My experience with Olive Oil...,
(
regarding muzzle loading...what a bunch of pervs....LOL)
Looking for a non petroleum lube for muzzle loaders and cap-n-ball revolvers. Folks told me in the 1970's to use Crisco or lard....
Well lard or Crisco on a hot summer's day..., melts.
So I added paraffin to the lard. (
but paraffin is a petroleum product, Dave...well I was a teen and didn't know that
) That still melted on a very hot summer's day, and didn't work so well either, making cleaning a bit of a chore.
So I'd use pre-lubed, pre-cut patches for round ball, and store bought "bullet lube" for conicals or bore-butter
.
Well I got into flinters 20 years later, and stuff gets misplaced, and heard about beeswax and lard. So I tried that. That worked but then the local store stopped carrying lard (something about trans-fats and cholesterol or some such). Well..., Olive Oil is a "fat". I found the
cheapest Olive Oil on the shelf. Turns out it's not what you want to be eating as food anyway, so...50:50 mix. Some I left on a shelf for a year, and when I found it, I mean
checked on how it was doing..., it hadn't gone bad. So I've been using it since, trying various ratios. My results so far are:
50:50 or perhaps a bit more beeswax to olive oil = very stiff and no fun rubbing it onto one side of a cloth patch..., but good for conical bullet lube. Too stiff for shotgun wads, especially if you have to get the wad past a choked bore.
1:2 Beeswax to olive oil = good all around patch lube. (Another way of putting it is 1/3 beeswax to 2/3 olive oil.) I use this to lube fiber shotgun wads too
1:3 Beeswax to olive oil = good patch lube in very cold temps (around 32 degrees air temp or colder) Another way of looking at it is 25% Beeswax to 75% olive oil. Some folks like this for a round ball year-round lube but in very hot weather at the range I worry about it melting = a fouled powder load.
You can use unsalted lard or Crisco for the olive oil if you wish. Actually folks also use canola oil, and walnut oil (pricey stuff) too.
If you're a deer hunter and worried about scent..., you can add
food grade wintergreen oil to the lube before it hardens, but you need a lidded jar to store it. This added to yellow beeswax and lard in 1:3 ratio seems very very much like bore butter...hmmmm.....
LD