Simple Lube for Black Powder?

I have heard that you are not supposed to use anything petroleum based with BP, but I have also heard that's just a myth. If I used something like simple lube (recipe below for convenience), am I going to have issues with a black powder cartridge rifle, or should it work just fine? I'd rather not have to have two different types of lube in stock if I can get away with just one.

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Simple lube.

4 oz's beeswax [by weight solid]
4 teaspoons of white petrolatum [vaseline]
2 teaspoons of two stroke oil
2 teaspoons of atf

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Bee's wax + unsalted Crisco + a splash of olive oil . Emmett's I am sure the spelling is not right 'but the lube is ' .

It doesn't get much simpler than Emmerts, been using it since 2004, smokeless and black.

Used Darr's lube in a muzzle loading slug thrower, for black powder cartridge, and even tested it as a muzzle loader patch lube. Never had any problems with it. Paraffin, Vaseline and STP oil treatment. Did well in smokeless cartridge too.

Just plain beeswax and olive oil works as well as anything, equal amounts.Adjust =- olive oil, some people add Neatsfoot oil, lanolin to make SPG.This is near Nirvana for about any application in B/P especially long barreled B/P rifles, I have pushed it 1600 fps with a 44-40 WCF rifle and it is faultless as well in 40-70 SS and 45-70

Again I use a lot of emmerts improved simple recipe that works good. SPG is good also.

Emmerts improved:
50% beeswax
40% unsalted Crisco shortening ( in the original this was rendered tallow or lard)
5% canola or olive oil ( in original this was listed as steam oil or sperm whale oil)
5% anhydrous lanolin

The difference between Emmerts and Improved is the lanolin. Regular has 10% canola or olive oil

I use a double boiler to melt beeswax oil and Crisco together and add the lanolin when these are liquid. I also add just a touch of murphy's oil soap to the mix. A couple drops on the stirring spoon and then poured back into bottle, what sticks to spoon is plenty. This acts as a emulsifier helping the ingredients to blend together. I usually "cook" for 5 - 8 mins stirring constantly.

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Originally Posted by Randy Bohannon

Just plain beeswax and olive oil works as well as anything, equal amounts.Adjust =- olive oil, some people add Neatsfoot oil, lanolin to make SPG.This is near Nirvana for about any application in B/P especially long barreled B/P rifles, I have pushed it 1600 fps with a 44-40 WCF rifle and it is faultless as well in 40-70 SS and 45-70

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I used 50/50 beeswax and olive oil. Panlubed and worked very well.

I doubt the "Simple lube" will give the performance in BP, that a known BP lube will give, like 50-50 BW-OO.

I'm not a BP shooter, but something I'd read in a 20 year old Lyman book that I've never seen mentioned before or since
was a guy using chicken fat skimmed off the top the water from boiled chicken.
He spoke well of it, and it would sure fit the simple and non petroleum requirement.

Yuck! When it went rancid that would be some nasty smelling ammo. Might be good for hunting cats though.

I tried a bunch of different BP recipes a decade ago and the winner is Emmert's Modified. Still shooting it in my 45-70 and 45-90 target rifles out to 1000 yards with great results.
50% beeswax
40% Crisco
5% jojoba oil
5% lanolin

5050 Crisco and beeswax allways worked as good as anything for me.

When I first began shooting a BPCR, I used SPG, then, was referred to this forum for something (don't recall what:???:) and stumbled across a recipe for Emmert's Improved. Since then, haven't found anything better and, yesterday, pan-lubed 400 305 grainers for my .38-55 Highwall using exactly the same mix posted by Country Gent.

Bill

Dose all these lubes work good in ball and patch .also real bullets?

In my experience there are two basic categories of BP lube. One kind works in most situations and the other does not.
The ones that work do so with a blow tube or to a lesser degree - shooting dirty.
If you wipe between shots (every shot) the lube requirements are much less for good accuracy.

No lube to date that I know of works well shooting dirty or with a blow tube when the conditions are too hot and the air too dry. Then we wipe or foul out.

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Originally Posted by trapper9260

Dose all these lubes work good in ball and patch .also real bullets?

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Haven't actually tried Emmert's in an M/L but don't see why it shouldn't work. Back in my re-enactor days, I lubed Minie boolits with 50/50 Crisco/beeswax and kept a shoe polish tin of the same mix to lube my patches for roundball. FWIW: I use Emmert's with both BP and smokeless in my BPCRs and have also used it to seal the chambers of cap & ball revolvers when loading roundball.

Bill

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Originally Posted by Kraschenbirn

Haven't actually tried Emmert's in an M/L but don't see why it shouldn't work. Back in my re-enactor days, I lubed Minie boolits with 50/50 Crisco/beeswax and kept a tin of the same mix to lube my patches for roundball. FWIW: I use Emmert's with both BP and smokeless in my BPCRs and have also used it to seal the chambers of cap & ball revolvers when loading roundball.

Bill

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Thank you for your help.I was usen just Crisco for my minie and on my patch. I have some beeswax on hand.I will use that mix you gave . I get the beeswax from the hives that a bee farmer that when open the hive he take off the wax off of the inside cover and I let the bees take the honey out of it and then I pick it up. and clean it up for use of make my boolit lube and for the string on my crossbow and now I got another use for it now.

Just about anything beeswax and a natural oil like olive, castor, sweet mixed soft enough and with perhaps a dash of lanolin should work fine. Personally, I'd stay away from anything with petroleum in it. First it isn't necessary. Secondly, I think it does more harm than good.

Chill mentioned something I've learned as well, over the last 40 years. When it's hot and dry ain't much of anything gonna keep that fouling soft. A blow tube will help but not for many shots. I always end up wiping when it's hot and dry. Around here in the spring and sometimes in the fall it is so humid you think the fouling is gonna start running out the muzzle. The bore gets pretty soupy.

That is better to know all that can be use in the mix.Thanks

Lanolin + Olive Oil + Beeswax = LOOB. :rolleyes:

For high performance I add some Imperial DAX pomade and a crayola for identification. Eh, but the fragrance pretty much prevents misidentification. Haven't yet figgered out a funny acronym for it though.

I'll be another that uses Beeswax and olive oil. Basically 50-50 mix unless making some for temperature extremes, such as either cold winter or the heat of summer.

Here is an older thread from another forum about petroleum products in black powder lube and I have used parafan wax and vasaline in my lube with no issues but the base for my lube is bees wax and olive oil and or crisco
http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/ind...?topic=41064.0

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People have heard for so many years that petroleum products are bad with BP we simply repeat it not realizing there are differences in the products of base petroleum. For instance most people don’t realize that crude oil actually contains thousands of compounds. But even with those thousands of compounds the hydrocarbons in crude can be divided into three main groups: paraffinic, naphthenic and aromatic. To jump ahead, motor oil, machine oils and most modern firearms lubricants and greases are naphthenic and many modern lubricants also contain other aromatic compounds which make the lubricity better especially through different temperature ranges.

Crude oil after removing the lighter constituents and fuels like gasoline, diesel and kerosene is relatively high in paraffinics. These are actually considered to be less desirable, the remaining oil is further refined to remove or separate most of them. Mineral oil, paraffin and things like petroleum jelly are the byproducts of continued refining crude oil to get the more “desirable” (meaning worth more) naphthenic and aromatic based compounds.

Paraffinic oils are straight chain or simple branched aliphatic hydrocarbons. One characteristic of these open chains is that they are capable of being emulsified without the addition of a secondary agent like a soap, etc. Naphthenic or alicyclic oils have the characteristics of naphthenes, which are saturated hydrocarbons of which the molecules contain at least one closed ring of carbon atoms. These closed rings make them extremely hydrophilic and you can’t emulsify them without a secondary emulsifying agent. In addition, paraffins are also saturated with respect to hydrogen, the rich hydrogen chains easily bond to oxygen if exposed to the heat of Black Powder ignition and form water and compounds incorporating water in the resulting residue.

The above paragraph in a nutshell is the difference between the petroleum oils and lubricants we warn people about and the “good” petroleum (this includes coal oil based products) like Ballistol, paraffin and the petrolatum based toilet bowl rings that people like Noz , Dick Dastardly and many others use.

We all talk about soft fouling and moister fouling being created by certain types of powders (like Swiss) and some shooters will use blow tubes to pass moist air through a barrel to allow it to be infused and keep the fouling soft. What we don’t talk about is that naphthenic lubricants don’t incorporate water or water based compounds because it has a closed ring. The results are hard tarry deposits. This is why when you submerge a gun part fouled in those hard tarry deposits it doesn’t soften in water.

As weird as it sounds, the way to determine if you can or should use a lube in contact with burning Black Powder comes down to whether or not you can eat it, or I should say ingest it (not always a good idea, but it won’t poison you). If the product has a medicinal use like paraffin, petroleum Jelly, mineral oil, etc. You can probably use it with BP. The reason is that it is going to be low in naphthenic compounds. The body will react to naphthenic compounds and they will basically poison you. If Mineral oil was poisonous many of us would be dead and our mothers would still be in prison.

That’s enough for a start, I’ll talk about fatty acids next. That’s another key to what makes a superior BP lubricant.

Regards,
Mako

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