Cooking with Geargnasher, a Soap Lube tutorial

Ian

Notorious member
Link to photobucket album with photos and descriptions. Click photos to see descriptions or view as slideshow or story. http://s1328.photobucket.com/user/Geargnasher/library/soap lube?sort=6&page=1

EDIT 10/12/2018: Since photobucket is being photobucket, I ripped a screenshot and uploaded it directly to the forum here for easy viewing and safekeeping.

soap lube tutorial.png

This is SL-68.5. Recipe follows:

4 ounces BW-431, 180F white micro-crystalline wax
2 ounces Everbilt wax ring from homeless despot. Don't use Harvey's. Fluid Master is good, too.
1.5 fluid ounces Golden West straight 140 wt. GL-1 mineral gear oil. DO NOT use GL-5 hypoid oil. NAPA 90WT mineral oil is fine, too.
1 full tablespoon Castor bean oil
1 full, 4.2 ounce bar of plain Ivory soap.

This stuff burns worse than lead because it retains heat so well. It sticks to skin like Napalm and will instantly cause 3rd-degree burns if you get a molten spec on you the size of a lentil bean, so be careful during the final phase of cooking and pouring out of the pot to cool. You need to get it out of that hot pot ASAP at the end or it will scorch.

Have fun!
 
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fiver

Well-Known Member
got enough soap in there butch?

it'll scorch is an understatement.
the soap will flow like water then turn black right now.
 

Ian

Notorious member
No more soap than a #6 brick grease, about 25% when it's all said and done. Same basic thing I sent to Pete, Larry, Bruce, and a few others. The SL-68 isn't the absolute best at anything except being consistent at what it does no matter what. This .5 version is very dry, almost gritty at the end of the glide. I'm hoping to solve some of the random flyer inconsistencies that the .1 version has by subbing in some random wax/oil mish-mash via the bowl ring.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I just hope it doesn't act like 63? [the first DR Tranny batch] did when we fought the vertical stringing.
the only way I could remotely control that was with Li stearate as a scrubber.
I still think AL stearate would work too, but that stuff is super hard to get ahold of, and possibly a metal filler would help.
 

Ian

Notorious member
I already have a batch slated to be made with only wax, soap, and Comp Cams oil supplement (basically STP on steroids). Maybe the zinc will be an improvement? SL-68 didn't have any of the issues that the paraffin-based tranny goo stuff had. SL-68.1 throws purge flyers like the dickens in some guns, look at the tests Larry did. One of the best groups of all the lubes tested surrounded by three wide flyers in ten to make it the worst. I never intended him to shoot it, I already knew it would do that but threw in the extra sample just for him to inspect. I really liked the feel of that lube, but it doesn't shoot all that well. The SL-68 did much better, but not still opened the group something like an inch over what worked best in the system he was using. No stringing, though. And not much in the way of first-shot flingers.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
If the Comp Cams has polybutene like STP then you are gonna have a whole lotta stickum in that lube. It certainly will be holding in the grooves. Until it leaves the muzzle. We hope.
 

Elkins45

Active Member
We're thinking alike, but I'm thinking more simply. I used the same brand of bowl ring but made a three component mix: Everbuilt bowl ring, Ivory and castor.
I haven't gotten to shoot it yet but I can tell you it flows easily thru a sizer but isn't tacky at all. The Everbuilt wax stands up to the heat required to incorporate the Ivory well.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Elkins, check out the Lube Quest thread, post #900. I made a simple concoction of Fluidmaster bowl ring (very stringy/tacky, similar to Everbilt wax) and Ivory soap, 3/2. Not sure why I made it, perhaps it was simple curiosity, but I did everything except shoot it. This was way back before I discovered the "secret" of using microwax and mineral oil to control c.o.r.e. The appeal of widely available and inexpensive components is very high with this concept. Stop at the hardware store, stop at the pharmacy, done. It remains one of the best-feeling lubes I've ever cooked, and it stands the freeze test, wear test, hot melt test, everything. Please keep us informed of your shooting results.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Using the batch of 68.0 I made a week ago I noticed one thing right off. This stuff barely smokes at all. Shootng indoors smoke is quite noticeable. The modified Felix I was using is very smokey, the lack of beeswax or paraffin in 68.0 makes all the difference in the world.
I did notice the telltale soapy slick feel to the revolver after shooting.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Interesting, I don't notice any residue at all on revolvers after shooting SL-68 variants, only the ones containing a significant amount of beeswax. "Dry" would be my description, and one of the benefits. On a hot summer day, shooting Felix lube, any variety of lithi-bee, and especially Simple Lube and Speed Green, a revolver can get so greased-up all over after a few cylinder fulls that it's like holding onto a wet fish. Low smoke is one of my favorite attributes, and consistent bore condition no matter the weather or caliber. It's not the most accurate lube I've ever used all-around, but it meets so many important criterion in other areas that I just call it good 'nuff for now.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
It is a very minimal residue, far less than most lubes. It is almost as much from dumping empties into my off hand as anything. I just find that the soap lubes with no beeswax have a very distinct feel to the gun.
I loved the low smoke, low odor shooting. Accuracy was hard to judge as I'm not a great offhand revolver shooter. It was certainly acceptable.
Jon sent me a sample of his 68.0B to try. Will be interesting to do a side by side compairison.
 

Ian

Notorious member
If it isn't raining tomorrow I'm going to run a "new" concoction through my 300 BLK: Essentially it's one part Gulf Wax, one part 180°F microcrystalline wax, two parts Vaseline, two parts fresh Ivory soap, and a little castor oil in the normal proportion. Idea is to improve first-shot cold start after a long set in my subsonic loading, which has been consistently low, even with BLL. I bet it smokes like hell, but we'll see.
 

JonB

Halcyon member
That's similar, but still plenty different than Mikes 666+1 (satan's lube), which has been in the back of my mind (because of it's simplicity) since I heard of it...which was a few weeks after I made my first batch of SL68 (my first batch was without beeswax and I burnt it with the blue crayon). I've held firm with SL68B because I am tough to change directions. I only mention this now, because I may be making a batch of 666+1, if I'm not called back to work anytime soon...and I welcome any commentary on this.

You are putting a lot of soap in the new "concoction" you mention, whereas, 666+1 has such a small percentage of soap. Mike was very happy with his 666+1 and I recall you mentioning using 666+1 and had positive review, although I don;t recall exactly what you said about it? So, I'm thinking here...Why the high soap content?
 

Ian

Notorious member
Why the high soap content? Because I live in Texas and prefer to shoot year 'round with only one lube for everything. You may have heard it gets hot here, which is quite true, and 666-1, like almost every bullet lube ever invented, melts on the shooting bench in the summertime here, its title notwithstanding. Lay a cartridge out in full sun for five minutes on a hot day and it will literally blister your finger pads if you pick it up. Only four lubes that I've tested stand the extreme heat, and only three stand the hot storage and handling: That is LBT Blue Hard (only one I tried), Starmetal's lube, and SL-68. Felix lube stands hot shooting, but not so much hot storage. 20-25% final soap content by weight, after the water is cooked off, is just about the only way I've found to make a bullet lube hold together physically and group-wise in weather as hot as we experience here. If using pure sodium stearate, the number is about 15-18%. The extremly high soap content adds some complications (slight accuracy degradation, possible corrosion issues, difficulty in cooking the lube, etc.) but over-all works at both temperature extremes and does well enough to satisfy me accuracy-wise for most shooting. Still, if you were to challenge me to an accuracy shoot, I would likely show up with a cooler full of cast bullet ammunition lubed with Felix lube, tailored to the conditions.

Mike's "666-1" lube is good, but like MML, turns to (his words) "goose chit" in hot weather. Both lubes will fling purge flyers like you have never seen beyond the old NRA formula in hot weather during rapid strings of fire. I'm talking 105°F. Keep it below 90°F and both lubes do pretty well. Both lubes also do well at extremely cold temperatures, unlike most. They are good formulas in my experience and in the experience of others who've tested them in weather far more cold than Texas has ever known.

Still, I'm looking for a better recipe than SL-68. Something without metal stearates at all. I've tried polymers and all sorts of inert solids, and so far nothing has panned out. Maybe one day someone will have an epiphany.
 

Ian

Notorious member
It has been steadily misting rain and the thermometer standing at 39 degrees day and night since Thursday, I don't know what happened but the weather here has itself confused with Vermont's. MAYBE it will dry up enough in a little while to go do some shooting, but it doesn't look like it.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
We have that rain too but our temps are hovering around the freezing mark. How would you like some icy roads?
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
got some thanks.

this sucks,, I should be heading down towards either Oklahoma or Texas tomorrow night.
I think I'd rather have frozen mud than real mud to dal with.
but it looks like i'll be thawing the muck boots out for this trip rather than throwing the tennis shoes in the travel bag.
39 sounds nice though, it's about 9 right now.
 

Ian

Notorious member
I don't know what OK weather has been like, but between here and the Red River it's a soaking wet mess. At least it hasn't been windy.