"Extreme" boolit lube, The Quest...

[Eutectic]

"UH-Oh".........

Remember 'CORE'? That's "Consistency of Residuals Encountered"..... Well, 'CORE' has bitten me in three different guns!

I have tested EBN (EsterBee350 with 13% Carnauba) quite a bit in three guns since my last report. Accuracy was excellent in all three! For a while and at times that is! The basics were there as they need to be like "no leading!" It tickles me how that is so important with so many! I'm not saying it isn't; don't get me wrong! But it's a given to me and not worth even saying or talked about...... If it leaves lead; it's dead! That's my criteria long before any complex testing starts.

Both the Hornet and the Marlin .25-20 started getting weird around 25 rounds dirty. The Hornet didn't ever 'cold start' out of the group... AT LEAST WITH THE FIRST ROUND!
Both guns displayed a somewhat repeatable phenomena then! Good first shot and a low second! The .25-20 started it at 27 rounds dirty and idle three days. At 70 yards, the first shot was 3/4" high. The next shot was 2 1/2" low! The third shot was right on. 4 more shots make a 1" group along with #3. The Hornet would drop the second shot as well. It was well fouled at over forty shots. The Hornet didn't always display this but the Marlin did. The Marlin basically made a 3" 70 yard group that had the rest of the shots into about 1"! Like I said this lube is accurate with the best of them except for this.
The .38-40 was able to stay right at 1" at fifty without cold starts of any kind. In the 30's through the bore it wanted cleaned, I could tell.
A close examination of all three guns showed bright clean bores in all. It was only after refracting strong lighting and 10x magnification I could see deposit. The lands shined even on their edges..... Carnauba!
I think the second shot low thing is a purging shot. The first shot literally 'tricks' you into thinking you have passed the cold start test, softens the hard deposits, and then the 'blade' drops and round two plows out the bore!

R5R had a feeling.... I think I may have the same one.... High Carnauba % may not fly when the mercury drops even with Ester's help.

I cleaned all guns with a bronze brush and Hoppe's #9. The first pass through gave above normal resistance!

I enjoyed Bruce's post. His analytic mind (I'm the same way) wants to pin down the problem! ME TOO! But just what is the problem? Our minds are incapable of thinking in milliseconds, much less microseconds! Yet our boolit and its lube see this every shot and we don't see what they see.... only the results of it. Like Bruce I would like to take a bite at a time at what's working. Very Hot barrels are an unimportant abstract as far as I'm concerned. I don't think most of us consider an "Extreme" Lube being designed to spray from a semi-auto. Some of the bogger throwing lubes we have criticized may have their place there. Nor are handguns the primary objective either. They are easy to please lube wise. I see the very best accuracy from a rifle (1 moa) being the goal over many rounds with a cold winter factored in! The first shot (hunting) being extremely critical not fast multiple shots.

S O O O what is my next move. First Carnauba will drop in % or maybe out. I have pondered this to the point my wife looks at me sometimes and says: "What are you thinking about?"
A la Bruce I'm going to modify what has worked for me.

See post #1000.
btroj mentioned the NRA formula being modified to work with new or different additions. I'm going to start there..... (I've been there) I like about 40% Beeswax. I like about 40% Alox 350. That leaves 20% for ester 2 stroke, carnauba (4% max), maybe even castor oil....... Those with experience are saying "That's way too thin!" Yeah..... I know... I'm thinking about that too.

I am not against Gear driving a "stake" through Alox 350's heart either! I hope he does and I'll be thrilled! We need "wetting" in "Extreme"..... THE BEST ONE!

Eutectic

[popper]

The first shot literally 'tricks' you into thinking you have passed the cold start test, softens the hard deposits, and then the 'blade' drops and round two plows out the bore!

First shot MELTS the lube and second scrapes it out? I did 75/25 oil/Carnuba and 100% oil from 2 30 cals, 1 min between shots. First 10 oil groped 8 in 1", 2nd 10 oil/Carnuba - 5 in 1", 3 for readjusting the scope and 1 an inch below the good group. Groups were pretty much a 1" vertical string. Cleaned after 60 rnds, no leading and cleaner looking than Recluse lubed bbl. 30-30 336, >1800 fps. Same gun has gotten 5 cloverleaf @ 50 LLA on the same CB but lighter load. The other was an AR 308 single loaded (got the wrong mag and it won't feed FN) Loads were MUCH hotter, different CB, same lube. Target result weren't as good, but no leading, dirty bore was same as 30-30.

[geargnasher]

Sounds like typical Alox fouling to me, not the shine, but the buildup after 20 or more rounds that eventually starts ruining groups. Might be the carnauba, though, and we sure need to know which one it is. So far I've run 60 rounds through my '06 with the CarnEsterBee and no cleaning, it's still holding round, 1.5" or better groups of ten, still putting the first three from a cool barrel in under 3/4". This is at 85-100 degrees ambient. It isn't perfect, but it's a move in the right directon I think. It might go to heck in the cold, though.

Sounds like either dropping the carnauba completely or swapping the Alox for a much smaller percentage of the Lubrizol Syn-Ester GY-HTO as an EP modifier and wetting agent would be something to try. MJ is in the process of testing a different version of my CarnEsterBee (with sulfur ester and HTO), if it works for him maybe I'll send you a small sample to try, maybe give it a go in the gun with the worst problem with CORE.

Gear

[popper]

Gear, the army temp tests showed the bbl temp was highest 6" from the chamber, decreased ~ 100F at the muzzle. The chamber was cooler (~100F) but the receiver is a honking big chunk of metal. My conclusion is the temp the CB and lube see is MUCH higher than many here assume. Their data also shows 1 min doesn't cool the bbl at all, but the bore surface may congeal the lube in that time. Yes, MGs use the open bolt design to cool the bolt and chamber. Cook-offs are only dangerous when the bolt is open. 5 inchers cook-off too. Interesting aside, 4 blade hopped up Thunderbolts and F86 often ran into their own bullets. ME109 and ME 262 solved the problem by using 20mm cannon, which also gave greater range.
Carnuba wax, melt=170F, flash=590F. Paraffin(micro-crystaline) melt=>200F, flash=390F. PAO oil flash=800F. Sort of indicates carnuba may have better cold results. Melts easier and has higher tensile strength. The build up may be because it sticks to itself pretty good, stronger lattice.

[runfiverun]

some thoughts
i think we need a de-fatted wax.
bees wax has done so well because it has an ester alcohol base wiithout any type of congealing fats in it.
i believe carnuba gives problems because of the fats in the wax.

[bruce381]

some thoughts
i think we need a de-fatted wax.
bees wax has done so well because it has an ester alcohol base wiithout any type of congealing fats in it.
i believe carnuba gives problems because of the fats in the wax.

how about just the wax and the HTO no carnuba and adjust to get vis correct?

[popper]

Waxes are mixtures comprising chiefly esters of monohydroxy alcohols, besides other esters and free fatty acids, free alcohols, and higher hydrocarbons. They differ from fats in that fats contain chiefly esters of glycerol.

So, except for paraffin, the waxes we use are 'de-fatted'.

oils, with long fatty chain triglyceride ester groups and with little or no unsaturation (which if present, would lead to oxidative instability).

Syn lube oils.

[Marlin Junky]

Here are the range results from this morning... the darn temp was in the low 80's today.

Everything remained the same as Fridays test except I substituted Gear's Sulfur Lube (sorry Gear, I don't know what else to call it) for my Beeswax, T3, Stihl HP Ultra, NaStearate, Jojoba Lube. Interesting thing about my lube is that on Friday just after shooting it, the barrel was shinny and clean looking. This morning however, one push of the bronze brush from the breach out the muzzle produced a puff of black soot. Another stroke produced somewhat less dust so I pulled out the cleaning rod and there it was again, that darn black fouling (which I removed with CR-10 before testing Gear's lube). What could have created this black fouling just from the gun sitting over the weekend?

MJ

P.S. The aim point on targets 1 through 4 is 3/4" in diameter and the range was 75 yards. Oh yeah, 22 rounds in 20 minutes and yes, next time I will use a new toner cartridge.

[geargnasher]

That's better. Now what happened to groups #2 and #3? If you started and ended up with the same thing (or thereabouts) but had some weird stringing in between, and it was a continous string of fire, makes me wonder if your load isn't on a borderline barrel harmonic node and passed through it as it heated (started on one side cold and ended up on the other after 15-17 rounds) or if you had too much coffee this morning.

So, what's your overall impression? smoke? Leading? Barrel condition? I would expect the barrel to be quite dry and not too shiny.

BTW your targets and edited notes are outstanding, if I can manage to just get a raw picture uploaded then I'm doing well.

Gear

[Marlin Junky]

That's better. Now what happened to groups #2 and #3? If you started and ended up with the same thing (or thereabouts) but had some weird stringing in between, and it was a continous string of fire, makes me wonder if your load isn't on a borderline barrel harmonic node and passed through it as it heated (started on one side cold and ended up on the other after 15-17 rounds) or if you had too much coffee this morning.

Nope, no coffee this morning at all. If it was shooter error, it would more likely be on the last target because that's when the eyes start to loose their strength. HOWEVER, my chronograph stats have been weird since I've been shooting the RCBS 30-165-SIL with its minimal bearing surface and our slicker than BAC lubes.

So, what's your overall impression? smoke? Leading? Barrel condition? I would expect the barrel to be quite dry and not too shiny.

BTW your targets and edited notes are outstanding, if I can manage to just get a raw picture uploaded then I'm doing well.

Gear

Gear, these results are sorta preliminary... I will get more serious when I get some 311-170 RD's loaded up; i.e., I do not care for RCBS 30-165-SIL in this gun. So far, I like your "Sulfur" lube. The barrel condition just after the range session was clean and perhaps not as shinny as with my lube on Friday (my lube contains about 20% by weight of Carnauba, IIRC [I'll double check that]). I was getting irregular amounts of smoke today but I also got a very wide extreme spread for this powder charge/boolit weight combination. I'm anxious to see if I'll get any hard black fouling by Friday. Oh yeah, I'm also going to pick up another pound of Re7, especially if I keep getting this darn fouling.

MJ

[geargnasher]

If this ester/carnauba experiment is trending toward funky velocity swings, we might consider Redline ATF and lithium complex. One thing about the lithi-bee lubes is the good ones sure do seem to generate low chrony statistics.

Gear

[Marlin Junky]

If this ester/carnauba experiment is trending toward funky velocity swings, we might consider Redline ATF and lithium complex. One thing about the lithi-bee lubes is the good ones sure do seem to generate low chrony statistics.

Gear

I like the idea of Redline ATF but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater... it could be the undersized boolit and too slow a powder for the pressure developed. I bet I'm doin' less than 20K PSI with this load.

MJ

[geargnasher]

True about boolit fit and small bearing surface, but it could also be the carnauba too. Between you, Eutectic, and me we're going to get to the bottom of this carnauba thing eventually. Part of the problem here is we're all three testing two unknowns at once (ester oils and high-carnauba content) so it's tough to tell.

Gear

[Marlin Junky]

Can we agree on a Carnauba to Beeswax ratio to stick with so we can go out and test the various POE's? Any idea what the Carnauba to Beeswax ratio is in BAC? You know, there are about four different Carnauba qualities readily available. T1 might be more expensive than T3, but it also might work better because it's more pure (less ash, IIRC).

Heck, I'm still wondering why I'm getting hard black fouling though.
MJ

[felix]

Ian, I forgot already from above readings: Have you modified the felix lube such that ester oil is used in lieu of mineral/ATF/etc leaving castor intact? ... felix

[felix]

Carnaba appears correct when the shine is present. Too much Carnaba, or not enough with some mixes, is a no-no in several concoctions I've tried when coming up with felix. ... felix

[Marlin Junky]

Ian, I forgot already from above readings: Have you modified the felix lube such that ester oil is used in lieu of mineral/ATF/etc leaving castor intact? ... felix

Yesterday I made a round-about suggestion that castor oil should be tested more thoroughly without mineral oil but I'm wondering what's the advantage of using both castor and a POE in the beeswax/carnauba blend?

MJ

[felix]

Maybe a waste of time, MJ. Needs to be tried without and with heating (polymerized castor), time permitting and raining outside with nothing else on the table. ... felix

If the cold (clean and dirty) barrel shoots mo'betta WITHOUT DOUBT, we can then work on the higher pressure end. That would be substituting the amount of naked castor with level-one hydrogenated castor. ... felix

[runfiverun]

back to the castor wax or the hydrogenated castor oil ian and I first discussed.
castor wax might be a good substitute for carnuba wax.

btw 2-5% added carnuba is usually the correct amount.
i generally go with 2-3% when adding to a known lube.

[felix]

The downside of any low-valued wax version of castor oil is the increase of viscosity. Might have to significantly lower the lanolin, and that might destroy the cold barrel requirements. You guys are doing fine without my interjections here. I am just throwing things around that are already in the lube kitchen. Maybe not the castor wax, but it is easy to obtain. ... felix