Thanks Milsurps for giving us a Black Powder forum. Thought I'd tell this yarn to run up points on the Black Powder site.

40 years ago I bough an Italianicon cheapie pistol. Nobody around to teach me squat. Didn't know about lubing cylinders to prevent chain fire and learned the hard way. Boy is that scary.

30 years later, I wanted to by a SS Ruger Old Army. 10 years later, I found one at a good price last Mother's Day. She didn't want it and I couldn't take back a used pistol, so I had to keep it for myself. Darn, what rotten luck!

Decided that I would lube cylinders, although that is a messy business. Tried Crisco, commercial lubes, etc. Bought some Wonder Wads, found them too expensive. Tried making my own with my .45-70 punch & felt. PIA. Decided to find a home made lubricant from the internet. All the ones I wanted to try used mutton tallow as a base.

Here in the big city, one sees few muttons being raised. Eventually figured out that the big city market might be the place to look. I knew that they sold 'lamb' even though it's actually fully grown sheep (sheep is to mutton as deer & elk is to venison).

Nobody could sell me any mutton fat (tallow) as they buy their meat pre-butchered. Eventually someone suggested I try the Halal (Islamic kosher) butcher elsewhere in the market area. Thought I'd try that.

The Halal butcher deals mostly to Arab restaurants here in Detroit. I had a hard time explaining that I only needed a couple of pounds of fat but eventually they produced some guy who could half speak English. He went into the back and brought me out two pounds of fresh tallow and asked me why I wanted it. When I explained it was for my new gun, the guy got all excited and pretty soon I was standing in a crowd of 7-8 butchers who were listening through the interpreter and each of 'em was asking me a question or mimicking shooting movements.

Turns out they all liked guns and while they had never seen a black powder arm, they all had AK stories from their military service in the Mid-East. Eventually they all shook my hand and refused to accept payment for the 2# of tallow.

Seems that guys working in Halal/Kosher shop are all pretty conservative Muslims and the kind who are ****ed off with the the gangster punks who are taking over Islam. Most of these guys had done their military service in Yemen or Quatar before legally immigrating here. To a one, they all have big families and attend 'church' every week. Somehow, it seems a little odd that these immigrants are so adamantly pro 2A.

So, I got the tallow, had a god time finding it and even acquired a story to tell at deer camp while we clean bp rifles around the woodstove.

The tallow-based lube works but it still is a messy business & a PIA.
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