Microcrystalline Wax

[gman]

Following the soap lube threads over the years I've looked up the different melt point temperatures of various Microcrystalline waxes and never ran across one that had a melt temperature of 195 degrees. I've been thinking of giving this a shot but before purchase would like a little feedback. It can be found at candlemakingsupplies.net and can be purchased in 1lb, 5lb or 55lb amounts and is in bead form not blocks. Figured this might be of interest to some.

 

[Brad]

I wonder how hard it is. One of the things microwax brings is a flexibility and natural stickiness that makes lubes handle well on the bullet. As melt temp increases some of that flex goes away.
It would certainly be a good thing I'm just not sure in what percentage. A mix of waxes seems to be important as they all bring something to the dance while also diminishing the negatives of other waxes in the mix.

 

[gman]

I ordered some. Going to make a lube that Ian was kind enough to give me directions on. Take several days to get it so I will report back. Help me Lord here I go!

 

[Ian]

In general, the higher the melt point the longer the carbon chains of the waxes. "Hardness" and "brittleness" has to do with oil content, or content of softer, shorter-chain wax components.

When plasticized to the point it can be used as a bullet lube, the melt point of a wax will be lower, sort of an average of melt point of all the ingredients at their respective additive proportions.

The extremely long-chain wax component is something I think is very important because it extends the upper end of the phase plateau, an important attribute for long barrels operating under high heat and high pressure conditions.

 

[Phlier]

I think my head is going to explode. I've spent several hours per day for the last month reading about boolit lubes (emphasizing my time on the SL series of lubes), and am still completely clueless.

I would like to make a version of Jon's SL-68B. Well, honestly I'd rather not make a "version" of it, I'd rather make the *exact* formula, but being able to source the exact three microcrystalline waxes he uses is a bit difficult.

So, I thought I'd post what I am thinking of making here first, for ideas, thoughts, criticism, etc.

Blended Waxes has three different melt point microcrystalline waxes available for sale here: http://www.shopblendedwaxes.com/Microcrystalline-Wax/

They are 155, 165, and 180 melt point waxes. I know I should just shut up, cook it, lube it, and shoot it, but it does represent $120 if I purchase all three of them. I don't have a problem with spending 120 bucks on something that'll work, but it would be kinda nice to know beforehand if I'm at least pointed in the right direction.

I did receive a PM from Jon on the other forum that was very helpful, thank you, Jon! But now I'm drifting off a bit from the plan I had in the PM exchange I had with Jon...

What do you guys think? Get all three of them? Just two? Only the highest melting point wax? If I do get one of the 165's, should I get the white or yellow one, or does it matter?

I live in the desert southwest. It's going to be 70 degrees here tomorrow. We'll hit 100 before the first of June, and won't see double digit temps again until mid September at the earliest. So I'm hoping that if I'm going to vary the recipe away from Jon's original SL-68B formula, it would be in a way that favors hotter weather.

Also, the BW I'll be using is a huge block that my Father purchased sometime in the early '60's. Any problems with using vintage BW?

 

[Rick]

Can't help with the lube questions, I'll leave that for the lube gurus but I would like offer a welcome to the forum anyway.

 

[Phlier]

Thank you, Rick. Very much appreciated.

 

[Brad]

Beeswax should be fine.
I use a microwax 180. For your heat you will need to listen to Ian, he loves and shoots in those kinds of temps.
A mix of waxes works best, in my opinion. All three meltppints of microwax wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Even better when mixed with beeswax and even paraffin.

Welcome to the site.

 

[Ian]

Welcome Phlier, and my sympathies for your condition. BLOCD, or bullet loob obsessive/compulsive disorder, is expensive, time-consuming, causes your hair to fall out, uses up a lot of reloading components, and has been known to cause marital strife.

My advice is this: You already gave yourself the best advice. Get some stuff, learn how to cook it up, shoot it, and repeat the first two only as required by the third. If you're going to follow an exact recipe, Jon's SL-68B is a good one. Pay a lot of attention to the proportions of wax/oil/soap he used so you get the final consistency in the ballpark, and less attention to the exact composition of the hodge-podge of microwax components he happened to have on hand. You can do fine with just BW-180 tempered to a beeswax-consistency with Vaseline for a total microwax component. I'd suggest throwing in some commercial taper candle wax (high-temp paraffin with Vybar and other goodies added, and a gloss topcoat) to get a little paraffin in the mix, and don't fool with beeswax until you've got the cooking thing down. Beeswax requires pre-melting, dumping in at the exact right instant, and crash-cooling to get it fully gelled into the soap matrix without scorching it terribly. Once you play with the petro-wax blends somewhat you will know what (if anything) you want to do differently in the future.

 

[fiver]

this is pretty much Phlier's first go round with the lube stuff.
so we have to keep the terms and the cooking super simple.
the 68-B recipe is one that should be followed pretty closely for a couple of reasons.
it is an exact recipe with good directions for cooking. [to get a predictable result]

changing up the matrix with a buffer/modifier such as Vaseline is unpredictable unless you know what to start with [or where your heading] when you add the modifier.
we know that the different micro-waxes are basically the same only modified with a mineral oil to have lower melt points and higher penetration values and why they act the way they do.
so we could guess at a percentage of modification to get the outcome of adding A [or Y] to B to get C.
mainly because we know what C is supposed to look/feel like.

having basically said all that.
if he used a BW-180 I would go with that.
But if 2-3 are more a 145-120 and you can find a 145-130 cheaper IMO you'd be fine using those.

 

[Ian]

If he needs a good basic recipe and directions, this will get him started: http://www.artfulbullet.com/index.php?threads/cooking-with-geargnasher-a-soap-lube-tutorial.554/

The photo bucket album linked in the first post has detailed pictures of each stage and what the stuff should look like in a spoon. People who haven't done this before or don't realize that they are actually breaking down sodium stearate with the wax/oil molecules at a critical temperature and gelling the mix all together like wheel bearing grease need to understand the process before they attempt it. The SL recipe in that link using Everbilt bowl wax and MW-180 works pretty well, and is a good place to start.

 

[Phlier]

Thanks, Ian and Fiver.

I've been through those Photobucket photos quite a few times. Really appreciate all the work done by you guys.

I think I'll start out by cooking up some of Fiver's "Simple Lube" and work my way up the food chain.

 

[Phlier]

I might have the names a bit confused here, as I'm still trying to translate between boards, so I apologize if I have the name wrong.

Anyway, during one of my late night, bleary eyed binge reading sessions, I happened upon a post which, I believe, was by Ian. He posited that SL68B could be saponified in place. That is to say, with all ingredients melted together (except the Ivory soap. Other basic soap making ingredients would be used instead), including the BW, if a saponification number could be determined so that the pH of the resulting lube was correct.

Would the resulting glycerin from the saponification reaction be detrimental to the lube? I read somewhere that Ivory bar soap has most of the glycerin produced from saponification removed.

Not that I'm getting some wild notion to actually *try* this...

 

[fiver]

glycerin has some wonderful property's.
it unfortunately has one major flaw for lube making.
the same one that's exploited for use as a beauty product.
it will draw moisture from the air and do it continuously. [hydroscopic]
otherwise it has some pretty desirable property's.

 

[Phlier]

Yeah, that's what I was concerned about, Fiver.

It is possible to separate out the glycerin. Probably a needed step for this. That is, if anyone is actually crazy enough to try this.

 

[Ian]

That was me. Glycerin is normally removed with salt when the mess is cooking in the first place. The Glycerin, water, and salt will separate out from the saponinified oil/wax mess....mostly. Too many ifs and almosts that can cause rusty barrel syndrome.

Don't over-think it. It's much easier to use commercially finished soap OR straight sodium stearate and simply melt the stuff together. Actually, this can be done with a pretty significant beeswax proportion without ruining the beeswax, but it will scorch a little and smell like cat poop. Beeswax scorches and turns brown at about 355 degrees if I remember right, and the soap doesn't liquify until about 450-460F, and on top of that it takes a few minutes to get the mixture to gain that extra hundred degrees (this time/heat is what scorches the wax really badly), and further you have the phase change plateau of the soap itself to contend with (the mix soaks a lot of BTUs to get from 430 to 460F), so there's a lot working against your beeswax component if you want to include it. This is all why Jon opted to pre-melt the beeswax up to just below its scorch point and then throw it in the mix as soon as the soap melted fully. The beeswax will quench the mix a little, but not fully below the gel point of the soap before it is all mixed into a nice, homogenous liquid. Then the stuff can be quickly cooled and allowed to gel (the gelling will start at about 430-440F and the beeswax will be fully incorporated into the grease matrix, which makes an outstanding lube.

 

[Phlier]

Ah, ok, I completely misunderstood. I thought the saponification in place idea was to prevent the beeswax from being scorched at all. But if I'm reading this right, the temperatures necessary to invoke the saponification reaction would be high enough to scorch the beeswax anyway.

 

[fiver]

damn near auto ignite it.

 

[Ian]

Ah, ok, I completely misunderstood. I thought the saponification in place idea was to prevent the beeswax from being scorched at all. But if I'm reading this right, the temperatures necessary to invoke the saponification reaction would be high enough to scorch the beeswax anyway.

No, you had it right, saponification will occur at relatively low temperatures. The temperature needs to be higher than the fats/oils/waxes and below the boiling point of water. I never tried it with beeswax or any other waxes as a bullet lube, but have made soap from scratch a few times with various fats and oils and they homogenize nicely.

But once that acid/base reaction has occurred, to melt the metal salt again (which is how all the SL series of lubes are made) takes a LOT more heat. Like Fiver wrote, the beeswax is right at it's poof point and it actually will auto-ignite at those temperatures if it is the only ingredient present. The only reason it doesn't poof is the other oils and waxes have a little higher poof point and quench the beeswax. Some of us have discovered the poof points of some ingredients empirically....not to name any names here

What gave me the idea to make soap lube from scratch ingredients is that is the way all commercial metal salt lubrication greases are actually made. Take common high-temperature lithium complex wheel bearing grease, for example. It has a drop point ("drop" meaning the point at which the gellant melts and it all goes liquid and runs out of the parts) of high 400s, which will smoke the oils badly, but the grease is actually made at much lower temperature. To make it, the base oil, other additives, the lithium hydroxide, lithium 12-hydroxystearate, and stearic acid are all thrown into a giant vat and reacted together while heating and stirring. Once the chemical reaction of the metal hydroxides and fatty acids has completed, the water and glycerin is boiled off and the completed grease is cooled, milled, and pumped into drums. While the grease can be made from scratch at 200 degrees, it takes more than twice that to re-melt the lithium salts and de-gel the grease matrix. No reason in theory we couldn't do the same thing with sodium soap bullet lube, except I don't think any of us have labs and accurate enough saponification numbers from the actual ingredients we would be using to get the reaction stoichiometry exactly right.

 

[fiver]

you have to remember past the drop point is also the caking point for the stearate in the grease.
the stearate itself actually goes into a caking [looks like not quite wet enough cake batter]
the oils drop out, leaving the smoking crumbling mess behind.

about 100-f before the melt point of a number-2 grease you will get mineral oil to smoke.
that's the temp that Felix lube is held to mix the castor oil and mineral oil before the stearate is introduced.
I have thought about making a Li stearate Felix lube from scratch just to see how the castor oil reacts.
I know how the mineral oil reacts to sodium stearate [that's how I made the GEL lube] but not the castor oil to Li stearate.
a combination of the two [GEL and castor grease] could be pretty interesting, I still have some of the base GEL if I get to thinking about it I might have to do a 5% Li-castor grease.