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Making Lube Pills

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celem

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FYI - I make home-made 44 caliber lube pills of equal parts Beeswax and Lard. I normally use a pill between the powder and round-ball with my Pietta 44 Remington, with no lube on top of the ball - only the pill between powder and ball. I recently created a cutter and have attached instructions illustrating how I made the cutter from a 45ACP case and some brass pipe.
 

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Good info. Thanks.

I've attached a link to this thread to a pre-existing thread that may be found in Blackpowder Essentials.
 
Lard Type for Lube

ARMOUR Lard. Requires no refrigeration, inexpensive. Available from 2.5 pounds to 5 pounds in the grocery store. Wal-Mart sells 1 pound tubs.
 
So you dont have to use the felt?

You can just make a small pill out of the wax and lard and it works ok?

If you make the "pills" slightly smaller wouldnt it be ok? Once you pack it with or without the ball it should flatten out
 
I do the same with Gatofeo's Lube.
Dust 'em with cornmeal to keep 'em separate.
Yes, they can be a little undersized.
Made for the cleanest BP revolver shooting I've ever done.
--Dawg
 
So what happens when the gun fires. Does the pill turn to liquid and coat the
bore or goes down the bore as a solid. I use lubed wads and would assume they actually push some fouling out they exit. Still new to this type of shooting
And still am finding new information I use wads because the dude on you tube does and I got a feeling he has forgotten more than I will ever know.

I use Pryodex and they say no lube necessary. All of my five different pistols will fire numerous cylinders with no problems. Caps seem to be the only Achilles heel.

I have questions on the need for pure lead RBs also but that is a different topic.;););)
 
Back from the range

Today I fired 54 rounds with my beeswax/lard pills between ~23 grains of TrippleSeven powder and .454 round ball. The action was as smooth on the 54th round as it was on the first. The bore is also pretty clean with no residue buildup. I am satisfied that the beeswax/lard pills work as well as the Ox-Yoke pills. Sorry Ox-Yoke, you've lost my business.

Caveat: Actually, the first 18 rounds were with .451 balls and the remainder were .454. Also, the 1st 18 rounds were loaded in my three cylinders the afternoon before.

P.S.: I added a pre-cleaning photo of the chamber end of the bore. Just some powder residue and a little lard/wax residue right at the throat which wiped off with a cloth - no hardened buildup.
 

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Lube keeps the fouling in the barrel soft.
Next roundball pushes it out.
Wads make the lube easy to handle, especially in hot weather.
Lube also keeps the gun lubed a bit from my experience.
Times I have shot without lube, cap guns didn't feel very smooth after several shots.
No-wad Lube pills work very well in my experience.
--Dawg
 
Great photos and easy to understand. A couple questions:
-Do the pills stick to the ball when fired? i.e. do you see if they hit the target with the ball or seperately? I've had grease cookies stick to bullets and ruin accuracy (6"-8" groups vs 1.5" groups w/o the cookie @50yds).
-Does powder stick to the pills and "cook off" as it is fired? I've had grease cookies get powder imbedded into them and cook off as the bullet traveled down range creating a spiral smoke trail and a fire hazard.
 
Pills after firing

Hellgate - beeswax and lard succumb to the heat and pressure involved and the pills are distributed in the barrel as liquefied lubricant and, as far as I can tell, nothing solid emerges from the barrel - just wax/lard impregnated burned powder dust. There is no fire trail - just nice bullet holes in the target.

As far as accuracy, shots with the pills group well for me while my shots with lubricated fiber wads went all over the target.
 
Sounds good. A fun thing to do would be to shoot them at night to see if they add to the fireball and if anything flaming goes down range on the back of the ball.
 
Lard Ingredients

Bacon is salted, lard is not salted. Here are the ingredients for ARMOUR brand Lard, the most commonly found in grocery stores where I live - even Wal-Mart carries one pound tubs in their food convenience section.

ARMOUR LARD
Lard, hydrogenated lard, BHA, Propyl Gallate and citric acid.

Hydrogenation stiffens the lard and raises the melting point.
BHA and Propyl Gallate are antioxidants to retard spoilage.
Citric acid is a preservative

Also, a friend of mine is a chemical engineer and I asked his opinion on the lubrication qualities of this mixture. He advised:

beeswax has the di- and tri- ester components which are the heart of todays synthetic lubricants such as di(isooctyl) azelate and/or di(isooctyl)sebacate. these two molecules are the work-horses of the synthetic automotive lubricants and also the bases of the lubricants for aircraft turbine engines.

Lard is an excellent idea for a gun barrel lubricant. It is in a class of compounds known as triglycerides which means they are esters of glycerine and a fatty acid and they are known to be "slick". The only down side I can tell you about on lard is that long term, and i mean LONG term, they may undergo hydrolysis with moisture and release a bit of free fatty acid which could on LONG term be a bit corrosive but that is really splitting a hair that has already been split a few times.

My take, a great lubricant mixture but don't keep your lard for a very LONG time. I'll probably buy a new tub each year.
 
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Scented Lube Pills

I used up all of my lube pill supply so it was time to make some more lube pills. This time, I attempted to add scent to them because I like the odor of the Ox Yoke brand commercially made lube pills. I added 6 drops of Bergamont essential oil to the mix. Bergamont is a type of mint and my wife had a bottle of the stuff.

I think that 6 drops isn't enough - the smell of beeswax overpowers the aroma, at least for me. My wife claims that she can detect the bergamont "at the end". I'm so sure.

So, I'll either have to add much more essential oil or try to find a more potent odor source.

This batch of 6 ounces of 50% each beeswax/lard made well over 200 pills because I was careful to cut real close to each neighboring plug.

Photo attached.
 

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celem Thanks for a really interesting and informative post. I've been using oxyoke felt pads for quite a while. I'd like to try your lube pill method. Sounds like you've found an answer to that always vexing problem of gunk building up during extended shooting/
 
Celem,
I found fir needle oil from a trapper's supply. You can also find wintergreen oil which is the scent of the wonder wads. Oil of Bergamot is an oil extracted from a citrus fruit from Bergamo, Italy and is the flavor used in Earl Grey tea. Ilike to make my own Earl Grey with more "kick".
 
When it's 100 degrees plus, how do you stop the lube from melting into the powder and creating a mess?

We typically shot when it's over 100.
 
Typically, more beeswax translates into a higher melting point.
You may have to play with proportions to find what works best for your temps.
--Dawg
 
High temp shooting

Re - "When it's 100 degrees plus, how do you stop the lube from melting into the powder and creating a mess? We typically shoot when it's over 100."

This lube pill mix melts at about 140F. If you are shooting at 140F you are a better man than me and must have asbestos skin.

I expect that if you left the pistol sitting in direct strong sun it would get pretty hot, but not 140F - you wouldn't be able to hold the pistol at that temperature. Nonetheless, the pill would probably soften some above 110F to 120F or so, but not turn to a liquid state. If I were shooting at broiling temperatures (I don't) I would put a cardboard wad between the lube pill and the powder or just use the pill for front of the bullet lubrication.

I live in the cool mountains of North Carolina around 3,000 feet and a summer day that hits 90F is pretty rare.
 
Melting the ingredients.

My wife bought a pot that women use in salons for melting body wax.I use Gatefeos recipe, put the ingredients in the pot and go do something else like melt lead and make balls. It melts the wax and keeps it at the right temperature. Its worth it if you can find one.
 
Celem: I tried your formula, substituting Crisco for the lard, in my 5.5 '58............worked great!.......That gun had been giving me roughly 4 inch groups at 15 yards with bore butter atop the .451 rb's.........with your pill I wound up with a six shot cluster so tight you cannot separate the individual rounds.

I tried the 50/50 you suggested, but I think I'll increase the beeswax ratio for a somewhat firmer product. Incidentally, the pills I did resulted in 'squeezing' out lube on ball seating. But then too, I used my usual 35 grains of 3/f Goex.

Ran one cylinder thru the gun at very close range......maybe 6 feet, and noted the target peppered with undissolved lube fragments..........regardless you made a convert!
 
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