Making my own lube.

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Russell13

Russell13

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Hey BP shooters,
I picked up my first black powder gun yesterday. It’s a Rem new army .44 and I decided I wanted to try making my own lube for it. I live in the desert in California so I’m thinking just using Crisco isn’t going to cut it.
I originally made a 50/50 mix of Crisco and beeswax but that stuff came out hard as a rock. I went all the way to 5 parts Crisco and 1 part beeswax with a touch of olive oil. This still gets pretty hard but is workable and will probably loosen up out in the heat.
What mixes have you guys found to be good for keeping the lube in the cylinder?
I’m also going to be using wonder wars behind the ball.
 
I’m in central Texas and Gatofeo’s lube has worked fantastically for my bullets, wads, and rifle conicals. It’s a historic lube for the old outside lubricated bullets.

By weight it’s 1 part mutton tallow, 1 part paraffin wax (Gulf Wax), and 1/2 part beeswax. Make it in a double boiler.
 
Are the Wonder Wads already impregnated with soft Wonderlube or are they dry?
Some folks melt lube into their dry wads, even if it forms a hard and waxy crust it should melt when fired.

What kind of powder will you be shooting with?
I've noticed that some competition shooters use a harder, tacky lube that literally needs to be spackled into the chambers with a knife.

Another idea would be to only put lube in every other chamber so that it doesn't become too messy.
Or swab the bore with a cleaning patch each time, or every other time that the cylinder pin needs to be pulled and lubed as a method to control bore fouling.
I'll swab the bore with mineral oil once in while as needed, others might use Ballistol , alcohol, windshield washer fluid or water.
These ideas depend on how much of a fouling problem there is, based on which type of powder is being used and the size of the powder charges.

The last idea is about how some folks make "lube cookies" or "lube biscuits."
The lube is cut or formed into wafers that are loaded under the ball.
That's if the lube is thick enough to hold together to be cut, punched out or molded into a usable diameter.
People have made lube cookies out of lubes of various hardness, then store them in tins to carry to the range.

I'm trying to give you some ideas about how to do things differently.
A harder lube may agree with a desert environment.
 
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The wads I’m using are impregnated with a lube. I don’t know how well they work. I will try using the wads by themselves and using them together with lube at the top of the chamber and see what works better. I’m starting with pyrodex P powder, I’m also gonna get some real black powder and see what works better or what I like better.
 
I live in deep south texas where its extremely hot and humid and use a very stiff lube of 1:5 or 1:6 ratio of mutton tallow to beeswax. The civil war lube was a stiffer 1:8 ratio of the same ingredients. I also sometimes shoot a stiffer version of Gatofeo #1 lube by adding more beeswax so that all ingredients are equal in weight. Trust me when i say that you want it a stiffer lube because the gun heats up and you dont want lube melting into your powder. Ive made and used lube felt wads and no longer use them due to they waste so much lube and take so much limited space that can be reserved for powder or lead. I have now settled on using very thin stiff lube disks. Made the same way as home made felt wads only instead of felf i use paper towels. The great thing about them is that they are so thin that when the powder is ignited they desintegrate immediately and lube the entire inside of the barrel. Not much lube is needed due to the short length of barrels anyways. The disks are placed between the powder and ball/bullet just like a wad and i also put them in paper cartridges. A few of the forum members have had great results with my paper towel method....Heres a pic of them so you get an idea of what i was trying to explain..
20191009_100431.jpg
 
I've always had best results in my cap and ball revolvers with felt wads lubed with Gato Feo #1 lube, whether hot and humid or freezing. I don't lube the chamber mouths and stamp out my own wads of Durofelt. I don't mind taking up space in the chamber since I never load to maximum capacity. I get better accuracy with lighter charges. Congratulations on getting started in a great hobby.

Jeff
PS: I use those same lubed wads when reloading 45 Colt and 45-70 cartridges.
 
According to Gatofeo mutton tallow was the best, and he claimed to have tried just about everything and every recipe.

I bought my mutton tallow from Dixie Gun Works. I’ve read of some getting it from a butcher shop.
 
50/50 beeswax crisco has worked fine for me for over 20 years, in temperatures from freezing to 100 degrees. Yes it is firm, which keeps it from melting out of chambers in the summer, makes it easy to handle and store. It doesn’t take much to do the job.

Good luck with your chemistry experiments.
 
Been melting wax into veggie oil till test sample cools to semi firm good and sticky. Use for over ball and patches.
 
I used to do felt wad deal but i now only shoot .36 cal with conicals so im limited on space. Felt wads have their place and work pretty good and they worked great for me for a long while....but only in light loads with round ball for my 36 cals. Being limited on space is what helped me brainstorm and work up the lube disk practice. Havent looked back since.
 
Ive tried the popular 50/50 mixes of lube plus beeswax and they work but i feel they will contaminate atleast some of the powder if not shot soon after loading. The reason i suspect this is because when i put the 50/50 ratio lube in paper cartridges...the paper always gets that "clearness" (kinda like when a napkin touches fried chicken) from having absorbed some of the oil/fat from the lube. This leads me to not trust that atleast some of my powder isnt contaminated..even if its just a grain or two. I want ZERO contamination. Heat will add to this absorption also as it thins the oils/fat making it easier for your powder to suck it up like a sponge. I dont even like my powder to get stuck to my lube disk or even touch it so it gets separated with a wax paper disk. This practice ensures long term storage of paper cartridges without the worry of contamination or wasting any powder by coming into conact with the waxy lube disc and sticking to it. Ever picked up a felt wad thats been shot out? Usually one side will be covered in unburnt black powder that was pressed into the soft lube when the guns rammer compressed the felt wad and bullet/ball under high pressure. Sometimes the stuck powder burns showing a tracer trail when shot, other times only some of the powder burns, other times none of the powder burns especially with softer wax to lube ratios. I hate wasting powder...and lube...thats another reason for making them disks really thin, the whole disk melts inside the barrel.
 
I use 40/40/20 beeswax, Crisco, oil. I actually now use Murphy's oil soap as the oil in the quite possibly mistaken belief that doing so aids in clean up. Any vegetable/plant oil will do. I have used jojoba oil and olive oil in the past.

Welcome to the wonderful world of black powder firearms. Remember to tell your progressive friends that you're becoming interested in black powder. Some of them will mishear you and be pleasantly surprised.:p
 
Here's a few threads about making the lube cookies.
Other name for them are "Lube Pills" or "Grease Cookies." for those who want to do an advanced search for more info.
Folks use different recipes but one example is a 50/50 mix of beeswax & olive oil.--->>> https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/lube-pills.225812/#post-2749099

See Post #28 for some photos: --->>> https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/home-rolled-lube-pills.249746/page-2

See post #3 for some photos: --->>> https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/lube-pill-question.398669/#post-4991039
 
Outlaw Kid, I finally got to use your paper towel method for a lube cookie and I am also not looking back. Like you I do a great deal of shooting with the 36 Navies with heel bullets and conicals and also ran into the problem of powder capacity. The paper towels solved that. I have loaded paper cartridges with the RAW brand cigarette paper that contained the cookie with a wax paper wad above and below it. My recipe has been equal parts, by weight, of the mutton tallow, bees wax and paraffin which I might even stiffen a bit. After more than 5 months of the paper cartridges sitting I see absolutely no evidence of lube migration. I used to use SPG for the same purpose and would detect some contamination, in the form of the "clearness" you mentioned, after a few weeks. I'm certainly not knocking SPG as it is a great lube, but for our purposes something stiffer is called for.
 
I use Gatofeo here in SoCal. I soak wads in it for use with loose loads, and with paper cartridges I dip the bullets into it. I do not use it or anything else over the top of the loaded chambers, as I find it is messy and that it comes out of all the chambers after the first shot, so doesn't seem to serve any real purpose.

I have used pre-lubed Wonder wads, and while I think Wonder lube works fine in general, there is so little of it in the wads that they don't work as well as they could. They also are so expensive that even if a fellow wanted to use them, he would be better off buying or making plain felt wads and then buying a tube of Wonder lube in which to soak them.
 
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Any sort of tallow that has been refined will last a good while if you're reasonable with storage.

Sort of like fluxing lead. You use salt after you've rendered your fat to "flux" it, then strain. Reheat again and repeat another time or two scraping junk off every time it cools. You're left with clean tallow thats pretty odorless and lasts longer. It seems like the salt is in the mostly dark impure part that you discard.
 
I make mine hard.
For me its easier to use and won't run. But I live in Arizona where it'll get 115°+ regularly and almost everything melts.

Soy wax, mineral oil, a touch of beeswax and a bit of peppermint oil(to keep the gf from complaining) work for me.
I just heat and add more mineral oil when it cools down to soften it.

Then soak patches and bag em, and pack the rest into my MZ kit.
 
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