Old-Time bullet lubricants

[getitdone1]

Just reading about tallow and beeswax at Wikipedia site. They used tallow for years to lubricate train engines and steam ships "at least until the 1950's!"

Said they used tallow and beeswax for guns. Bullet lubricant?

Will plain ole' lard do as a bullet lubricant? Lard's just hog fat/grease cooled down to a paste consistency. Well, that's my understanding. Then there's suet, which I don't understand. Believe tallow is like lard only from cattle.

Terry Murbach mentioned there using graphite for bullet lubricant in the old days.

Did anybody here ever eat "cracklins" during hog butchering time? I have. Pretty tasty.

Hog and cattle butchering on the farm died-out pretty much around here in the 50s. We used to have a 2x4 sticking out from the smokehouse they'd hang the hogs on. Still have the big cast iron kettle they filled with hot water to dip the hogs in. I believe it was to help make scraping off the hairs easier. I was so young at the time I don't know much about it. Bet some of you do.

Before refrigerators I recall my parents talking about how salty the meat was after being kept in salt brine so it wouldn't spoil.

Getting off track here but know some of you will find this interesting.

Edit: Just discovered a guy who makes his own bullet lube. Junior Doughty, Homemade bullet lube. Type that in the Google search box. Think you'll find it interesting. Expect some of you here also make your own.

Don

[J Miller]

Don,

Junior used to be a member here but because of his political leanings (he's a democrat) other members chased him off.
He used to give us some of the best ideas and goodies.

I once contacted the operators of a steam locomotive to try to buy a bucket of side rod grease. In an NRA article about target shooters this one lady used side rod grease to lube her cast bullets. I guess they were democrats too cos I never did get any of the lube. But they did tell me much of the lube was made with soap. I found that very interesting.

Joe

[JimT]

The list of commonly used bullets lubes over the years is interesting:

US Army 1855 - 1 part beeswax, 3 parts tallow
US Army 1861 - 8 parts beeswax, 1 part tallow
US Army 1873 - 8 parts bayberry wax, 1 part graphite
US Army 1880 - Japan wax
Sharps Rifle Co. 1878 - 1 part beeswax, 2 parts sperm oil.
Maynard Rifle 1890 - 1 part beeswax, 3 parts tallow
Marlin Firearms Co. 1891 - 1 part beeswax, 4 parts tallow
S&W 1891 - tallow
H.M. Pope 1900 - 3 parts mutton tallow, 2 parts bay wax, 1 part beeswax, 1 part steam cylinder oil, .2 of 1 part Acheson graphite. (The bay wax can be omitted)

This is from an article I did some years ago. You can find it here -> http://www.leverguns.com/articles/taylo ... _lubes.htm

[75SharpsShooter]

Will plain ole' lard do as a bullet lubricant? Lard's just hog fat/grease cooled down to a paste consistency. Well, that's my understanding. Then there's suet, which I don't understand. Believe tallow is like lard only from cattle.





Don

Rendered lard is highly acidic to the point of being corrosive if left long-term in a bore . Unlike tallow which does not require refrigeration, lard will decompose at room temperatures and become rancid. In ammunition usage,I suspect the exposure to heat would cause migration into the charge and produce less than satisfactory results.

SS

[Cliff]

Lard is produced by rendering hog fat. Lubes were made with lard oil. Lard oil is made by cold pressing hog fat. Acts the same as sperm or whale oil. Railroad used it for years in lanterns because it didn't smoke and burned with a white light in a proper lamp. Watch makers and machinests like using lard oil for its staying power, won't dry or gum up. Best answer today for a similar lube is automotive transmission fluid. the original ATF was basically sperm oil with aditives. It can still be found but sometimes takes some searching. Best quality Tallow is made from the hard white fat found around the kidneys, low heat is necessary in making, usually cut the fat into smaller chunks, put the chunks in a pan of water and slowly bring up to a boil. Makes a nice hard and clean white tallow. ATB

[Sixgun]

Sometimes people over-analyze bullet lube.

KISS- (no, not my butt--I'm straight)--Keep It Simple Jo-Mamma

45% beeswax---55% white lithium grease (available everywhere but the post office)

You can make about 5 years worth for about what you pay for a bottle of Jack Daniels ---Sixgun

[getitdone1]

JimT,

That's an interesting list of bullet lubes. Thanks too for the good article/link.

Don

[Chuck 100 yd]

I have made and shot lots of Tallow/bees wax (50/50)bullet lube.
I use it for lube groove bullets and for paper patch bullets.
Some of my very best groups with my .40-65 were shot using 30-1 alloy and that lube.
I use SPG today because it is easy to come by and is the same thing IMHO. I find it hard to find time to render down and purify the tallow when SPG don`t cost much for the amount I go through now days.

[Don McDowell]

At bpcr.net there's a fairly lengthy list of lubes.
In Ned Roberts Schuetzen Rifle book he listed all the lubes he knew of ,from the champion and well known shooters of the day to the lube recipes from the major ammunition companies.

[Cimarron Red]

I make lubes for both BP and smokeless. The smokeless is just beeswax, Marvel Mystery Oil, and anhydrous lanolin. The BP lube consists of beeswax, anhydrous lanolin, palm oil, and Mobile One synthetic motor oil. Both work very well. Making lube is a messy business, but I don't do it often. And you pay for the convenience of having someone else make it for you. SPG, for example, in bulk is $25 a pound from Buffalo Arms.

[M. M. Wright]

I've mentioned this before but I make a lot of my own black powder lube. Works real well for smokeless too but the Crayola smelling smokeless lube that most bullet companies use is terrible with black powder. Temperatures are just too high for it in my opinion. So I use toilet bowl wax rings and a little olive oil. Probly 5:1. I know it's not really bees wax but it works great and is real cheap. I melt and mix it in an old electric percolator (guts removed) and just pour the molten lube into my Lyman sizer/luber. Has always worked for me and I sometimes buy SPG and can hardly tell where the change occurs as I run it through. Neither SPG or my concoction is very stable at high temperatures. I mean it will run off the bullets if you leave them out in the sun on one of these 100+ degree days. Seems ok if left in the shade though.

[Ji in Hawaii]

I use a 50/50 mix beeswax & ATF.

Mountain men used bear fat.

[rimrock]

I have mixed up alox/used lard at about 60/40 for some testing.

rimrcok

[93marshooter]

This is resurrecting and old thread. What would be a good substitute for beeswax? Will these formulas word for cast gas check 30-30 bullets at 2000fts ? I did some research on home made bullet lube. the recipies are many and with a dizzing arey of formulas. But beeswax is a very common ingrediant.

[Nath]

Bees wax and olive oil is good. Beef fat and olive oil is good too.

I have heard Candle wax and olive oil is good too!

Nath.

[Ben_Rumson]

Pure Mutton Tallow... I bought a pound of this stuff when I was prepping up to make bullet lube ... Never made the lube but I sure can say the stuff has plenty of lubricity.. It doesnt melt at warm room temp either... I use the stuff for resize lube now & love it... Swipe thumb and forfinger across it and your good to lube at least three to four cases..Wipes off eay enough with a paper towel..
The pharmacy has lots of old time remedy ointments, lotions and all kinds of things you don't normally find... Prolly have beeswax too
http://www.theherbalman.com/productq2.cfm?&cat1=2

[6pt-sika]

In Ned Roberts Schuetzen Rifle book he listed all the lubes he knew of ,from the champion and well known shooters of the day to the lube recipes from the major ammunition companies.

+1 I have that book and it's very informative .

I may try and make some using one of the recipe's that calls for steam cylinder oil !

Always liked the smell of that stuff when I had my traction engines .

Also I've seen several old recipe's over the years that called for sperm whale oil . I dunno if you can even get that anylonger .

[6pt-sika]

I once contacted the operators of a steam locomotive to try to buy a bucket of side rod grease. In an NRA article about target shooters this one lady used side rod grease to lube her cast bullets. I guess they were democrats too cos I never did get any of the lube.

When I still had a traction engine I would buy a 55 gallon drum of steam cylinder oil from one of the local bulk plants about every three years . I would assume you can still get the grease they would use on the valve rods and crank shafts of a locomotive as well .

If you still want the stuff I'd suggest trying a local fuel oil company as they might be able to help you out .

[Rusty]

If anyone wants to try one of these recipes one word of caution is in order for the lard. All of the lard I've seen for sale at my local grocers has citric acid in it to act as a preservative. That might not make good lube.

[Don McDowell]

6pt, you can replace spermacetti with jojoba oil.

Replacement's for bees wax would include tallow (not lard, there is a difference) ozokerite, and bay berry wax.

[Sixgun]

My brainless concoction of 55% white lithium lube and 45% beeswax has done me well with smokeless up to 1800. I don't know if it works at faster speeds because thats about as fast as I go.

But........here's a new brainstorm.....

I was thinking a 50/50 (or near to get the right consistency) mix of beeswax and Slick 50---susposedly the "slickest thing on Earth" Wadda do the experts think? Reds??---------Sixgun

[93marshooter]

I have seen dozens of formulas maybe best described as recipes. I am going to try toilet bowl was and about 5% lee alox with some Johnson wax maybe 5% However that "slick 50" and white lithium grease sounds promising.

[Cimarron Red]

Hey, Sixgun,

BW and Slick 50 may be worth a try; just keep the test batch small.

[shooter]

My brainless concoction of 55% white lithium lube and 45% beeswax has done me well with smokeless up to 1800. I don't know if it works at faster speeds because thats about as fast as I go.

But........here's a new brainstorm.....

I was thinking a 50/50 (or near to get the right consistency) mix of beeswax and Slick 50---susposedly the "slickest thing on Earth" Wadda do the experts think? Reds??---------Sixgun

I don't know about that Slick 50, but it's worth a try. I like your white lithium formula.....I've used it but never made a batch. I make a similar formula but with moly lithium grease instead of white lithium, and I throw a little bit of carnauba wax in there too.

[Sixgun]

Thanks Reds! That Slick 50 ain't cheap but life is short so there's a little betting that needs to be done. I'll make a batch and if it don't work, I'll just melt it down and pour it into "'Ole Yeller" -----------------------------Me

Shooter--The white lithium at 55%BW and 45WL makes for a very nice consistency. I've never noticed any leading, but then again I know how to size and adjust my alloy for velocity.

[93marshooter]

Well I have some toilet bowl seating wax and some petroleum jelly and will experiment with some olive oil and Johnson wax as additives. This is not a scientific approach. This follows recipes I have seen. I will report back

[Don McDowell]

The olive oil and johnsons won't give you anything more than what the toilet ring and the petroleum jelly are doing for you already.
Not quite sure why folks add all the stuff to the lube's, when you read the old deadguys recipes there were two maybe three ingredients.

[6pt-sika]

Not quite sure why folks add all the stuff to the lube's, when you read the old deadguys recipes there were two maybe three ingredients.

And typically the 2 or 3 ingredients they used were readily available .

Pope's recipe with the steam cylinder oil is all still readily available I believe . But to be honest I can't imagine it being any better then SPG .

I used to think i needed to make everything myself !

But I've kinda gotten over myself

[Don McDowell]

Yessir with all the good lubes like Bullshops , DGl, and others, taking the time to gather and properly blend the lubes, doesn't make alot of sense.. unless you just want to.

[Chuck 100 yd]

I agree. I used to make up lube and render tallow but now it`s either SPG or Alox ( NRA 50/50 formula) for me.
They do it all IMHO.

[M. M. Wright]

marshooter,
I'm sure your recipe with petroleum jelly will probably work well with smokeless powders. I've found that you need to avoid ANY petroleum products when you want a black powder lube as it will turn to a hard black crust in the bore. Just can't stand the heat of black. That's why I use olive oil, it stands up to the heat of black powder. Never tried it but I like the idea of synthetic oil since it was formulated to withstand much more heat.

[Don McDowell]

MMWright, just for clarification , petroleum jelly has been used with beeswax,or japan wax (ozokerite) for well over a 100 years now to make bullet lube for blackpowder rifles.
Matter of fact I know of a couple of bpcr shooters that do make their own lube with petroleum jelly as half the lube ingredient that always finish up near or at the top of the matches they attend.

Ned Roberts book on the Schuetzen Rifle contains two pages of bullet lubes used by the old dead guys shooting bp and setting records that we still chase after today,,, lots of stuff that blows straight in the face of the "conventional" wisdom of today...

[Ben_Rumson]

In our muzzle loading shotguns and rifles a short burst of WD 40 down the bore after loading kept them shooting all day long..This was for shot after shot plinking or claybird shooting in warm weather too... not for hunting where the powder would be ruined if the WD sat too long...The only cleaning that was during the shoot was to remove the caking in the powder chamber area that built up. The rest of the bore or tubes stayed slick as a whistle. When we used WD in conjunction with bore butter we went 90 plus shots in our rifles and quit counting because we knew nothing was going to change.. Accuracy in the rifles stayed the same as it was after the first couple of shots.We didn’t use WD in our revolvers... We shot 45 cal bullets lubed with NRA formula Alox with no problems, but this may have been because the barrels are only eight inches long. They stayed shiny up to about the last two inches where the fouling formed but never really got hard enough to affect accuracy as far as we could tell when shooting tin cans. I was very surprised to lean petro prods are a bad mix with BP.

[KCSO]

A lot of the modern lard is salted and you don't want salt in your lube. I have rendered my own lard and used it and also deer tallow and sheep talllow. The sheep tallow is your old Dixie Zip lube. The best B/P and low velocity bullet lube Ii use is bear grease and beeswax mixed to suit the weather. Stiffer lube in the summer and softer in the winter.

[Bill in Oregon]

6pt: You had a traction engine??????

DO TELL MORE!

[JohndeFresno]

This thread is a keeper. Thank you, GetItDone1 Don, and all.

[93marshooter]

Well I did it made some pan lube 30-30 bullets. I used a cut off 7.62x54r steel round as a cutter to get the bullets out of the lube. I use one third petroleum jelly and two thirds. toilet bowl wax ring and one tea spoon Lee Alox. I will let you know how these shoot.