. Poly ATFs will take 600? If so, that should be the "solvent" for the stearate. ... felix
Ian
I shot alot of soft and gooey and alot of "grease" lubes like you describe a few years back using both over the counter and lab grade feedstocks....at this point we are gonna have to agree to disagree. Aparently my "feelings" are my own.....AS I KNOW what lubes like that do at lower velocity(in my local only apparently) and it is not what I or my guns want out of a "lube". I shoot all my lubes and I need a lube that will do 400 fps and I need a lube that will push or exceed 3K....that GOO you describe above is not the answer for me. I am not a huge fan of vertically dispersed groups as I would rather have round groups. You do as you wish as well as I will. This is your baby and I will leave you to it...GOOD LUCK,
Mike
Gear, or one of you other educated guys that have a much better understanding than I do need to look at this site for a possible blend that would put a fiber finish in our quest for the ultimate lube: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester
Yes, it's polyester.
EW
I'm a little confused. It was my impression that the goal of this thread was to define a lube for our boolits that would be pretty much universal. I assumed that a lube that could withstand 50,000 psi peak pressure loads as well as loads in the 10,000 psi realm in temperature ranges of 100 degrees down to at least 0 degrees was the goal. Am I wrong?
Since I am working on the alloy end of high speed cast boolit loads, I thought the sharing of information and ideas in this thread would be a benefit to everyone including myself. Apparently some suggestions, thoughts, or questions are not welcome. A rather odd direction for a thread to take on the Castboolit Forum.
Edd
This has been an excellent group effort so far, and we've come a long way thanks to a lot of input from the most knowledgeable people around. The only thing not welcome here is a bunch of drama BS, which I will see ended immediately if someone starts it here. DFIU.
I can be tart sometimes, so if I offended anyone somehow, I'm sorry, you need to tell me. I'm interested in facts, not feelings. We have a section here dedicated to feelings if you need a hug or a stroke. You wanna talk lube and all the things that affect it or it affects, this is certainly the right place as far as I see it, bring it on. :) (there's a feelie!)
Gear