I haven't made my own lube yet so take this with a grain of salt... I bought the wool felt, still need the cutter, paraffin, bees wax, and tallow.
Gatofeo uses mutton tallow - which is rendered lamb or beef fat.
How to make mutton tallow (render animal fat):
https://www.thepaleomom.com/recipe-home-rendered-tallow-its-easy/
US websites that sell mutton tallow other than Dixie Gun Works who is out of stock (for my future reference):
https://grasslandbeef.com/lamb-tallow
Unsalted - Vegetable based Margarine or Unsalted - Biljan Mast (vegetable shortening), or both, should work.(this replaces mutton tallow) 1 part
Paraffin wax (used for home canning of jams and jelly) - the more refined the better. 1 part
Bees Wax (filtered is best). 1 part
Quoting Gatofeo from the 1858remington post:
"All parts are by weight, not volume!
I measure out 200/200/100 grams on a kitchen scale, toss the ingredients into a wide mouth Mason jar, and set the jar in 3 or four inches of boiling water for a double-boiler effect to melt it. When thoroughly melted, mix well with a clean stick or disposable chopstick, then allow to cool at room temperature.
Do not try to hasten cooling by placing the jar in the refrigerator, or the ingredients may separate."
Note - you can try leaving different ingredients out.
I believe you bought the wad cutter - so cut some un-lubed wads. Set those aside.
Set up a double boiler on your stove. Put a glass jar or tin can floating in water in another larger pan. Melt the Margarine or Biljna Mast, then add the Bees Wax, then add the paraffin wax using the above weights. Mix it all up. You should end up with a balm type mixture that will harden together. Put all that in a large container with a lid. This mixture will be your wad lube.
Some folks skip the double boiler and use the microwave.
Scoop out some of that back into the smaller pan in the double boiler. Melt it to liquid form again, add your cut wads - allow them to soak up that hot mixture.
Then let them cool on a cookie sheet. There is your lubed wad that goes between the ball and the powder.
You can take that larger tub of wad lube that you made and put some of it into a smaller container to take to the range. That can be used as an over the ball lube, if you'd like to try that out.
As mentioned you can mix and match different vegetable type oils with beeswax.
Some folks leave the wool felt out and cut Lube pills out of the hardened wad lube.
Side note:
I like to lube my cylinder pin with Bore butter. I'll have try lubing it with vegetable shortening or margarine. Will also try the above lube - 20 some days from now (R&R).
Last edit: You can shoot just ball over powder. That's how I started. Lube helps the gun run longer during the shooting session and makes clean up afterwards easier. Water followed by WD40 is really all you need to clean.
and I see it's like that on all threads related to this lube topic.
