Paraffin as bullet lube?

H Wally

H Wally

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I've finaly run out of my beeswax bullet lube and have a pile of paraffin wax. I'm considering substituting the Paraffin, and have found numerous recipes for it, but have also read warnings against using synthetic lubes for blackpowder guns as it'll cake/gum up in the gun.

If anyone has tried using paraffin in a black powder patch or bullet lube I'd be interested in hearing their experiences or opinions on it.
 
I dunno if this is applicable....:yingyang:...:

I was bench shooting some very accurate Eley ammo at 50 yards many years ago and it was performing flawlessly. The group couldn’t have been more than a quarter inch. I then decided to switch over to another brand that was less expensive and less accurate. (Got to save the good stuff you know.) Now usually when I switch ammo, I’ll clean the barrel before I start shooting again. However a friend came over to chat and I got distracted and forgot to clean the bore. Well the first shot was dead center. The second shot was right on the first one. In fact, it was hard to tell whether there was one shot on the target or two. I immediately began to wonder what was going on as this ammo never seemed to shoot so well before. Then, shots 3, 4, and 5 opened things up predicting a group of around 3/4” which was normal with this ammo. I stopped and kind of thought about what just happened.

Kind of on a whim, I repeated the situation. I cleaned the barrel, fired a couple of fouling shots with the Eley and shot a group. Again it produced a very nice quarter inch group. I then switched over to the other stuff without cleaning out the bore and again the first two shots stacked on top of each other and the next three opened things up again. So what was going on here?




The group on the left was produced with bullets coated with Lithium grease while the group on the right was coated with Shooters Choice gun grease

The left group was shot with bullets shot with Graphite grease and the right group was shot with ammo right out of the box


I came to the conclusion that the residual bullet lube in the bore from the premium ammo was improving the accuracy of the less expensive ammo. But after two shots, the lube from the good ammo was then worn away and the cheaper ammo reverted to its normal accuracy level. Then I thought how nice it would be if somehow one could buy some of that premium lube. You could then put it on middle priced ammo and get premium performance. Well I didn’t think that Eley would sell me a barrel of Ten X lube so I wondered if I could find a substitute. That kicked me off on a multi month experiment where I tried at least a zillion different lubes which ranged from super heavy duty industrial greases to hair care products and everything else in between. They only made things worse. Nothing worked and so I gave up.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the same thing happened again, and again, it got me thinking about rimfire lubes again. This time my experiment would be more limited. Like most people, I’ve noticed that expensive brands of rimfire ammo always seem to have white lubricant, while the less expensive brands have black lube. Just what is that white stuff? I wondered if it could be white lithium, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I also had some general purpose graphite grease in the garage, so that got added to the list. Lastly, as I was casting my eyes around my work bench looking for something slippery to try, I saw a tube of Shooters Choice gun grease. Perfect.

I chose Wolf Match Target ammo for the experiment as it shoots fairly decently in a lot of guns and the price is right. The first step in the experiment was to remove the factory lube. This was easily accomplished by wetting a paper towel with acetone and spinning the bullet in the same. I then applied the respective lubricants on seven bullets each. Two bullets would be for fouling shots, and five would be shot for group. I should note here that my lube coatings were very thin and were applied by putting the smallest of dabs on my fingers and twirling the bullet around. I was very careful to insure that there was no lumping of the greases on the bullets and that the coating was even and uniform.

Lithium Grease .536”
Shooters Choice .178”
Graphite Grease .328”
Original Lube .140
All shooting was done at 50 yards. Again I used my wind flags to insure that all shots were taken under as identical wind conditions as possible. Here are the results:

It was easy to see that both the lithium and graphite greases really degraded the accuracy of the ammo. It also confirms the fact that lubricant is a significant factor in rimfire accuracy. The Shooters Choice gun grease however was a nice surprise in that it produced a very pretty, very tight group. However, in spite of its excellent performance, it still didn’t match the effectiveness of Wolf’s original lube. Of course when you’re getting down to groups that are measuring in the 1’s, the differences between groups is very small and can be caused by almost anything, including random chance.

Bottom line - unless you like to experiment for the fun of it, fooling around with alternate lubes for rimfire ammo isn’t worth the trouble. If you do like to experiment, this is a subject that can keep you occupied for a long time. Mmmmmm I wonder how some RCBS or Redding die lube would work?
 
Interesting that it does affect accuracy, but still doesn't really answer whether or not synthetic greases coke/gum up blackpowder guns. I'd read that lithium and heavy synthetic greases are poor performers in some guns, specifically black powder.

At the moment I'll accept decreased accuracy if it's ok to shoot paraffin at all (The paraffin being free is a big reason I'm considering it).... obviously it's possible to use paraffin, but if someone knows first hand whether or not it's a bad or good idea, I figured I'd ask before whipping up a giant batch and clogging my gun with it :p
 
lister said:
Are you just doing this for kicks? If not, why not just use Bore Butter?
Click to expand...

Paraffin is free whereas the bore butter isn't, and I have a compulsion to experiment.:D:p


Bookworm said:
Why not just use Crisco

Dave
Click to expand...

I usually mix it with wax to solidify it a bit. I found it tended to run and get everywhere - more ended up on the inside of baggies and tins and on me than stayed in the grooves :p I started doing this when I got some lubed 43 mauser bullets that used a hard blue lube of some kind - made a couple different batches of my own with bees wax - mixed crisco into one, tallow into another, tried dish soap and some old mystery cutting oil from a tin and they all worked about the same, but all used bees wax and not paraffin.
 
I personally use a 50/50 mix of paraffin and vaseline, with a little Lee Liquid Alox thrown in. So far, I've used it on everything from high-velocity gas checked rifle loads to blackpowder .38-55 target loads. I haven't had any problems with fouling or deteriorating accuracy, and the clean-up is super easy. Naturally, your mileage may vary, but I cast for 9 different calibres, and I don't bother to switch lubes between applications.
 
For black powder cartridges you want something that is soft like baby poo. I use 50/50 bear grease and beeswax. I suspect any animal fat plus bees wax will do and I think lard and bees wax is probably what SPG and Paul Mathews lube are. RCBS lube with alox is a very poor second best and the lube without alox worse and last place are the waxy blue or red lubes that many cast bullets come with. The waxy ones work fine with smokeless but not with black in my experience

cheers mooncoon
 
I wouldn't use parrafin as a BP lube, IMHO lube in a Bp load is more for controlling/managing fouling and not so much to prevent leading, combinations of beeswax, lanolin, crisco make good lubes and help to keep fouling from being dry and hard to remove.
 
Maybe try a 50/50 mixture of paraffin and olive oil?:stirthepot2:

Mix it in small batches until you get the consistency your looking for.

I would be interested in how it works out.
 
I think the only use paraffin has in a bp lube is to help keep lube firmer in warm weather conditions. Any petroleum product is probably not a good idea. I have read a lot of threads in this forum regarding bp lube recipes with so many variations that it would take a person a lifetime to go through them all. I believe that if you have to swab your bore between shots then the lube you are using is not good. A good measure of how good a lube is performing is if you can fire 20 rounds and your last group is as good as your first, then it is doing its job.

Cheers, Steve.
 
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