I put this question under "technical" because I figured it's a "how-to" or DIY type thing...and if there's a certain process for rendering it specifically for this purpose that makes it any different than the stuff my grandma kept in the cabinet, ya know...like...is the stuff from "The East Woods" of a different composition than the fat from Elsie's kidneys that gets heated for hours and then strained into containers? I don't have any bee hives I can swipe wax from, and I hear trans fluid messes things up...I'm a habitual DIY kinda person and if I can make most of my stuff at home, that's money that can go elsewhere for things like go-fast goodies, or oxy/acetylene refills. My hesitation to post the process is because I haven't tried the homebrew stuff yet, with the vast amounts of knowledge in these HAMB pages and/or members' heads, if it CAN be tried, someone here has done it...hoping to find out before I wind up having to melt everything off and start over
In my very limited and low dollar experience with lead, I found a quick shot of Fluid Film (aerosol) seemed to work well for what I was doing.
Tallow is rendered beef fat.You can make it yourself by getting some beef fat from the butcher, chop it or grind it up and cook it for 6 or 7 hours until the fat melts. Take your time you don't want it to overheat or burn. The easy way is to use a crock pot. Leave it on the back porch, it will stink a bit. When the fat is all melted and it stops bubbling leaving nothing but liquid fat and brown crackling strain off the fat. For your purpose you might want to melt in some beeswax and pour it in a flat cake pan so you can rub your paddles on it. You can get beeswax from a local bee keeper. It will last a long time, if it goes rancid you can sweeten it by melting and boiling.
Some say mutton tallow is better than beef. Mutton comes from sheep. Where you would get sheep fat in north america I don't know.
If you cook it off on your back porch be prepared for every meat eating animal within 10 miles to visit you. That includes bears, fox, and dogs ect.
I grilled steaks for Mother's Day and let the grease drip into the fire...Nice flare ups for the char but not lead.
When I did my apprenticeship as a panelbeater 48 years ago, we were taught to just use clean engine oil.
My experience matches Spanners above. I was taught to use fresh automatic trans fluid and it worked fine and that is still the way I do it.. Have to wash it down with Metal-Prep before priming though.
I got a beeswax toilet seal ring for like 1.99$ Wood is cheap, I cut new paddles for lead work on the bandsaw
I hear ya on the cutting new paddles, I've got piles of hardwood 2"x 4" pieces from a couple "palletcaster" builds, been eyeing those for just this purpose.