I would toss the parafin and go with beeswax. Again, parafin is much lower melting temp, which is why I abandoned it. I wanted something that wouldn't go runny on a summer day, but still stay pliable in freezing temps.
LD
Loyalist Dave,
I just reread my original post and I guess it made it sound like paraffin had a higher melting point than beeswax. If you read I said that a paraffin candle won't soften in your hand but a Mutton Tallow/Beeswax/Paraffin lube would. I hope I didn't confuse anyone.
The Royal Oak (Gulf Wax) product melts around 128° F and Beeswax typically melts at 145°. Not a huge difference, but the beeswax mixture is stiffer above 100°. It's the Mutton tallow that makes everything softer at human body temps.
I also said I added Beeswax for my summer cap and ball mix. I do know one thing, and that is that particular mix doesn't flow as well in my lubrisizer if I'm trying to lube bullets and not not use a base heater. I can lube without a heater in the summer with the #1 lube mix, but I have to (I choose to) use a heater like you do for smokeless lube such as the Rooster lubes (which have a melting point above 200° F).
I can force the lube through the sizer and it will soften a bit and flows under the shear from the extrusion through the port, but I'm putting load on my sizer and I want it to last. I have gone to a modified #1, I guess you could call it a #1 Mutton Enhanced Lube or #1 MEL for short for my CAS cartridge bullets. I actually up the Mutton tallow ratio which makes it even stickier and it flows very nicely.
When I lube, I wipe the bases on a rag before loading and line them up on a tray to keep the bases clean. It may be a bit messier at loading, but it's really hard to tell how much messier. With high volume loading on the 650 I handle a lot of bullets and even hard lube smokeless bullets get you a bit messy.
U.C. Ranger,
Speaking of summer heat and loaded cartridges:
I conducted a test two years ago because I was concerned about lube contaminating the powder in cartridges in our hot summer heat. I made my #1 MEL lube and added some phtalogen blue die as a marker indicator and loaded some .45 Colt cases and then cut the bottoms off of the cases. I then pushed an absorbent medical pad I cut with the punch I use to make my .45 caliber wads for my .44 caliber C&B wads up against the base of the bullets.
I left a tray containing 20 of these (bullet end up) on the dash of a truck which sat out all day for a week in temps that went above 100° on most days. The thermometer in the tray showed over 150° between 4 and 5 pm everyday. After a week I pulled the absorbent wads from the base end and inspected them for traces of die or lube. The pads came out clean. With a well fit bullet and a clean base to start with the lube doesn't flow just sitting in the sun.
I went to this trouble because the Mutton Tallow is what is really doing most of the work as a fouling lubricant. The Waxes are primarily carriers. I can go an entire match with even the longest barreled .44WCF (I used to have a 30" '73) and it won't foul out or drop off in accuracy at CAS ranges. My worst fouler was/is a 19" barreled '66 in .44 special I shoot .44 Russian cartridges through. I bought it used and there is a spot about 3 inches from the bore that begins to get dark after about 50 rounds. I can go an 8 stage match without cleaning but I usually usually pull a bore snake after three or four stages to keep me from worrying. That carbine is the primary reason I started using the #1 MEL.
It works, you can tell at cleaning. One patch on a slotted holder with moose milk pulled through from the receiver to get the crude out then followed with a dry patch from the muzzle on a jag. Followed by another moose milk patch and other dry patch and then a Ballistol soaked patch before going bore down in a plastic cup in the safe waiting for next week.
Before the #1 MEL the cleaning rest of the rifles were easy to clean but I had to run multiple alternating moose milk and dry patches through the carbine. With the #1 MEL they all clean quicker, which tells me the fouling is either softer or not as heavy.
For my Army models I use #1 Lube, or the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 summer mix. I use the summer mix because my hands would get greasier and the lube was soft by the time we reached noon. I wipe my hands and rinse with alcohol (I also use a rosin bag) but I noticed my clothes were dirtier in the summer. I have used the summer mix even in December which was mild by Northern standards and it worked fine. But I have two different (actually three if you count the #1 MEL) lubes all based on the classic Mutton Tallow lube I keep on hand. I just bought 6 pounds of Tallow a couple of months ago, so I'll be doing this for a while.
I keep the wads in a little tin box in my loading box. I use Dura Felt like you do I have a small pyrex bowl I melt the lube in and then dunk a hand full of wads in I then fish them out one at a time and put them on newspaper. I've tried wax paper and butcher paper, it really doesn't matter much. I let them dry then peel them off and put them in the can.
They should basically look like this:
Not too fussy, but you can tell the wads on the left have been fully soaked and have absorbed the lube. I just load powder, add the wad, seat the ball and reholster the pistols. It may be as long as 30 minutes before I cap and go to the line. I even had a pair of loaded pistol that sat until the next day in the heat. We had a pardner get sick and we stopped the match temporarily. A couple of us drove him into town to have him checked out. I shot the pistols Sunday afternoon so I could clean them and I couldn't tell any difference in the report, recoil or accuracy. Those pistols sat in a case in an enclosed vehicle for hours while we waited at the minor emergency center, then the ride home. It was over 24 hours before they were fired. I didn't expect any less.
The above account is not a definitive test, it is purely anecdotal. But it was about this time of year and it was with the original #1 formula even before I made my changes. It can only be better now for summer conditions.
Remember, it's the Tallow that does the work. Other things like petroleum Jelly mention in a post above is added as a softener, other things like Paraffin or Beeswax are primarily added as stiffeners. Beeswax however does has lubricating properties of it's own. The Paraffin flashes liquid quickly at firing which spreads your lube.
There are other forms of paraffin waxes, some have melting points as high as 160° F. Some of these waxes were used to lubricate .22 LR or even the .38 and .44 caliber heeled bullets that preceded the inside the case lubed bullets. They didn't lubricate as well as the #1 lube, but then again we shoot more in a year than most of those 19th century cowboys shot in the lifetime of their guns.
Have fun,
Mako[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Times]
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