Why Castor Oil in Moose Juice?

[colmoultrie]

Hi Stumpkiller,

I was reading and copying down your recipies for Moose Juice and Moose Snot, and I wondered about the castor oil. Does it have properties that make it better than other oils? Is this the result of long experimentation, or is it something that worked well right away, and if it ain't broke...? :hmm:
I'm wondering, because I don't have any castor oil lying around, but I have a plethora of other oils, so I was wondering. Sorry if I'm rehashing ancient history (but I can't seem to get my browser to load old topics past the last 30 days, anyway, despite the help listed in the using the forum section).

 

[Bob Riegl]

:v You certainly could use olive oil as a substitute for castor oil. Personally I made some Moose Snot (uncouth connotation) with olive oil and had to use twice as much castor oil as suggested in the manufacture, and it is still not soft in the winter. However, all that said one can find Castor Oil in the Wally World (Wal-Mart) pharmacy department in 4 oz. bottles. :hatsoff:

 

[bighole]

I don't know if this has any bearing on why caster oil is in this but caster oil mixed with anhydrous lanolin has been the standard lube for custom bullet makers (myself included) for swaging jacketed bullets for a long time.

 

[54ball]

Castor oil has excellent properties as a rust preventitive. In the First World War castor oil was used as a mix oil in the early aiplanes of that time. It was used like two cycle oil is used today, mixed with the fuel. Also old model airplanes used castor oil as a mix componet of the fuel. Old aircraft engines that were luded with castor oil have been in storage for decades with no rust evident. This has been noticed in shops where other engines and machined componets that were covered with other types of oil have rusted.
Incedently, the old time WWI pilots were known to get sick, and vommit in the air due to the castor oil laden exhaust being blown in their faces. They also suffered from chronic diarrhea.

 

[tom hargrove]

is the bean on the castor plant ,what the :hmm: posion -ricen is made from :winking:

 

[buckknife]

I wouldnt worry about the castor oil doing its job,but i am concered about the mix and its ph level of the moose juice.Witch hazel is a 4 on the ph scale and 4 parts are used and alkey is around 5.5 and 8 parts are used.Murphys is 10.5 on ph but only 1 part is used.With the 16 oz of water and 1 oz murphys is it enough to bring it to a mix that is netural or a little above?If it isnt then you are adding a acid to blackpowder fouling.Im not a chemist and i dont know but if i had to guess i would think that its on the acid side.If that is the case,which i dont know,the brew could be adjusted to make it a safe ph and the caster oil would have a chance to do its job at protecting the bore.Most of us clean the rifle in short time any way but during hunting season sometimes the rifle may be left loaded for a week at a time.If the lube being used is on the acid side this would not be a good thing.I dont think even 24 hours would be a good thing.Stumpy his self has said the moose juice is not ment as a bore protectant but a general cleaner and patch lube. Wish i knew what the ph level of it is.

 

is the bean on the castor plant ,what the :hmm: posion -ricen is made from :winking:

Yes, and parts of the plant are toxic. They used to plant castor bean plants around the edges of cotton fields in California to discourage burrowing rodents. No idea how ricin is actually made tho.

 

[Stumpkiller]

54Ball is on the right track as to why i use castor oil. I fly R/C airplanes and, after a day of burning an alcohol/nitromethane/castor oil fuel I have to wipe the oil off the parts of the airframe in the exhaust slipstream. One day, while doing this, I had the mini-epiphany "Hey! This oil just went through a full combustion cycle and is still slick amd clean! I wonder if I could use this in a muzzleloading lube?" Sure enough, I find castor oil is used in radial engines, two-stroke engines, even jet engines because it is extremely stable in heat.

It also has properties of animal oil, specifically similar to whale oil, the only vegetable oils which share these fats are castor and jojoba. And castor is much cheaper than jojoba and much easier to find.

Is it authentic? Dunno. The Romans used it in lamps as it burns cleaner than olive oil. It has been used medicinally throughout European colonization in American history.

Google up "castor oil".

As far as rust protection, I have one gun, a T/C Renegade, which has had nothing but Moose Snot (the beeswax/castor oil/Murphy's mix) applied for lube and protectant after cleaning. So far (2-1/2 years) it is rust free. It has mostly sat unfired for over a year. My Rice barreled Donelson custom Lehigh flinter I clean with Moose Juice, which is mostly water, so I wipe with alcohol and then Beechwood Casey Sheath as a metal protectant. So, I guess you can take that for what it's worth as to how far I trust my own products. :winking: The last thing in the world I want is for someone to find rust on their baby because they thought my lubes or solvent was a protection. THAT's why I recommend not trusting them. At this point I trust the Moose Snot, the beeswax alone is a wonderful metal protectant if you rub enough in and are thorough about it. I also have a habit of running a treated patch through the bore the day after I clean a gun. Not everyone does that. I would NEVER trust Moose Juice as the last thing in the bore for an overnight or longer period of time.

As far as the pH? Knot a clew. Shake some baking soda into the water and dissolve it before mixing if it concerns you.

 

[buckknife]

Stumpy the reason i ask about the ph of moose juice is my 36 was cleaned with murphys and water and rinsed with water.Then dry patched and olive oil was put in the bore.That was over 2 months ago.It was spot less and not a speck of brown.
On a whim i decided to put some castor oil in it.I cleaned the barrel with wet patches of moose juice and then dry patched and used straight castor oil in the bore.The next day it was full of brown on the patch.There was no shooting between the olive oil treatment and the castor treatment.If i would have washed and flushed the barrel with water and then used castor it most likley would have been ok.The culprit as i see it was the moose juice.
It seems that one can get by using petro oils like clp and wd 40 without much concern about ph,for some reason im not sure why,but when using a natural lube it seems to make a big difference.
Stumpy i think you have made 2 fine lubes and my hats off to you for sharing them.I just think that if a ph meter could be put to the moose juice and the right ph aheived maybe it could be a contender with something like lehigh valley lube.Could clean and protect the bore with it and wouldnt cost us a arm and a leg for it.Could be made right in are own homes. :winking:

 

[Stony]

Well, castor oil is sold as a laxative, and if it helps get the brown stuff out of you, probably helps keep the brown stuff out of your gun :rotf: :rotf: :rotf:

 

[Old Charlie]

Stumpkiller I have been messing with your moose juice for awhile. The first I made I only used castor oil murphy's oil soap and water. This dried on the patches with just a slight oily feeling.
I just made up a new batch and this time I used all the ingredients. The alcohol was 100% pure as used in boat stoves. I had boiled the water to get the chlorine out of it. when I mixed it up the water was still pretty warm. This mixture after drying for three days is still very greasy.
I used some in my GPP .54 and there was very little fouling in the barrel when I cleaned the gun. My question is , is yours that greasy?
Old Charlie

 

[Forster]

Buck knife.
Just a thought...How about the test strips pool owners use to test their pool's ph levels...Jim

 

[paco97]

I MIX this stuff called Ed's Red for my milsurps. You can use it as a cleaner and if you add lanolin to it, it will safely store your rifles for up to 2 years. Its based on a WWII recipe and works great on corrosive WWII ammo, my thoughts are this stuff should work great on BP. You can google it to get the recipe. You might be able to substitute castor oil or lanolin if you want the protection of the CO.

 

[buckknife]

you would need someone with a good meter.From what i understand the results on a strip can vary from the meter.I should have just keep my trap shut.Stumpys moose juice is a good shooting lube and thats good enough. :v
Now if you men want a good lube i will go to town and buy a 4 ounce bottle and fill it up with extar virgin olive oil an get it right out to you.You only have to send me 20 dollars for shiping and handling charges. :haha:

 

[rabbit03]

Bet it helps pass those little balls out of the barrel too! :thumbsup:

rabbit03

 

Took my Moose Juice into work today and tested the Ph. 8.2. I made this Juice following Stumpkillers recipe this Spring. I work at a waterplant and our lab equipment is State Certified. Now you know .

 

[bwhoffman]

Buckknife....
I like the "sweet oil" myself!
I have mixed it with bee's wax for winter, dont really know why! and also MOS,but now I'm hearing that it may have salts in it,dont know for positive.
So for now olive oil or olive oil and sting bee stuff.


Brett

 

[Stumpkiller]

. . . something like lehigh valley lube.

I used to use that (LVL) as a liquid lube and to coat the bores after shooting . . . until I got rust in my barrel. According to Deke the new product is again what it was. The last I bought was about three years ago after it fell under Ox-Yoke's umbrella.

That's one of the reasons I was motivated to try my own brews.

So, is 8.2 pH a good number or a bad one? 0 to 14, 7 being center. 8.2 is a little off base? :haha: Sounds about right. Thanks!

 

[Stumpkiller]

Stumpkiller I have been messing with your moose juice for awhile. The first I made I only used castor oil murphy's oil soap and water. This dried on the patches with just a slight oily feeling.
I just made up a new batch and this time I used all the ingredients. The alcohol was 100% pure as used in boat stoves. I had boiled the water to get the chlorine out of it. when I mixed it up the water was still pretty warm. This mixture after drying for three days is still very greasy.
I used some in my GPP .54 and there was very little fouling in the barrel when I cleaned the gun. My question is , is yours that greasy?
Old Charlie

It is very possible that being warm the alcohol and witch hazel evaporated off too quickly, but I don't know why it would stay wet once the water had evaporated. I did find the witch hazel helps "smear" the lube onto metal, enough so that I left it in the mix even though it seems otherwise useless. It is a "volatile oil" and heat will dissipate it.

I can lay a patch on glass and it won't leave much of a mark, but pressing down causes the oils to squeeze out. I use 0.021" cotton tick (Joanne's) and Ox Yoke bulk cottom (0.010" & 0.015"). These seem to hold the lube in a "semi-dry" state. I also wash my material with detergent to get the sizing and treatments out. Maybe that would prevent absorption (if you didn't)?

I dry my cotton strips overnight laid flat on wax paper (after two dunks with a day between) and then roll them up and store them in baggies or wrapped tight in wax paper (looks more authentic that way). If I handle the strips I have an oil film on my hands. Any pressure forces the oils out of the weave. They are not dripping, but yes, they are greasy. I carry mine in deerskin bags that I have worked hot, melted beeswax into while turned inside out. When dry the leather is hard and serves as a barrier to keep my shooting bag oil and grease free.

 

[buckknife]

Thanks Charlie.Stumpy 8.2,man i was way off.That murphys must be some powerfull stuff if one part can bring up the witch hazel to be that basic.I will use it sparingly in my water from now on.If i would have ran a patch of water or 2 after the moose juice that might have brought it closer to 7 before i applyed the caster oil.
8.2 would be alright againts the acids of black powder fouling i would think as long as it was brought back close to netural sometime in the near future.