Summer presenting some new problems. Need some lube advice, please.

[JL McGillicuddy]

I ran into the "too hot for the lube" problem for the first time this weekend and I must say it was quite disagreeable. 

My first question is am I going to have any trouble getting Bore Butter out of my pants legs and will it hurt my holsters?

Second, can some of you folks offer me lube recipes for things you have found work well on horridly hot days and in scorching hot guns?  I am needing an over-ball lube for my cap and ball guns.

Third, I remember someone having a recipe that called for "all natural" toilet wax rings.  How do you tell which they are?  I asked the guy at the store and he looked at me like I was stupid.  He was even more confused when I tried to explain to him what I was planning to do with them. 

Third, what can I do to keep the primers upright in my snail capper?  I had a few come out sideways and ended up tossing a couple of them because I was worried about contamination from the lube all over my hands.  Ted Cash type of very recent purchase.  I assume that they have changed from what was originally offered by them based on what I have read on here.

Until I can get around to going over to the Big Lube ROA bullets, I will just have to keep front lubing my cap and ball guns, but if I can't find a temp resistant lube, I may have to go to 3 seasons only shooting my lovely Old Armys.

Thanks in advance!!
Jack Lee

[Wills Point Pete]

 All you really need to do is add a bit of beeswax to your Bore Butter. It doesn't take much.
Melt a couple of days worth of Bore Butter and than add about a Ping Pong ball sized lump of beeswax to it.

Then let it cool down and take it outside and let it heat to air temp. Still too runny? Add more beeswax. Too thick? Add more Bore Butter.

[Paladin UK]

Wills Point Pete says....

Still too runny? Add more beeswax. Too thick? Add more Bore Butter.

Easy innit!!

Paladin (What lurvs the Holy Black ) UK

[hellgate]

Call me a heretic but I use an irrigation syringe (curved tip) full of cheap rotgut AUTOMOTIVE grease I buy by the pound and squirt that on top of the balls. It is an all temp lube. I also use a 50/50 beeswax/lard lube wad under the ball that swabs the bore. The auto grease is the same consistancy in ALL temps I shoot in. I used to keep two different lube formulas: 1:3 beeswax/olive oil for cooler weather and 50/50 for warm weather. The problem was the in betweens when it would be cool in theAM and hot in the PM where I always seemed to need the "other" formula. Auto grease solved my problem. I would not rely on the auto lube alone nor would I put in into the wads but I lube the cylinder pin & frame with it all the time.

[Dick Dastardly]

Since 100% of the lube is captive in the lube grove on Big Lube™ bullets, I've never had the heat problem.  I shoot the EPP-UG or DD/ROA bullets in my ROAs and 1860 open tops when using the C&B cylinders.  Never a problem with the heat.  The lube is in the grove and it stays there till shot.

DD-DLoS

[Noz]

I shoot a wool wad soaked in homemade lube(parrafin, soy wax and crisco) lube under the ball in my 1860 Pietta armys. No lube problem, no chain fires and no mess. 6-10 stages with no cleaning.

I don't know about the big Lube bullets as I don't have a mold. (sniff, sniff, sigh).

Sorry DD. I couldn't pass it up.

[rifle]

The cap&ball revolver needs are satisfied differently than cartridge. The lube should be under the ball in a cap&baller where it does the most good.  Naturally one can't put soft lube squished under a ball in a cap&baller so the lube/wax recipie needs to be somewhat solid and the heat of the powder the lube is laying on will melt enough of the lube/wax to keep the barrel clean for accuracy and stop chain firing from the front of the cylinder. Anywhooo......a recipie of equal parts bees wax,paraffine wax and mutton tallow(or any natural lubey stuff like lard,crisco ect.ect.) works real well in all weather. Soy wax can be substituted for the more expensive bees wax but.....the soy wax is more suseptable to warm weather. It still works well though. I just used pure lube/wax lube pills ,I carry in a little tin Altoids box,  the other day in 90+ sunny heat. No problem with the lube pills at all. They get a little slippery and having a little cotton wiping rag to wipe the fingers before capping the gun helps. I use my old pants leg as much as the rag I carry to wipe the slippery off my fingers to get the capping done. Anywhoooo....those Big Lube Bullets fer cap&ballers can work,I guess since I ain't tried them, but I can't imagine anything working better in a cap&ball revolver than lube pills.
Lube Pills? They can be wool wads saturated with the lube/wax recipie I mentioned above or pure lube pills. Pure lube pills are made by melting the wax/lube recipie and pouring it in a shallow cookie sheet pan(I use one almost a foot square).  I use a tooth pick to check the level or depth of the wax/lube in the pan since that determines what thickness the lube pills are. I let the wax/lube solidifiy and then pop it in the freezer to harden it so it pos out of the pan in a sheet of lube/wax. Then when it returns to room temp I punch the lube pills out with a tube punch.
The tube punch is made from brass tube whereas the tip ,about an inch, is tube that has the inside diameter the size of the chambers of the gun,or a tad bigger is better but as long as the diameter of the tube is real close to the chamber size.  That short section of brass tube is soldered into the next larger size brass tube making it long enough to hold onto. Six inches maybe or ten even. With the short section of chamber size tubing soldered into the next larger size brass tube(they are a perfect fit one inside the other the way they are manufactured) the pills leave the short section where they are sized very soon and enter the larger tube  so the pills don't stick in the tube and squish each other as the tube fills. Anyway the tube fills with lube pills as the tube punches the sheet of wax making the lube pills. The pills fill the tube and then a pencil or dowel rod piece is used to push the row of neatly stacked lube pills out of the tubing. Nice neat rows of lube pills.
Slide the pills off the row sideways to use them one at a time to put in the chambers ,"on top the powder" and seat the balls on top of the lube pill. Load as usual without overly compressing. The lube pills stay on top the powder in the chamber and no noticable affects are noted from the lube pills when the chambers fire.  The wax/lube is melted some(the whole pill doesn't melt in the barrel since it isn't in there long once the cap ignites) and splashes on the arbor and the cylinders hole the arbor is in where the fouling likes to build and make the gun drag once fouled. That splash of lube wax there gets inside the very beginning of the cylinders arbor hole and keeps powder fouling from entering from the very first shot. The powder is behind the wax/lube remember.
Anywhooooo......the rest of the pill is pushed thru the barrel where some of it melts and coats the barrel with lube/wax so the powder fouling behind the lube pill can't stick to the barrel walls and fill the grooves. That lets the gun shoot all day and allows it to be as accurate as it is capable of being without the fouling making the cylinder drag. The only drag can come from the wax/lube at the front of the arbor/cylinder hole or the fouling that builds behind the cylinder. Anywhoooo..... the gun will shoot at least a hundred shots before the cylinder "may" have to be pulled and the frame cleaned off some usually behind the cylinder.   I use regular gun grease on the arbors of my Colts and Remingtons when using lube pills and that works well for me. I usually fire a coupla hundred shots and don't remove the barrels or cylinders to clean till I get home. I will on occasion use a Visine bottle with black powder solvent and drip a few drops wherever I think there is fouling on the gun needing to be softened.
Anywhooo....when making the lube pill cutter make sure there is no restriction in the tube like solder or whatever. The inside of the tube used to punch the pills out of the wax sheet should be smooth inside. A good thickness for the lube pills is an eighth inch but.....I've used them a thick as a quarter inch in Walkers and Dragoons where there's room in the chambers. The eighth inch thin lube pill can be used to add more lube to a cartridge where the bullet doesn't carry enough.  Made from equal parts bees wax and paraffine wax and mutton tallow(or lard or crisco or the yellow stuff Bore Butter or any natural type lubey stuff) hasn't bothered my cartridges even in the summer. I can load a bunch and leave them for months and they still fire fine without squib loads. I don't store them anywhere special except not in direct sunlight and I don't run air conditioners in summer. I wouldn't rewcommend soy wax for cartirdges since it's more heat sensitive. More paraffin wax can be added to a mix of equal parts soy wax and paraffin wax and mutton tallow(or any other lubey stuff) to give it some "summer heat protection. I use the soy wax since it's cheaper than beeswax and has a certain lubricating trait to it that beeswax doesn't seem to have. Anyway cheap is good with soy wax and using extra paraffin in summer ,so the pills don't get too soft, is still cheap. 
Well.....It seems I type this out often enough but I figure it can be a big help to my fellow cap&ball Afficionados.  I use the lube pills and can't imagine a better way to shoot a cap&baller with balls or conicals. I'm not critisizing Big Lube Bullets or saturated with lube wool wads or any other way to shoot cap&ballers. I'm just relaying my opinion about what I figure is the best way.  Some people want to use fiber wads, and the like, to "scrap" the barrels and all but with a lube pill on the powder in a cap&ballers chamber there is no need to spend extra moola on fiber wads.  Barrels stay clean and it's the lube wax "on the powder and under the balls" that does the trick. Anywhooooo......lube pills can be kinda fun to make too. Anywhooo.....even with Big Lube Bullets if the recipie for lube/wax is too soft there will be problems. The Big Lube Bullets will have the lube melt off or run all over in the heat if the recipie is too soft in the heat. I guess the people that sell those bullets must have a good recipie for the lube/wax. Wonder what it is? It would be a little different for cap&baller bullets than cartridges right? Well......not in the summer I'd guess. Maybe it would depend on how the bullets are crimped in the cases? Collet dies? Factory crimp dies from Lee?
Take care Pards.

[Noz]

rifle, have you ever tried shaking your pills or cookies in a little motor mica to help keep them seperate?

Works pretty well.

[Fingers McGee]

I shoot a wool wad soaked in homemade lube(parrafin, soy wax and crisco) lube under the ball in my 1860 Pietta armys. No lube problem, no chain fires and no mess. 6-10 stages with no cleaning.

Pretty much the same here.  Precut .386 felt wads soaked in beeswax/bore butter mixture for my ,36s and .456 wads soaked in same mixture for my 44s.  Store em in an old Altoids tin in my possibles bag during a match.  No muss, no fuss when charging cylinders and helps keep the fouling soft.

FIngers (Show Me MO smoke) McGee

[rifle]

NozzleRag, I never thought about shaking my lube pills in motor mica since I don't know what it is.    What is it?     I just keep em in a Altoids tin and get about six out at a time. It's a trick I try(getting better at it). Get six out at a time.   I just slide them sideways offa each other.   I got my own measuring glass pitcher thing like women use makin cakes and stuff with oz. graduated on it. I melt single ingredients in mason jars and pour what I want into the measuring pitcher thing. Then stirr it and pour it in a warm cookie sheet pan that I level with a little level I got somewhere that's about six inches long.  I got these white match box sliding boxes off the net and they are the right size for a mess of pills in rows. I had a friend make me a copy of an original paper cartridge label off those brown paper boxes of originals and copy those on sheets of sticky backed paper at Staples and cut the labels with a paper cutter I got and store the pills in the cool match box type boxes with cool labels. Why? I couldn't tell ya. I'm just weird I guess. ha ha ha I'm a lube pill junkie.   Cap and Ball revolver junkie too. I bought another Centennial Belgian 1860 Army like I really needed another.

[Noz]

The Motor Mica is finely ground mica that is very near to talc in particle size. It's used as a dust to keep "sticky" items from sticking to each other. I discovered it while using Lee's Liquid Alox for smokeless pistol bullets. Works as advertised.
Midway sells it.

[hellgate]

Can't remember the guy's name but I think he's from Austrailia or NZ who would roll small pills of 1:10 beeswax and i think mineral oil and attach them to the back of the lead balls to make a short cone shape that stuck to the lead. He would ram them into the cylinder lube down and his guns would shoot all day. No over ball lube. The attached lube would be melted off during firing.