T/C bore butter

[ss1]

T/C bore butter, what is it made of ?? It seems to attract bees!!

 

[J.D.]

This was copied andd saved from another forum a coupla years go. The author is a chemist, if my memory is correct, so he should know what he is talking about.

Bore butter and 1000 Shot Plus are for all practical purposes one and the same.

The lube consists of paraffin wax melted into USP heavy mineral oil. To that is added an oil soluble dye to give it color.
Also added is a synthetic oil of wintergreen. This is where the food grade ingredient thing comes from. Except that oil
of wintergreen is not a food grade item since it is somewhat toxic. Tincture of wintergreen would be food grade.
The thing about a magic additive that "micronizes" the lube is a bit of fiction. Paraffin wax is a hard, brittle crystalline
wax. The addition of a small amount of a particular type of fossil wax, made in Germany, will reduce the size of the
crystals formed in solidified paraffin wax but certainly nothing on the order of a micron size which would be indicated
by the term micronized. The German's pioneered the use of this modified paraffin wax (using the "micronizer") back in
the late 19th century as a way of making paraffin waxes acceptable in skin care preparations, replacing petrolatum
wax.

If you don't want the oil of wintergreen odor you can make your own version by buying blocks of paraffin wax sold for
use in canning and USP mineral oil.

I am still not fond of the grease-like lubes based on paraffin wax. As long as the surface temperature of the bore is
above the melting point of the paraffin wax you can stand there and easily reload the gun. When the surface of the bore
drops below the melt point of the wax you have a film of hard wax that almost glues the fouling to the metal. An
historic feat then involves getting the 3rd or 4th round down the bore without having to beat it down the bore.

 

[ss1]

Excellent response. thanks

 

[Slamfire]

I was under the impression that paraffin wax was a petroleum product. It is the base of the so called PA motor oils.

 

[roundball]

IMO, a lot of things can technically have their roots traced to a petroleum base, but in the particular form of refinement and formula that it's used, apparently does not rise to a condition of causing fouling that we hear the generalized cautions about if considering to use petroleum based products.

In fact, in experimenting with Hoppes No9 PLUS BP Solvent & Patch Lube, I've found it to be absolutely outstanding year round in all weather, all temperatures, etc...yet right on the label it plainly states: "Contains Kerosene".

But I can use it as a patch lube when shooting a 50 shot session without wiping between shots and barely get a trace of color out of the bore when I'm pump flushing the barrel in a bucket of hot water during the clean up.

So my conclusion is that cautions against using petroleum products in our bores is probably referring to using some form of full strength regular oil in the bores...not necessarily products that have a very distant, remote trace back to a petroleum origin.

 

[ryoung14]

Hmmm.... Somewhere I got the idea that Bore Butter was a mixture of bees wax and olive oil. Seems like it was this forum.

It would be 'all natural' if it was. It would also explain the bees.

Roundball: Do you still slather your bore with Bore Butter after cleaning? If not, what are you using to protect the bore? I'm finding it's very hard to remove all traces of that stuff, even after a thorough hot water cleaning....still get faint streaks of yellow on the drying patch. Does the Hoppes clean it out?
Bob

 

[jtmattison]

Hmmm.... Somewhere I got the idea that Bore Butter was a mixture of bees wax and olive oil. Seems like it was this forum.

It would be 'all natural' if it was. It would also explain the bees.

My internet searches gave me the same impression. I've always assumed it was beeswax and olive oil. I make my own lube and that's all I use in it.

HD

 

[roundball]

Hmmm.... Somewhere I got the idea that Bore Butter was a mixture of bees wax and olive oil. Seems like it was this forum.

It would be 'all natural' if it was. It would also explain the bees.

Roundball: Do you still slather your bore with Bore Butter after cleaning? If not, what are you using to protect the bore? I'm finding it's very hard to remove all traces of that stuff, even after a thorough hot water cleaning....still get faint streaks of yellow on the drying patch. Does the Hoppes clean it out?
Bob

Steaming hot soapy water & dishwashing detergent is all I use...pump flush a patch, a couple dozen strokes with a good bore brush, pump flush another patch, then a patch/rinse with clean hot water...I get it bone dry, then I really do slather the NL1000 in there...dry patch out possible excess before the next time I shoot.

 

[Mad Professor]

I'm a chemist (who uses natural lube 1000). I'll try to sneak a sample into our gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer sometime, the results might end the above speculation as to contents of natural lube. Realize that waxes and oils may have some of the same constituents wether from "natural' or petrochemical sources, so I'll try to come up with reference samples of parafin/bees waxes and mineral/olive oils to make comparisons. I will post results after I run samples, might be a week or two as am taking time off for ML hunting :grin:

Concerning oil of wintergreen (e.g. methylsalicylate). It's found in wintergreen berries and is related to aspirin (acetylsalicylate). Both are derivatives of salicylic acid, an analgesic/pain reliver. The reason Mr. Bayer came up with aspirin is that salicylic acid is rough on your stomach but aspirin is slowly converted to it in your digestive tract; oil of wintergreen behaves in a similar manner when ingested.

I munch on wintergreen berries whenever I find them while in the woods, freshens your breath and good for headaches too! :thumbsup:

 

[roundball]

I'm a chemist (who uses natural lube 1000). I'll try to sneak a sample into our gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer sometime, the results might end the above speculation as to contents of natural lube.

Now that Sir, would put you on the "most favored fellow muzzleloader list" of all times...I'd like to know myself as I use a lot of it...
:hatsoff:

 

[renovato]

I was under the impression that paraffin wax was a petroleum product. It is the base of the so called PA motor oils.

The general caution against petroleum based products doesn't apply to them all apparently. For example Ballistol is petroleum based and it causes no fouling that I've noticed. In fact, it does quite the opposite. It keeps fouling from building up. I see paraffin and mineral oil in a number of homemade lubes and it doesn't seem to cause any problems. Odd.

 

[renovato]

In fact, in experimenting with Hoppes No9 PLUS BP Solvent & Patch Lube, I've found it to be absolutely outstanding year round in all weather, all temperatures, etc...yet right on the label it plainly states: "Contains Kerosene".

But I can use it as a patch lube when shooting a 50 shot session without wiping between shots and barely get a trace of color out of the bore when I'm pump flushing the barrel in a bucket of hot water during the clean up.

I've had the same experience with Hoppe's. It's the cleanest lube I've found, even more so than the Ballistol I generally prefer. I use the Ballistol dry patch system because of the accuracy I get from it, but Hoppe's cuts down on swabbing immensely. It's not a greasy mess like that accursed Bore Butter. I have really learned to dislike that stuff.

 

[arcticap]

I've read that because olives are natural and organic, olive oils do contain varying amounts of salt, which infers that the oil may not be the ideal patch lubricant.
And while mineral oil is a petroleum product, it does have pharmaceutical and food processing applications.
[url] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil[/url]

 

[Cherokee]

That would explain the fouling I have after only a few shots.
It was so bad the other day after only 2 shots I had to use a thinner patch.

 

[Mad Monk]

Mad Professor,

If you can. Get a quantity on the amount of oil of wintergreen in the lube. When Ox-Yoke was still producing it I tried to look at that. I had found that if the container was not tightly sealed the lube would harden. So I smeared some on a piece of foil and weighed it. Left it sit exposed to the air for a week. Volatile loss was 5.5%. Only the oil of wintergreen is the volatile in the lube.
This ignores federal law on packaging. Any thing with more than 5% oil of wintergreen must be in childproof packaging. No matter the amount or end use. They claimed all food grade ingredients. You do not use oil of wintergreen in any foods. Normally it would be a tincture of oil of wintergreen going into foods as a flavoring.

In 1985 I identified mineral oil in the lube through the research group lab I was working with. They identified the mineral oil on their IR machine. They would not do the work on the base waxy material. Too much time for their niormal work load.

Using different solvents it looked to me like a low melt point crystalline wax base.
I tried turpentine and that ruled out beeswax.

They use an orange oil-soluble dye to give the appearance of beeswax. That came out with the mineral oil in an acetone extraction of the lube. The dye wanted nothing to do with the waxy base.


Ox-Yoke got into the lube business back in the early 1980's. Young, in California, came out with his Young Country 103 lube which was nothing more than repackaged Chap-Stick. Soon after that we see Ox-Yoke selling a lube. I bought a container of each at the Morgan's Rifles Shoot at Winchester in 1984. Compared the two to Chap-Stick in the lab. No question. You paid the same for 4 ounces of Young's lube as you did for 3 ounces of the Ox-Yoke lube.

Then in 1984, Ox-Yoke and Young had a parting of the ways and Ox-Yoke came out with the first version of what evolved into the 1000 shot plus lube.
Funny thing about this. Ox-Yoke was located in Suffield, CN while a large skin care product company was located just across the river in West Suffield. That skin care product company produced products based on paraffin wax or petrolatum. The oil of wintergreen was used in chest rubs for those with colds.

Then around 1989 or 1990 we see the 1000 shot plus lube come on the market. All kinds of nonsense said for it by the manufacturer. One that caught my eye was the thing about micronizing the lube. That Ox-Yoke had to go to Germany to obtain this technology.
The oils, fats and waxes book in the research library went into how the Germans had used cheap paraffin wax in skin care products by micronizing the normally macro-crystal paraffin wax. The simple addition of a tiny amount of a certain fossil wax would cause the paraffin wax to form micro crystals.

If they had been using a waxy material obtained from rendering animal fats there would be no need to micronize because they are amorphous in form.


It was Ox-Yoke who started this whole nonsense about "all-natural" and "non-petroleum". The man who ran Ox-Yoke had dealt with me a few times. I had explained black powder fouling to him.
I had written a magazine article explaining how some petroleum lubes formed asphalt films in the bore of a black powder gun and why some would not.
We had, at that time, lubes on the market that were petroleum lubricating greases. The T/C Maxi Lube at that time was the same grease they used in the shop to lube the milling machines, etc. The other was the industrial lube grease that was sold by Butler Products.
The petroleum greases that are made from lubricating oils with a metallic soap as a viscosity builder would react with the sulfur from black powder to form asphalt films in the bore. The commercial way of producing asphalt was to heave a napthenic petroleum oil into an autoclave and add sulfur. Heat it up and in a certain period of time you have road tar.
The petroleum waxes will not do that.

Even Ox-Yoke's lube would form a film in the bore eventually. If you want to look at how a lube performs in the bore you put some in a shallow metal pan and burn it down with a propane torch flame. It either produces a tar-like deposit or it does not.

 

[J.D.]

You da man, Mad Monk.

I was hoping you would see this thread.

My first post was origianly written by the man himself, BTW.

And I do want to give proper attribution to the author. :v
J.D.

 

[Mad Monk]

J. D.

The other joke is that it might be Maine moose ear wax.

My favorite was the big adds for the 1000 Shot Plus lube. How many rounds they fired without having to swab the bore and the lack of rust or corrosion in the bore.
They showed the T/C New Englander rifle leaning up against a tree in the woods.
Not telling you that this photo session was the only time that gun left the environemtally controlled shooting building.
When I questioned Ox-Yoke on their shooting of the gun they owned up to having done all of the shooting in the building where the relative humidity was controlled at 30%. Now that explained the lack of rust or corrosion. When the R.H. is 30%, or lower, the black powder residue is not hygroscopic. It will not pick up water from the air. Without water there can be no rust or corrosion. The black powder residue stays in the barrel as a fine powder. Easy to deal with while reloading.

To see the funny part in this you have to go back to the days of Young and Ox-Yoke back in the 1980's.
At first we had Ox-Yoke selling repackaged Young Country 103 which was repackaged Chap-Stick. With the difference in how much lube you got for the money.
So Young and Ox-Yoke got into this battle. Adds in Muzzleblasts were a riot. One month Ox-Yoke would claim 200 shots without wiping. Then after two or three months (mag lead time) Young would claim 300 shots without wiping for his lube. This sort of kept going. Sort of I'll raise you 50 shots and add 50. Lube poker???
That sort of culminated in the 1000 Shot Plus lube.

But if I took my Getz barreled .45 Schimmel to the range on a cold day "an historic feat" was getting 3 rounds out of the .45 before having to really swab the bore.
The lube has a very distinct melting point which is typical with most waxes. Only a few degrees difference between the softening point and the melting point. So if the barrel was cool, below the melting point of the wax, the lube film in the bore was hard as a rock. but once the barrel warmed up to a temperature above the melting point of the wax the lube film would be a liquid and then you could get a lot of shots before having to swab the bore.

 

[roundball]

As a devout NL1000 user who has shot range sessions virtually every weekend year round for the past several years, I have a problem with Oxyoke's claim that they fired all those shots without wiping because it was in a 30% humidity building...has to be more to it than that.

During the spring/summer months here the humidity is anywhere from 50 to 95% and I can shoot Goex PRBs and NL1000 patches for a 50 shot range session without ever wiping between shots...and particularly when humidity is up in the 90's, the bore and pan become glistening wet in seconds so each new load just slides down effortlessly.

But during the Nov/Dec/Jan/Feb months of winter, I can't do that because it's so much drier and there is not enough lube in the patches to keep the fouling soft in that dry air...usually have to wipe the bore after every several shots...switched to a semi-liquid type patch lube (Hoppes No9 + BP) and was then able to shoot entire sessions OK...have proven this to myself year after year.

If I can't shoot a dozen shots in my low humidity here with just NL1000, I can't possibly understand / accept how Oxyoke could shoot 1000+ shots without wiping and claim it's because of a 30% humidity environment...low humidity / dry conditions always makes it harder to keep shooting without wiping, not the other way around

 

[Mad Monk]

Bill,

You misunderstood part of my message.

They did not tell me what temperature they kept the shooting building at. Only that the R.H. was held at 30%. That made it clear as to why the lack of rust and corrosion.

It was my understanding that they shot patched round balls and the patches were lubed with the 1000 Shot Plus lube. The question in my mind was how tight of a patch and ball combination were they using.
How big of a hammer did they need to beat them down the bore?

 

[messer454]

Mad Monk and others..this is incredible. Not sure I understand all the Chemistry though(didn't understand it in college either). Mad Monk if I may be so bold, after all your research what lube do you use and why?