Cooking with Geargnasher, a Soap Lube tutorial

[fiver]

I think part of our problem is we don't have a way to compare the chain lengths on the waxes
I used to work with MEG-20 which was used as a binding agent in electro-ceramic lead based products.
now I know the 20 meant a 20 part carbon chain.
now...
if there was a way to rate different waxes in a manner such as that, a chain length could be used to describe different waxes.
it's a little frustrating to know how some 'oils' are made with carbon chains and alcohols much like bees-wax is an ester-alcohol chain, if the chain numbers could be used I think the picture might become a little clearer as far as to how things are relating to each other.

 

[Brad]

We can tell some about chain length distribution from wax melt point. The higher the melt point in a wax "family" the longer the chains in the wax. We need to consider apples to apples in this, microwax with melt point 180 has longer chains than microwax with melt point 150. I don't think we can say, for certain, that a microwax with melt point 160 has longer chains than paraffin with a melt point of 150.

Maybe test some lubes that vary only in melt point of the wax but use the same proportion of wax types. In other words does using 140 melt point microwax in place of 180 melt point microwax make the lube behave differently in the bore?

This is gonna take buying some wax and making lots of little batches. Best bet is to make a oil/soap gel and add it in a set percentage to the various wax blends.

Yep, this is gonna cost some money for wax and take a bunch of time to test the various permutations.

 

[fiver]

I don't know if manipulating the waxes with mineral oil would make a difference or not.
you should be able to reduce the melt point of a 180-f wax to 160 with some vasoline.
I don't know how that would affect the results of what we really wanted though.

 

[Brad]

That won't tell us what we want to know. We need to know which melt point wax, or what blend, give the optimum results in the bore.
We need at least 3 melt point microwaxes and the same in parrafin. Make some blends and start seeing what happens to the lube. Hard part is that we need to try some binary and tertiary blends of each wax.
The number of permutations will be huge.

I think a low melt point paraffin with a high melt point microwax would be interesting.

On a different note I plan to try some Ben's Red with an addition of microwax. It would add a little tack and more important it would add some strength to the lube ring in the groove. That microwax just helps hold things together without changing overall melt point much.

 

[fiver]

Ben's red does a bunch better with another 5-6% bees-wax added to the formula.
a similar amount of micro-wax would be a benefit too.
paraffin {IMO} would make it flow too fast especially in the heat of summer.

 

[Brad]

That is about what I am thinking.

Add 5-10% microwax to the existing recipe. I will likely take 100 g of BR and add 5-10 g of microwax.

Paraffin goes liquid too suddenly.

 

[Ian]

Or....we can take an edjumacated guess. Beeswax is a conglomeration of lots of good stuff, and throws in a whole spectrum of ester compounds to boot. Start with that, boost it on the top end with some hard, low-oil microwax, anneal it on the bottom end with both some short-chain paraffin like Gulf wax (how short, I don't know, but it's probably in the mid 20s with a fairly high (2-3%) oil content), and some Vaseline, preferably industrial stuff that's just un-refined instead of a Flavor o' the Day fine fractions of microwax and white oil that approximate a certain melt and needle penetration specification thrown together and pumped into little translucent tubs...

Oh, wait. That's been done and it worked. As a little soap to suit your velocities and climate, some castor oil to your rifle's taste, and done. Or cut back on the Vaseline and sub in some lithium grease instead of Ivory, and delete the castor oil. Ben's Red has the right idea for wax blends but has a couple of drawbacks from an "extreme" perspective: Too much polybutene in the grease of choice, ATF used as a plasticizing agent instead of something more useful (likely necessary to counteract the gummy aspects of the Paratac), and beeswax being the upper end of the wax carbon chains. The paraffin in the JPW helps also to mitigate the gummy part of the Paratac while still allowing it's positive cohesive properties to remain.

Before I proceed with the Navy wax version of SL-whatever, it might pay for me to cook up something more like JonB's SL-68B and Pete's Four Quarters lube.

 

[Ian]

That is about what I am thinking.

Add 5-10% microwax to the existing recipe. I will likely take 100 g of BR and add 5-10 g of microwax.

Paraffin goes liquid too suddenly.

You could also just delete the ATF and replace it with a double-dose of storebought white Vaseline and accomplish the same thing.

 

[fiver]

were right back to just controlling the oils.

I was having a discussion with a work mate that understands none of this [but he asked] on one of our 12 hr drives across Oklahoma and Texas this week.
as I went through everything with him it REALLY dawned on me that the whole ball of wax IS about the core condition of the barrel.
what is left behind is what matters.
oils are too slippery and controlling their release works on a shot to shot basis on the same day, but a real long term solution truly is the coating [or lack of one] left in the barrel.

making a lube that works is easy [I got a recipe for surf wax and antiperspirant [shrug] that works as good as anything else]

we need to work on the real issue.

 

[Elkins45]

I remember there being some discussion "over there" about an upper limit on the amount of soap in a lube before it starts to leave behind unacceptable fouling or some other undesirable something or other. I'm thinking about adding a spoonful of castor and another of lanolin to 666+1 and I'm wondering if I shouldn't make it 666+2 to make sure the oil gets locked in. Or will that be too much soap?

One interesting side effect of shooting a high soap lube: the shots smell like Ivory. I was shooting subsonic blackout with my last multi wax experiment and the guy downwind asked "What kind of powder is that, it smells funny?"

 

[Ian]

The soap fouling happened in rifles with TnT, due to the absence of any kind of wax.

Avoid Lanolin if any of your accuracy shooting occurs below 40°F, particularly if that first shot matters.

For best accuracy, consider 8% Ivory an upper limit, 5% is better but things start to wilt in the heat. I use 30% by damp weight.

You'll notice little fibrous snowflakes stuck to the baffles in your cans if you put a lot of soap in your lube, it's interesting and harmless if you can take them apart for cleaning once in a while.

 

[fiver]

you'll see the soap not quite break down in a high soap lube too.
the GEL trials made things more like a cross-link than an actual grease, and I could see little bits of soap in the mix.
not a big deal until I started using to stearate the wax and oil mixes together then it was super easy to add too much and have the longest gelling state ever for the lube and that was as it was heating up.
it for sure locked everything up tight when it all cooled down indicating the need for a higher oil content.