AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: old dog on September 15, 2020, 07:07:02 PM
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Thoughts on Murphy's Oil Soap for a lube.
Old Dog
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When I make up my winter patch lube, I take an (empty) whiskey bottle and fill it to within a few inches of the top with Winter Weight Windshield antifreeze (-40 C), add a couple ounces of neatsfoot oil, and a couple ounces of Murphy's Oil Soap. The concoction does not emulsify, but I shake it up each time I want to use it. This lube is slippery as moose snot.
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Taylor's lube is so good I wouldn't bother with Murphy's Oil Soap. However, if you want to experiment, you could mix up a small batch at 1 part MOS : 6 or 7 parts water. Btw, Dixie Gun Works used to sell a patch lube that smelled exactly like MOS (because that's what it was?).
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I just use the Neetsfoot Oil and WinterWWFluid - no soap. I like the blue coloured fluid - it shoots better. ;)
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"This lube is slippery as moose snot."
What a Canadian! LOL ;) Moose are scarce here in the northern Carolina, so I'll take your word for it.
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Look up Herb he uses it with alcohol .
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I noticed that one of the purpose made lubes smells like that institutional amber liquid hand soap. So I tried MOS straight. I refilled the squeeze bottle with MOS and proceeded as usual.
I put some on the patches I will need for a match. I wring out the shooting patches in mass for consistency. They load easy and I win matches. IF anything from spit to whale oil is sufficient, it makes sense that MOS works too. I bet dish soap, or liquid hand soap would work the same.
I also saturate the cleaning patches at the beginning of the match and wring them out. IT cleans the rifle fine.
Patch lube seems to be very non critical, just use something and it works out. My only gripe with liquid soap is that it make the balls very slippery and easy to fumble.
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I use beeswax and animal fats.
I’m period, and have NEVER tried any modern junk that works as good.
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I use beeswax and animal fats.
I’m period, and have NEVER tried any modern junk that works as good.
Cut the beeswax out and the animal fats will work just as good. Haven't been a fan of beeswax lubes for front stuffers since my musket shooting days.
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Me neither, Clark. Here, in the late fall and winter, anything with beeswax in it, gets too hard for a patch lube.
Other climates may differ. I've seen good results with bullet lubes having beeswax, even in the front stuffer, but
not as a patch lube.
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I use deer tallow. Works fine.
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Liquid soap is liquid soap as far as I'm concerned. There's no "oil" in MOS. The oil is what they saponify with lye to make soap. It's consumed in that process.
I've not used any soaps, nor beeswax for lube, so defer to those other opinions offered here.
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Surprised I didn't see any comments on "Bar Grease". A builder/shooter whom I have a great deal of respect for uses crisco oil. Aint no way anyone could talk him out of it, no way. Guess with the MOS I feel like I'm lubing and cleaning the barrel at the same time. Love all the responses.
Old Dog
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O.K. This is a test RIGHT!!! Just to see if I can straighten all of you out in one response. Murphy’s oil soap has all kind of stuff in it that don’t belong in your gun, and can cause crusty build ups at the breech. Bee’s wax Polymerizes at low temperatures and can also leave deposits in the breech that are hard to remove. Crisco has such a low flash point that in hot dry weather its like shooting a flamethrower. I recommend venison, or mutton tallow, or better yet bear grease.
Hungry Horse
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Bear grease.
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Mutton tallow
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Surprised I didn't see any comments on "Bar Grease" ...
Old Dog
You didn't ask what I use.
Fats of animals: bear grease thickened with tallow is my hunting lube.
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I wouldn't use bacon grease unless you want to season your iron skillet.
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B ear oil and Tracks mink oil, 50/50.
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I have both bear's oil and bear grease (somewhat thicker and white) that melts instantly with the touch of a finger.
I still haven't shot any since getting this a few years ago. Guess I should try it. I used up almost a gallon of it as
patch lube back in the 70's, that is, except for the dollop my wife used for pie crusts when she was out of shortening.
Best pie crusts she ever made.
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It looks like some form of animal fat takes the prize. You wipe with the same thing? Clean with water?
OD
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The only thing I use MOS for is cleaning. But I'll sure second Wade's recommendation regarding bear grease and tallow. I have not ever had a problem with it here in Wi. winters.
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It looks like some form of animal fat takes the prize. You wipe with the same thing? Clean with water?
OD
I clean with water, then dry, then flush with WD40, then patch/blast the excess out the vent or nipple seat, then wipe it down and reassemble the rifle.
I remove all barrels for cleaning, always have. I have not super fragile or bendable tangs. The Average humidity here is 50%, so nothing more than WD40
is needed for storage - rifles are stored muzzle down after cleaning so there is no buildup in the breech area of oil from the barrel. What is there, drains
out the muzzle onto the 2x4 base of the rack.
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It looks like some form of animal fat takes the prize. You wipe with the same thing? Clean with water?
OD
Lots of us load such that we don't wipe at all. Yes water, tepid only, is the ideal solution for black powder residues.
As far as "prize" goes, you'll find two dozen more "recipes" being promoted if you look around a little bit. Patch lube discussion always brings a crowd and everything has been tried, and folks are always trying "something new". Some folks use the same lube for every occasion and others use something different for targets and hunting. Target lubes are often water-based (not there long enough for any problem) whereas hunting lubes should not contain water. Saliva is a popular targets/plinking lube. But know that each different lube may affect POI, so it's important to know which goes where if using different lubes.
As to cleaning, I've never pulled a barrel to clean and don't plan on it (here in long-tang alley). I use tow and a hook/worm for the cleaning process rather than any cloth patching. Then water-displacing #40, and tipped on end as Daryl speaks of above. Enjoy the process.
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Ya gota respect a man who stands by his lube.
OD
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We just called it "Murphys Oil" when wes was kids.
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I recently started testing honey-butter and spit as a patch lube. I prelube the patches and then put it into my mouth to add the spit component. It works ok but I can’t seem to get more than 3-4 shots off per range session....
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I recently started testing honey-butter and spit as a patch lube. I prelude the patches and then put it into my mouth to add the spit component. It works ok but I can’t seem to get more than 3-4 shots off per range session....
Now THAT'S funny!
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I recently started testing honey-butter and spit as a patch lube. I prelube the patches and then put it into my mouth to add the spit component. It works ok but I can’t seem to get more than 3-4 shots off per range session....
A long time black powder shooting friend of ours, now gone to his reward, used to use brandy/spit as a patch lube. In between shots, he'd have a brandy patch in his mouth,
getting it all spitted up.
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on the range i use alcohol, murphy's oil soap, and ballistol. mixed equal parts. spray my ticking and let dry some then load. i can shoot long as i want with no swabbing. for hunting i load with beeswax and olive oil mix. i have been cleaning by swabbing first with alcohol to break up fouling, then murphy's oil soap squirt and mop, it cleans good,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
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All store-bought "soaps" contain salt. That is,, good ol' sodium chloride, same thing as in your kitchen.
Same thing as rusts iron.
Nearest I can tell from this site, the best agreed-upon lube is the nasal mucus from either a moose or an owl. Neither, so far as I know, are particularly corrosive to iron or steel.
I spent a bit of time on my job - metallurgist for a specialty steel supplier - chatting with the engineers at Proctor & Gamble to learn a bit about making soap, what is actually soap, &c. They used my employer's fancy corrosion resistant alloy because their Soap production would rust stainless.
Jim K., the P.I.T.A. metallurgist
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Water soluble cutting oil worked for me with a 58 caliber flintlock rifle
I cobbled together about 12 years ago.
Bob Roller
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I’ve tried a lot of stuff and Murphy’s oil soap has been the best. I can shoot all day long with a .32 or .50 and the last ball is as easy or easier to load than the first.. The barrels not even that dirty when I clean it at the end of the day.
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Well, whatever works for you.
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I’ve tried a lot of stuff and Murphy’s oil soap has been the best. I can shoot all day long with a .32 or .50 and the last ball is as easy or easier to load than the first.. The barrels not even that dirty when I clean it at the end of the day.
I see Lehihg Valley Lube is off the market, so I will use the name. I bought some on a whim, it worked fine. It appeared to be liquid soap. I refill the LVL squirt bottle with MOS and get the same result. I have MOS anyway for household cleaning so I use it. Plain water may work just as well as would many other things.
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I’ve tried a lot of stuff and Murphy’s oil soap has been the best. I can shoot all day long with a .32 or .50 and the last ball is as easy or easier to load than the first.. The barrels not even that dirty when I clean it at the end of the day.
I see Lehihg Valley Lube is off the market, so I will use the name. I bought some on a whim, it worked fine. It appeared to be liquid soap. I refill the LVL squirt bottle with MOS and get the same result. I have MOS anyway for household cleaning so I use it. Plain water may work just as well as would many other things.
I have two partial bottles of the original LHV lube but it's nothing like liquid soap.
Mine came in spray bottles. When I first used it I thought it was like using plain water and concerned it would be be hard to seat ball/patch. It loads easily and I have never had to clean during a shooting section. Great stuff sorry it's not available now.
Dennis
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Before he passed, our good friend and shooting buddy, Roy Unrah (Leatherbelly) gave Taylor and I each a quart sealer jar full of LHV.
I still have well over 1/2 a jar of it and I do not see it as a soap. It is VERY slippery & does a good job as a patch lube, for target work.
I do not see it as a hunting lube, but some have used it as such.
Taylor loaded a LHV lubed patched ball over a charge of powder, into a breached pistol barrel and let it sit outside for a week, then pulled the breech and powder
then pushed the ball out. The patch was still damp & no rust, no was the powder fouled by the LHV. This seems to indicate it could be used as a hunting lube, but
I prefer to put my trust in Track's Mink Oil and Neetsfoot Oil as both of those have worked well for me.
LHV and Mr. Flintlock's Lube work similarly and equally, as far as I have seen.
In the .40 and .45 I had to increase my powder charges by 10gr. to get the same accuracy as when using a water based lube - spit or the WWWF + a tich of oil.
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Where/how does one purchase bear grease/bear oil?
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Since you do not list a location, there's this one, however they cannot ship to the USA.
I am sure there are other outfits in the States that sell it. Heard of one but did not locate it.
These are a few locations where it is available in Canada - Googled it.
https://tribalspiritmusic.com/product/bear-grease
https://www.whetung.com/products/bear-grease
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/254186383/bear-grease-healing-salve
https://turtlelodgetradingpost.ca/products/bear-grease-314-ml-10-6-us-fluid-oz
Track's Mink Oil is much less expensive as a patch lube.
https://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/131/1/MINK-OIL
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https://grasslandbeef.com/lamb-tallow
These guys have beef and lamb tallow for low prices. I see my local grocery has beef tallow. I tried bear grease, it works fine. I have to wonder if it wasn't so commonly used because it was easily available rather than superior to our choices today.
Sperm oil was supposed to be spectacular. Modern ATF is equivalent. I never tried it because of the common belief that all petroleum bad. Is synthetic ATF petroleum?? I have not seen enough difference in my selections over the years to compel me to make a study of it.
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As I understand synthetics, 100% synthetic oils are no longer petroleum as they have been synthesized, changed molecularity, however, they may or may not mix with and thus soften black powder fouling. That is the stickler - the lube must be compatible with black powder fouling. Vaseline is not a petroleum oil, it is a
petroleum wax & when mixed with beeswax, roughly 60:40, it makes a terrifically great bullet lube for muzzleloaders or ctg. guns. In my rifles of both ilks, the equal of SPG and that says a lot.
edited - changed the word "lube" to "fouling" -in the first sentence. I guess I was typing faster than my mind was running, last night.
Partial synthetics are a blend of synthetics and petroleum - maybe. Years ago, there was some marketing speculation that some people might accept synthetics if a partial blend, rather than being labeled 100% synthetic, even though those so marked were (likely) 100% synthetic.
Petroleum oils do not mix with/soften BP fouling, which is why petroleum oils are not recommended for lubes, for BP shooting. The whole idea of synthetics was their molecules had a greater compressive strength than-did petroleum oils, and also higher burning and flash points levels - thus they lasted better in high heat conditions, along with not "wearing out" as quickly as petroleum oils, thus "lasting" longer. That is how I understand the synthetic/petroleum wars.
So - a synthetic might work, or not, depending on how it reacts with BP fouling, as in, will it soften and mix with the fouling, or will it remain a separate solution and not mix - THAT is the question.
I suspect some will, some won't.
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I use mutton tallow with some bees wax in warm weather in a Hawken with a 45 cal fast twist barrel breeched for muzzle loading(Ed Rayle barrel). The bullets are put thru a bullet swag that puts the rifling on the bullet then run thru a lube/sizer to lube them. They go down the barrel easy.
I found out after shooting a deer that the bees wax and mutton tallow on the bullet freeze in the cold. I reload right after shooting a deer just in case it gets up to run. Lucky that the first shot did the trick because I broke my ramrod trying to get another bullet down the barrel.
I went back to using Grease Patch. Doesn't freeze. It's not made anymore so when it's gone I'm not sure what to use. Probably mutton tallow. I may try water soluble oil with a little water in it to see if that would freeze. I clean after each shot with it and get better groups doing that with the bullet barrel. That's in warm weather.
It's a problem using a bullet barrel in the winter because of not using a patch. Never thunked up using some winter windshield washer fluid in a lube. I think I used some wax from a toilet sealer ring at one time on bullets.
Mutton tallow was "the thing" back in the day. Whale oil was a "big thing" too. Rare to get today but some lucky people can get some from Alaska.
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I did get an opportunity to try sperm whale oil back in the mid 70's, but it was on it's way out then. I found bear grease to work as well
and mostly used then in the .59 Hawken, along with spit for lube for plinking. Used to do a lot of 100 yard shooting back then, mostly 100
yard shooting with both patched balls and with modified minnie mould slugs. The 675gr. with 165gr. 2F booted quite hard, with the hooked
butt plate, but shot the best at 100yards of all of them. Those were running 1,325fps according to my notes. I used Beeswax/Vaseline for
lube, 60:40. successive shots were a piece of cake to load, in any weather. I only lubed the outside grooves of the bullets. Bill Large Bl., btw.
(https://i.ibb.co/SddB7SS/Mixed021907-6-Corr-zps8551e52b-1.jpg) (https://ibb.co/8dd94kk)
(https://i.ibb.co/J2hgstQ/Mixed021907-8-Corr-zps6d2d3496-1.jpg) (https://ibb.co/rMWNw0s)
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Daryl,
Ever use any of that SPG Lube or that Wonder lube 1,000? I once was looking for a good lube and mixed about every type of natural exotic oil and added butter and Crisco and olive oil and many others. Even added water once I discovered mutton tallow mixed with and holds water in suspension. I just kept adding a little more beeswax and more lubey stuff and got a magical great lube that way. Murphy oil soap was one thing added. So was SPG Lube and that Wonder lube and all. Well, since mutton tallow can hold water in suspension just the tallow and the water would be a good patch lube if the patches were kept in a closed little container so the water wouldn't evaporate.
Best lube I ever made. Thing was.... I kept no records and once the lube was gone my magic lube faded off into the sunset never to be seen again.
I even tried making bees wax ,mutton tallow and paraffin wax and a few other things to make sheets of it. Then punch out grease cookie type things and put those right down on the powder charge with a veg wad over that. That seemed to help. Thing is.....that made smoke trails all the way to the target. If I hit the dirt and made a hole when I got to the target area smoke would still be coming out of the hole. No flame, just smoke. Kinda like tracer loads from a muzzleloader.
I thunk one of those grease cookie things under a ball and mutton tallow on the patch may be good. Heck.....mixing a little of that Murphy oil soap in the mix of mutton tallow with a lil Ballistol for the patch lube might be good. Just for good measure some green muck from Mars mixed in with some spider wizz and a little flower necture from the rain forest may spiff things up. ???
I do like mutton tallow though. Thing is....the danged racoons got into the barn and dug into my mutton tallow and ate every bit of it. They even got into the little boxes of grease cookies made with the bees wax and mutton tallow and parafin wax and ate that too.
Those racoons must not have had any trouble puttin their scat all over the country side. ;D Too bad I didn't put some Murphy Oil soap in that mix.
Anywhoooo......trying different things for lubes and being inventive and innovative is a good thing.
Those pics you posted are cool. You make that Hawken rifle? Lucky guy to have a B. Large barrel. An acquaintance of mine found an old custom rifle with a B.Large barrel on it at an antique store. A 32cal. The barrel is in prime shape.
I use a 500gr. bullet with 75gr. FFG in my Hawken and that is about all the recoil I want to handle being a little older now.
I'm going to try plain Murphy Oil soap on patches and see what happens.
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Years ago I tried the Lube 1000, and more recently the SPG. I found Beeswax/Vaseline mix to be every bit as good as SPG and that SPG by itself, shines as well.
Another that works well for me, was Lyman's "Black Powder Gold".
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I like this site. Never too old to learn new tricks. I was surprised when I read in a mag that had what the some people in the competition used to swipe their bores. NAPA oil they called it. I figgered out that meant water soluble oil for machinist. I tried it. Cuts down on fouling building in the rifle. Doesn't seem to hurt anything.
I thunked some one may have commented some thing about mutton tallow suspending water in it. I have a small container of it. I can swipe my finger across it and sorta see and feel the water stays in the mutton tallow. The only thing I can imagine to do with it is lubing patches with it. I guess the patches would need to be in a sandwich baggy or something closed so some of the water doesn't evaporate.
I once talked with someone that shot in a very arid environment . Mutton tallow with the water suspended in it would probably work good in a really dry place.
How well does beeswax mix with vaseline ?
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I like this site. Never too old to learn new tricks. I was surprised when I read in a mag that had what the some people in the competition used to swipe their bores. NAPA oil they called it. I figgered out that meant water soluble oil for machinist. I tried it. Cuts down on fouling building in the rifle. Doesn't seem to hurt anything.
I thunked some one may have commented some thing about mutton tallow suspending water in it. I have a small container of it. I can swipe my finger across it and sorta see and feel the water stays in the mutton tallow. The only thing I can imagine to do with it is lubing patches with it. I guess the patches would need to be in a sandwich baggy or something closed so some of the water doesn't evaporate.
I once talked with someone that shot in a very arid environment . Mutton tallow with the water suspended in it would probably work good in a really dry place.
How well does beeswax mix with vaseline ?
Not sure but it mixes well with Crisco.
Dennis
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Was using Winter windshield washer fluid and Murphys oil soap but ran out of MOS. Tried Simple Green in place of the MOS. Shot to same POA and cleans up easy with water. Just another option.
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Beeswax/Vaseline mix was for black powder bullet lube, not as a patch lube.
For target shooting in any temp - up to over 100F, WWWF + a bit of Neestfoot oil works fine. The Neetsfoot oil is just to slow evapouration.
shake it up and apply it to pre-cut patchs. I store them in a Trackofthewolf snuff container or round tin. These work well, as-do "Sucrets" tins.
These work very well and are 1 3/4" in dia.
https://www.trackofthewolf.com/List/Item.aspx/104/1
These also work & I use them all.
https://www.trackofthewolf.com/List/Item.aspx/107/1
tinder box 1790B
tinder box 1790S
tinder box B
& tinder box C