Tallow vs. Crisco???

[Dakota Widowmaker]

I find that cleaned tallow is MUCH stiffer at room temp than crisco...

Warm up that tallow a bit or have it out on a sunny day, and it acts like crisco... a bit

But, what I have also found is that tallow doesn't go rank like crisco.

Do other folks here use tallow with their lube recipes?

mixing it with bees wax in the "army" formula makes a nice lube that doesn't "run" with oil like crisco.

Would mutton (sheep) tallow be much different than rendered suet?

[maybe this dialog is better for a soap making forum... but, I am all about making smoke]

[Delmonico]

I use deer tallow and bees wax for my lube.  Has an even higher melting point, a friend left a box of bullets in his pick-up in July for a week by mistake and the lube was still in the grooves.  Does fine down to 0, as cold as I have shot the Sharps so far.  Remember the friction when a bullet starts moving will soften it in a big hurry.

[hellgate]

I salvaged about a pound or two of fat from a doe this fall so I plan on making a tallow based lube when the winter gets slow. Currently i use 50/50 beeswax and lard (1 pound of each melted together). It's pretty stiff at room temp but softens with handling. I put it in my lubrisizer and it works fine. I lube my C&B revolver wads with it too.

[Dick Dastardly]

Crisco is a trade name.  The actual product has stuff in it that your bullets and guns can't appreciate, like yellow color and butter aroma.  I use the cheapest vegie shortening that I can find.  Aldi store brand works just fine.  It holds up well, doesn't go "rank" and doesn't separate from my lube alloy.

So, loose the "Crisco" and get something more pure.  There are too many adjuncts in Crisco that have nothing to do with the reason you might use it as a bullet lube ingredient.

DD-DLoS

[hellgate]

Some of DD's criticisms of Crisco are why I use plain old LARD which was the original cooking oil for which Crisco was developed. It's like shooting subs: ala "Crisco is just a lard substitute". However, If you get the butter flavored Crisco I agree with DD but the regular Crisco should be just plain old vegetable shortening. I just remember that once you melt Crisco the new  cooled/hardened consistency is nowhere like pre melted Crisco. It is like a thick oil. I suspect they whip a bunch of air into it to make it look white like good old lard (which is like a buck a pound).

[Howdy Doody]

Well, I use a mix I make up with a bit of crisco in winter and none in summer. I use tallow, but it is mutton tallow.

When I started I was using beef tallow and in the summer that stuff burned my eyes when shooting, it was rancid from the heat. Mutton tallow does not go bad in real hot weather.

I now spritz up my lube a bit with a dash of thompsons 1000 for the better scent... there are a lot of varibles to folks lube they
make themselves.

Wait until that new 777 Cowboy comes out. I'll be looking for a good smokeless lube then.

[Noz]

One thing to watch on the labels on both "vegetable shortening" and lard is for the presence of salt. I salvaged a front stuffer that had been lubed with salted vege oil. Was a real chore.

[Dick Dastardly]

Right on the mark Noz,

Salt is the LAST thing I'd want in my lube recipe.  It's the salts left behind in the fouling that mix with water to start the rust bug.  One thing a good lube should do is to leave a coating that blocks oxygen from getting to steel where salts are present.

Yup, I missed the salt in some of the ingredient lists for different shortenings.  Thanks for mentioning it.

DD-DLoS

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

I haven't made up BP lube for a few years now, these days I just use SPG. When I used to pan lube I used a mixture of Crisco and beeswax in approxiamtely 50/50 proportions. I never noticed it going rancid. I still have some of my beeswax/Crisco pan lubed bullets that have been laying around for maybe three years or so. I have not noticed anything wrong with them.

If I was gonna make up some more BP lube, rather than buying SPG, I would probably go back to my Crisco mixture, it always worked fine for me.

But that's just me.

[Cohagen]

The recipe I am going to use is 1 lb. of beeswax to 1lb. deer tallow,plus a tablespoon of olive oil.
The test run I made of this concocktion worked really well in my lubersizer, but I don't know about hot weather.

Cohagen,   Your milage may vary.

[Paladin UK]

FWIW.........

My lube consists of..

2 parts Mutton Tallow
2 parts Paraffin Wax
1 part beeswax

Holds together even on the hottest day (Obviously NOT in direct sunshine ), Mutton Tallow is getting harder to acquire here, Some Plumbers merchants have even stopped selling it!!

Paladin (What LURVS the smell when he`s mixin his lube  ) UK

[Delmonico]

The recipe I am going to use is 1 lb. of beeswax to 1lb. deer tallow,plus a tablespoon of olive oil.
The test run I made of this concocktion worked really well in my lubersizer, but I don't know about hot weather.

Cohagen,   Your milage may vary.

Lose the olive oil, you don't need it and it will just lower you melting temp.  That's waht I use is a straight 50/50 mix, make a very wet lube star even in cold weather out of my Sharps and any bullet I've dug back out of the backstope still has some lube in the grooves.

[Dakota Widowmaker]

I found that rendering beef tallow and then "washing" it in boiling water a few times gets rid of all the salt and "whitens" it nicely.

The reason I ask is that tallow is alot less "oilly" then crisco or other shortenings for making paper cartridges... (still working on this as a side project)

[Howdy Doody]

See, there are about a thousand recipes for lube, same as cleaning. Seems everyone has a special they like.
My lube recipe is pretty simple.
Equal parts of mutton tallow ( I get it by the pound from Dixie Gunworks) and beeswax ( I get that from a craft store called
Michaels) then add a dash of the thompsons 1000 for a little yellow color and scent. In the winter I add a dash of the crisco,
especially for the rifle pistol bullets that I lubersize and not really for the ones I pan lube.
I heat the mess in a tupperware bowl in an old microwave I have in the garage and then mix real well and either pour directly
into the lubersizer or into little pans I have for pan lubing 50 at a time. Let cool and punch 'em out of the cake or use the
lubersizer.

[hellgate]

Howdy doody,
You can get beeswax from Bitter Creek Candle supply for $4.95/lb+S&H. I suspect Micheals is alot more expensive. You can google "beeswax" and get all kinds of beekeeper supplies and candle making supplies where they sell the wax at pretty good prices. Sometimes local honey makers have it for very affordable rates.

[Delmonico]

I've seen about anything possible used in "secret" lube formulas, the only one possible I haven't seen so far is KY Jelly and ain't so sure if someone might not be using it and just don't want to tell. (For Black Powder lube, I mean.)

Main thing is if it works for you it is a good lube.

[Howdy Doody]

Thanks for the tip Hellgate. I usually wait until Michaels has a 50% off sale and even then the beeswax
is about $8 a lb if I remember correctly. The one advantage to getting it there is that Heidi Doody
is always getting stuff there and I have her pick it up and saves me a trip.
I'll bet there are beekeepers around here in my new hometown. There are all kinds of orchards and they
usually get bees to do their thing.
I think that even with as many rounds as I shoot a year I still only use about a pound a year of beeswax.
I don't make cookies any more, just those big lube boolits.

KY Jelly? 

What about a dash of hemerroidal cream?

[Dick Dastardly]

KY jelly works great on the reloading lab doorknob.  Keeps unwelcome kids out. . .

DD-DLoS

[hellgate]

I hear if you add hemorrhoid cream to the bullet lube it'll shrink your groups.

[Delmonico]

I've had a couple guns that were a pain in the arse, wonder if hemorrhoid cream on the bullets would help them.