Simple readily available lube

[Arrow]

I have read pages and pages of everyone's favorite lubes. Thy all have one thing in common, they are all made of ingredients I have never heard of before. What is a good lube you can cook up with stuff you can pick up locally like a grocery store, auto parts store, Walmart. I'm not looking to he very high tech, I'm just about to start casting. I am looking for a general purpose lube I can use for pistol cartridges up to magnum handgun cartridges mostly. I will be loading for a 45-70 as well if the same lube will work for it. If not I am mostly concerned with handgun cartridges. Also, everyone is talking about bees wax as a main part, where do you get that? And last thing, when doing volume measurements on ingredients that are not liquid, do you get a volume measure after you have melted it? Thanks for all the help.

[CastingFool]

There is a member here that sells beeswax. Pretty good price, too! When I was looking for lubes, I choose Emmert's lube. It's a blackpowder lube, but it's said to work in low pressure smokeless rounds. I use it to pan lube my lee 452-255 swc, and I use either Unique or Bullseye, and it seems to work. I basically load for plinking loads.

[celem]

I make my own pan lube of half beeswax and half Armour brand lard. Works great. Ask you county extension agent for the name of a local beekeeper. They usually have excess wax. They slice off the comb caps and it is a waste byproduct that they sell, usually to companies that mold comb starter frames.

[geargnasher]

Randyrat (vendor sponsor of this site) is where I get my beeswax. Shoot him a PM and ask about TAC #1 lube while you're at it. For the best, long-range, accurate magnum handgun loads, I haven't found anything better than Felix lube. The recipe is in the first post of the sticky. If you make it, DO NOT deviate from the instructions. All ingredients except the beeswax can be found at Wal Mart. Buy a tube of Lansinoh nipple creme in the nursing mother's section if you need a source of lanolin.

Gear

[btroj]

Felix lube is easy to make, just follow the directions. Lanolin can be bought from Randy too, think. If not, look online, it is available. Be sure it is anhydrous lanolin, it should look like brown, sticky Vaseline.
The lanolin is an awesome case lube too.

[jonas302]

What method are you going to use pan, sizer, tumble ? If your going to be sizing or putting gas checks on with a lee sizer kit it will come with a bottle of LLA that you might as well try out or make 45/45/10 from it
Also recommend Randy for the bees wax and his ready made TAC lube will do what you want if you are going to pan lube or run though a lube sizer

[bhn22]

50/50 Lithium grease from the auto parts store and beeswax. That's probably the easiest, and quickest. When I make lube, it's also Felix' formula.

[Idaho Mule]

Arrow, all these other guys have more experience than I do but here goes anyway. Either get some beeswax from a local bee keeper or order some from RandyRat here, some vaseline, Dexron, and some 2-cycle oil. A member here by the name of run5run has a recipe with these ingredients for Simple Lube and it flat works. I looked thru all kinds of lube stuff here and settled on this one. I am not saying it does everything but I sure haven't had a problem with it. It is ultra simple to make, you can pan lube, run it thru a lubra-sizer, or probably just smear it on. I have been using it for almost a year now in calibers from .25 to .454 and velocities from 750fps to just over 2000fps with no troubles at all. JW

[smokesahoy]

beeswax (crafts store) synthetic 2 stroke (nearly anywhere) 3 parts to 1 part, if too tacky add another part wax until where you want it. that's simple man.

[C. Latch]

If you can find beeswax, mix it with olive oil until you get a mix that is solid at the temps your ammo will be exposed to. That's where I started, I still have gobs of it, and it works for any handgun I've tried it in yet. It requires -0- noxious, smelly ingredients; you can mix it in your wife's cookware.

[hotbrew]

Randyrat has the ingredients that are not at the grocery store, pharmacy, or auto parts store. Something I've done is to make up Felix grease ( Mineral oil, Castor oil, and Ivory soap from pharmacy) cooked per instructions, and save it to mix with the beeswax, lanolin, and carnauba (from Randyrat) as needed.

hotbrew

[fryboy]

if for some reason you wish to forgo the beeswax ( tho i wouldnt as it's a near perfect base and all natural ) you can make darr lube ,( it's in the recipe thread ) from paraffin wax , as is it's more for low to mid velocity as opposed to magnum type loadings but you may be able to crowd up there a wee bit if you have a decent bore, proper size and a powder with a lower pressure burning curve but i honestly doubt that it'll see you successfully thru the upper end of magnum type loads
hobby lobby sells beeswax as do some other type craft stores but expect to pay a pretty penny for it , honestly randy rat cant be beat , send him a pm get a quote send him a money order and wait a few days and you'll be good to go , if you have pay pal it can even be done faster [shrugz]

[JSnover]

My 45-70 loves Emmerts, with black and smokeless.

[randyrat]

Let me know what you want with a private message. I also have a spare chunk of My own buck Emmert's lube or a spare chunk I'd throw in so you can try it out for free..Let me know I can send you some samples of my lube..TAC1 and buck emmerts..At least it will hold you off until you decide on making your own witches brew. along with the free sample I'll send you a list of my goodies

[Arrow]

Randyrat, thank you very much for the offer. I will be contacting you in the next couple months. I have not even started casting yet. I am just doing as much research now so I have a plan and hopefully have an idea of what to expect when I start in a couple months. I will be using a lubrisizer and occasionally pan lube. So if there are lubes as simple as bees wax am 2 stroke that work fine, why are there usually all those other added ingredients? I will go out and try to locate all those things if there is a big difference. I'm just tryin to learn this stuff. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you.

[William Yanda]

", why are there usually all those other added ingredients? "
Why do some witches say; "Eye of newt and skin of toad" and others say; "Skin of newt and eye of toad"?
Bill
Duckin and runnin, and sorry-that's probably not much help.

[a.squibload]

Want simple? Buy some BAC sticks from White Label Lubes
and stick one in your lubersizer.
There are a hundred lube recipes, like beers, variety is
the spice of life.

[fryboy]

making lubes appeals to the mad scientist in all of us ( ermm at least those who have the mad scientist gene lolz ) some folks also just prefer to do it themselfs , now having stated that ... keep in mind that different ingredients do different things , since you are in a learning stage as opposed to a need to use stage allow me to leave a link that you should pursue to lasc's site about lube ingredients , altho i've found that practical application beats book learnin' any day of the week both are tools that can be well utilized
http://www.lasc.us/LubeIngredients.htm

and this link which has many sub-links of info that are very very worthy

http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

[JSnover]

Want simple? Buy some BAC sticks from White Label Lubes
and stick one in your lubersizer.
There are a hundred lube recipes, like beers, variety is
the spice of life.

True on both counts. I have bought lubes for maximum simplicity. I've also enjoyed making them... To an extent. IMO if it has more than three ingredients and you have to do more than "heat, mix, apply to boolits," it is over-complicated.

[9.3X62AL]

HERESY ALERT.....don't say you weren't warned.

I don't make my own lubes. There--I said it. I use two different lube types--an Alox/beeswax 50/50 type for handguns up to 1100 FPS and a concoction known as Carnauba Red for everything else. Both of these are mailed by Glenn and Leah Larsen www.LsStuff.com at a VERY reasonable cost.