[grampajack]

I've found a reasonably inexpensive source for caproic acid. I probably wouldn't want to add too much of it because it will lower the smoke point.

Right now, I'm looking at a blend of coconut and safflower oil. Coconut for its low iodine value and safflower for its high smoke point. If I combined those two, I could probably get a smoke point of 400-450, with a melting point somewhere around 0* F. Anything extra in the cold weather department I could get with caproic acid will be much appreciated. But again, that will lower the smoke point, as well.

Is there anything I can do to raise the smoke point without raising the melting point, thereby negating the purpose of the coaproic acid in the first place? I know for a fact I can add oleic acid to raise the smoke point. Just 10% oleic acid will raise the smoke point by 75 maybe 100 degrees.

In any case, I'm willing to experiment. So how difficult will it be to combine the caproic acid with the base oil? Are we talking graduate level chemistry or just a bit of fancy cooking?

[Intanjir]

Do you mean high-oleic or high-linoleic safflower?

I am skeptical that safflower has a particularly high smoke point.
A lot of credulous internet sources have a 510°F smoke point for 'Safflower Oil' without regard for which variety, and none that I saw link a credible source for this number.

My understanding is that the smoke point is lower when there is a higher content of free fatty acid. You suggested that adding oleic acid will raise the smoke point. How is the oleic added to do this?

Fancy cooking- if you can find a nice procedure.

[grampajack]

The smoke point for safflower oil is 500* F, according to everything I've read. I know it's highly recommended for deep frying because you can get it hotter than canola or soybean oil. But that's only for the highly refined safflower oils. The less refined ones have a smoke point of around 450.

I was wondering the same thing about the oleic acid myself. It has a flash point of 235* F, so not very heat resistant at all. But, canola oil has a higher smoke point if it has a higher oleic acid content. At least according to what I read. There's also a company already using vegetable oils for gun oil, and they specify high oleic content, probably achieved using GMO. I think they specified 80% oleic acid, and their oil is good up to about 500* F. It's called Fireclean. That's actually where I got the idea for doing this. The only problem with Fireclean is that people complain about it gumming up and going rancid if left for several months. And apparently, it has a 2 year shelf life, as per the expiry date on the bottle.

[DrCMS]

I honestly think your on a fools errand thinking you can fix this issue in your kitchen/garage.  Reading what you have posted and your replies to other posts it is quite clear that while you understand what you want this product to do and how it should behave you have no real idea at all how to achieve it.  I think it is very likely that what you want to achieve is impossible.  You can not simply mix A and B to give a new mixture that has properties in between those of A and B; that is just not how it works.  Yes simplistically in your head that makes sense and it should be true but it in just not the case in the real world. 

[grampajack]

Well, as it turns out, the veggie based gun lubes already on the market were just guys mixing stuff in their garages. They really didn't do anything to try to improve them. I don't want to get sued for libel (people already have been), but suffice it to say that these products are for all intents and purposes nothing more than straight up veggie oil. The companies selling them have been called snake oil salesmen by more than a few people. Even then, though, they perform quite well. If nothing else, they've shown us that vegetable based lubricants are indeed practical for guns. The most amazing thing is that the fatty acids make the gun pretty much self cleaning, and they have really amazing corrosion resistance. To get that level of carbon removal and rust protection from a CLP, you have to use something really toxic.

So I'm wondering how good they could be if someone took the time to do more than just mix a few oils and make it smell like mint. It may be a fool's errand, but I like doing stuff like this.

I'm really eager to try the hexanoic acid. Can someone give me a general idea of how I can do it? Again, I want to mix hexanoic acid with fractionated coconut oil.

[Intanjir]

As always, the additional background information is quite appreciated. Fireclean certainly seems to be substantially canola oil from the spectrogram comparisons which have been posted around. What catches my eye though is that a really distinguishing feature of an outstanding gun oil seems to be that sooty matter ends up suspending well in the oil and so the firearm is easily cleaned and the surfaces remain unobstructed.

I find it entirely credible that vegetable oil suspends sooty nonsense well. I remember a controversial toxicity study from 2012 that was done on rats fed Carbon-60(a molecule initially discovered in soot) dissolved in olive oil. Some researchers discovered that vegetable oils were surprisingly good solvents for C60. Some other researchers then realized that this would be an ideal carrier for testing the chronic toxicological effects of C60 on rats since the oil would be nontoxic unlike the established solvents. The handful of rats that were tested ended up living substantially longer than either controls instead given olive oil and controls given water. While much better evidence is needed for elucidating any potential lifespan effect of C60, tissue analysis in the study did show that the olive oil was an excellent vehicle for delivering the carbon particles to the body.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961212003237 See corrigendum for corrected figures.

You have some concern about the toxicity of traditional synthetic gun oils. I think you should be equally concerned about the toxicity of soot. A digestible oil is a bad choice here as it will be completely absorbed and dissolved substances will come along with. This route of absorption also sneaks through the lymphatic system and enters the bloodstream without first being detoxification by the liver. This could result in a much greater exposure to some known nasties in soot, perhaps by several orders of magnitude. A traditional hydrocarbon oil would instead predominantly simply pass through the intestines along with the bulk of any hydrophobic cargo.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I would consider any claim of practical reduced toxicity of vegetable oil gun oil as highly dubious. If toxicity concerns are the raison d'etre for this project then this just does not seem well-founded. Especially as an exercise in well-meaning garage entrepreneurship. 

An olestra-inspired approach using indigestible esters of fatty acids would perhaps have a better chance. But synthesizing fatty esters of sucrose and tuning them to be good carriers for gun soot while hoping for good potential for lubricity even at low temperatures as well as resistance to oxidation and high temperature degradation, is too much for inexperienced garage chemistry.

I think there might be something to the idea of using an indigestible oil with the right fatty acids as a cheap means to suspend soot with low occupational toxicity concern. I wouldn't really know though, I am no expert. I do know that you would need an expert to credibly try for it, or you would have to become one yourself. Even then as DrCMS points out, it might just not work.

[grampajack]

Yea, that's what people are saying about it. I have a hard time believing they didn't use safflower instead of canola, but I guess canola is cheaper. The problem with both oils though is that they're both extremely prone to drying out. Since the military leaves their weapons on the rack for months to years at a time, it needs to last.

As far as being a carrier oil, that's definitely a concern. But it's an equal concern with synthetic non toxic lubes because those are typically mineral oil, which is also a very good carrier. About the only thing you can do is wear gloves when cleaning, and try to make the base product as harmless as possible. One thing to consider is that the entire surface of a gun must be oiled, so you're exposed to the lube every time you touch it.

The potential of the carrier oil is something I've already looked into, and one of the reasons I'm committed to making this stuff completely non toxic. There are low toxicity oils like Ballistol, but they contain some mildly carcinogenic ingredients that have been banned in some countries for use in cosmetics. Not only is the safety of those chemicals suspect to begin with, but probably greatly amplified when suspended in a carrier oil.

Even then, though, the main problems with gun fouling are very small amounts of lead and mercury. Shoot, there's probably more in the average drinking water, not to mention produce from Asia. Compared to the chemicals in most CLPs, a little bit of lead and mercury is the least of your concerns. Like I said, to get the corrosion protection and carbon dissolving properties of vegetable oil you have to use some real nasty stuff. And you get that crap on your skin every time you touch the gun without gloves.

Okay, here's something curious. If I add oleic acid to canola, it raises the melting point. If I add it to coconut oil, it lowers the melting point. How strange is that?