Johnson Paste Wax

[William Worth]

I have acquired a Sig .22 pistol and for the first time ever, I see Sig actually recommends a light oiling of ammo to get them to feed more reliably.

(this will be ML related, bear with me)

Long story short, I thought I would try some Johnson Paste Wax on the ammo.  The gun ran like a top when it wasn't before!  Other .22 pistols that I had that had been very persnickity about what ammo they were fed, ran like a top as well with a trace of JPW!!!  When I opened the tin of wax, I flashed back to my youth, I knew that smell, I was home again, in my folks pantry.

My question has come around to, has anyone tried Johnson Paste Wax as a patch lube?  The stuff is wonderful.  Where has it been all of these years?  (I know, on the store shelf, with me ignoring it).

[Canute Rex]

You made me curious so I went to the SC Johnson site and looked up the ingredients:

Ingredients
Solubilizer

    Deodorized Naptha

Film Formers

    Carnauba Wax
    Cera Microcristallina (I'm assuming this is what we call microcrystalline wax)
    Paraffin

So it's three kinds of wax with a solvent. I'm thinking that without some kind of animal fat or vegetable oil mixed in there it would scudge up your bore fairly quickly. In a cartridge gun it is somewhat isolated from the burning powder, but with BP I think you'd be unhappy.

But hey, I've never tried it. Try a few shots and let science triumph.

[FRJ]

I use it on all my bows and firearms but have never tried it as a patch lube. If you try it please let all of us know how it works. Frank

[northmn]

Works pretty fair to protect the bottom of the barel in the stock.

DP

[Long John]

I use a lube concocted of about 3/4ths bear grease and 1/4 bees wax.  In my experience the presence of the wax makes a major contribution to the ability to load many times without the need to wipe the bore.  Using pure bear grease fouling becomes an issue but using the BG/BW mixture I have fired 50 rounds without a wipe and without loss of accuracy.  I don't know how a pure wax would work.

Best Regards,

John Cholin

[Daryl]

Bear grease, mink oil, NeetsFoot oil, crisco oil or shortening for hunting, while spit, water, water/alcohol, water/alcohol/oil for target shooting only. These along with SPG, SPG/NF oil, Lyman's BP Gold and NF oil - all the same - never have had trouble shooting over 50 shots without wiping.  

That ability is all in the patch/ball combination as long as the lube is as good as any of the above and straight water isn't much of a lube.

What I've found matters the most, is the thickness of the patch and size of ball - as long as there is compression in the bottom of the grooves, it has nothing to do with the lube at all, for any of us.  All lubes I've tried shot cleanly & loading was identical from the 1st. to the 50th.

Just how Johnson's would work, I don't know. I do know that the additon of parafin was less than stellar in my ctg. guns.  BW was immensely better.

[Canute Rex]

A little while back I made some conical paper cartridges after reading about them here. I dipped the ball ends in candle wax as a lube. That got me about three shots before I had to get out a mallet. It took some work to clean it out. Maybe mixed with the other waxes and solvent it would work.

[ottawa]

seems like it would build up a coating in the barrel after  a while unless it burns out completely when fired

[hanshi]

I think it works great on the OUTSIDE; not so sure about the inside.

[Daryl]

Canute is shooting a smoothbore, which brings with it, some extra problems with fouling, as in not having grooves.