The brown Lee Alox

[Little Joe]

I tried it on some bullets out of my 444 Marlin chambered Encore and it works good.The bullets used were big ones to boot.No leading in the bore at all .You can't beat that can you?

Little Joe

[Little Joe]

I made a mistake and posted this on the wrong forum.It needs to go to the cast bullet formum.

Sorry about this!!!!!

Out of here for now,
Little Joe

[Ranch Dog]

I love the stuff. I only shot boolits that match my barrel so I'm never looking for a miracle lube to cure all the wrongs in life. It is simple and cheap. I don't have to melt it or buy a luber to apply it.

If you want this moved... send a PM to one of the adminstrators.

[Rod B]

I have been using it for many years on pistol bullets.

I recently tried it on rifle bullets & I am very pleased with its performance.

[Little Joe]

With the use of this Lee brown alox lube i have no need for my Star lube sizer anymore.I have alot of stick lube for it as well.I have red sticks and blue with the blue being to best of all only compairng to brown alox.

Im hoping to be the new owner of a bullet mold from Lee Precision for the good design bullet that im shooting now.Then sometime soon a 35 caliber mold can also be had.The Lee brown alox will be used on both

Out of here for now but will return sooner than later,

Little Joe

[GLL]

Little Joe:

If you ever plan on getting rid of your Star please drop me a note. I have cash in hand ! :) :)

Best Regards,

Jerry

gllewis@pasadena.edu

[versifier]

I have been a vocal proponent of LLA since it first came on the market. I have yet to find a boolit/barrel combination it doesn't work well, or at least adequately with. Lately, I have taken to diluting it with mineral spirits and dipping just the driving bands of my rifle boolits. This keeps the loaded ammo much less messy. Handgun boolits still get tumble lubed, though. Many dust their boolits with mica to minimize mess, too. I have tried it and it works well, but I don't usually bother with it unless the ammo will be stored or it has been loaded for someone else.

[Little Joe]

GLL the Star may go up for sale but im not in a hurry to sell it.I don't really need the money so it will be just gathering dust out in the shed for awhile.

Some say the Star lube sizers are the best of all the lube sizers.

I say a Cool Whip bowl with the Lee brown alox is best.We have 5 votes saying yes but knowone tells how to beat it and 4 saying no you can't beat it.

Out of here again,

Little Joe

[Ricochet]

I think the question's confusing. People who like it might be voting both ways.

I didn't vote, but yes you can beat it, with White Lightning bicycle chain lube. I've relegated the LLA to mould block lubrication duties henceforth. I've still got boolits lubed with LLA on hand, but I'm not applying it to new ones at present.

[Little Joe]

Tell me more about this White Lightning bicycle chain lube.You just spray it on the bullets,load and shoot?Do you tumble lube with it?I guess you could mix it with the Lee brown alox then lube the bullets.

Little Joe

[Ricochet]

I've posted about it several times already. It's a liquid solution of paraffin in hexane with a white substance in suspension that will slowly settle out and need shaking up if it sits for a long time undisturbed. I think that's likely a soap as used in greases. (Most likely this stuff is a repackaged rust preventative coating from Lubrizol, as LLA is.) Squirt it on the boolits, tumble and dry. Much nicer looking and neater to handle than LLA. Dries nearly clear and doesn't pick up dirt.

http://www.performancebike.com/shop/Profile.cfm?SKU=17143&item=40-1654&slitrk=search&slisearch=true

[Ricochet]

And yeah, I'm sure it could be mixed with LLA if someone wanted to for some reason. It'd go back to being a gooey brown mess. 357Maximum tried my idea of mixing LLA with Johnson's Paste Wax before I got around to it, and reported that it looked and felt like chocolate brown hand lotion! He hasn't yet reported, that I've seen, anyway, how that mixture worked when it dried, and I held off on trying it till he did. The ingredients and carriers are miscible, at least. I've switched back and forth firing both of these lubes (and JPW as well) in barrels previously seasoned by firing boolits lubed with the other, without cleaning, and noticed nothing unusual at the switchover. No change in velocities or POI.

I did previously mention an experiment with some hideously oversped soft plain based boolits in my M91/30. The LLA coated ones sprayed the bayonet with molten lead! No visible lead built up in the bore, though. On switching to the same load with WL, the lead spraying stopped. Still no lead in the bore. Didn't get any of those on paper at 100 yards with either lube. Bad load. No more of that for me. But it was an interesting exercise in lube testing. I also loaded some 7.5 Swiss the other day that I expected to be a working maximum cast boolit load, that turned out to be too hot. Didn't shoot accurately (because the boolits were deformed by the excessive pressure, I think), but the WL lube kept the bore nice and clean, and nicely lube starred the muzzle.

[Little Joe]

Im going to give the White Lightning bicycle chain lube a try and thanks for a great idea.

Little joe

[carpetman]

Ricochet---Was wondering why they call that stuff Whie Lightning instead of Mountain Dew?

[versifier]

C-man,
Don't get me wrong, I really like your new avatar, but I find myself staring at her instead of reading your postings. [smilie=1: I guess it's a good sign that I still get easily distracted that way. :mrgreen: Does she like old, bald Italians? It never hurts to ask. Sometimes I still get pleasantly surprised....

[carpetman]

Versifier--I asked her if she likes Italian men? She said she likes Jewish men and Native Americans. I told her my name was Tonto Goldberg.

[rebliss]

Versifier--what ratio are you dilluting your LLA with mineral spirits to?

[bruce drake]

I enjoy using the LLA due to the ease of use but one thing I hate and it happened again today is that the plastic bottles weaken after a while and then the thing cracks on you leaving you with a hand ful of FROG SNOT. If we could convince Lee to start packaging the Lube in the same squeeze tubes they use for their bullet lubricant I'd be a real happy camper regarding this.

Bruce

[Ricochet]

I had that happen to me last month, too. Reminded me more of diarrhea than snot.

[9.3X62AL]

I've used LLA as jacket coating for paper-patched boolits, and YES the little bottle will self-destruct in cool weather if you don't warm it up first. Or dilute it. Or something.

[Joey]

I have used it from the beginning. I cast for C&B, high power rifle, and hand gun. No problem with leading except when I shoot .38 Spl. in my .357's. Leading in the cylinders.

[LET-CA]

It's the only lube I've ever used. I have two Lyman 450's that were given to me but I have yet to set them up. Alox works.

[cherok9878]

I think the question's confusing. People who like it might be voting both ways.

I didn't vote, but yes you can beat it, with White Lightning bicycle chain lube. I've relegated the LLA to mould block lubrication duties henceforth. I've still got boolits lubed with LLA on hand, but I'm not applying it to new ones at present.

With White Lightning being aprox three times the cost of LLA, I think I will stay with the latter, Just my own misguided opinion

[versifier]

Rebliss,
That's not as easy a question to answer as you might suppose, because it changes with the temperature. (And we get quite a range of it up here.) But, it doesn't take much to thin it, maybe 10% ms by volume, if that. FWIW, I use about 1/4 the amount of LA now than I used before I started dipping, there's much less mess to clean up, and the loaded ammo isn't a lint and dirt magnet. Dipping doesn't work with short and round nosed pistol boolits because I can't get a good grip on them, but .358 SWC's and longer rifle boolits are no problem. I use an eyedropper and squirt a couple shots of ms into the bottle the LA comes in, then shake it and check it out. Doesn't need as much in summer as it does in winter, and it doesn't ever need much of a coating on the driving bands to work, either. I used to tumble lube until the lube grooves were full, and boy did that make a mess of the exposed noses. Now, I dip the boolit to the crimp groove and three drops fall off it, then I put it base down on wax paper. In winter it doesn't flow as well in the cold, so I wipe the last drop off on the edge of the container (a small cutoff prescription bottle, 1" high). Sometimes they take two days to dry in hot summer, usually one day in the dry cold of winter. Here it's been Monsoon weather lately - humid and just above freezing, so two days for last few batches. Then, after I size them and seat the gc's, I carefully scrape up the excess LA from the wax paper, now an oozy goo, with a sharpened slat of wood, cram it back into the bottle, add a little more mineral spirits, and shake well. Always add it to the bottle and then shake, ms just floats on top if you try to add it to the dipping container. If you make it too thin, just squirt more LA in and shake it up again. I never let the container of diluted LA get any more than 1/2 full. Store the LA, both diluted and regular, where it is warm, and if you have to nuke it to get it to flow better, take the whole top off first, don't just raise the spout - it clogs, then blewie!!! And it's a bitch to clean off the sides and top of the inside of the nuke, then you gotta do something about the smell of the solvent you used to clean it with, etc., etc., etc. Despite how this might sound, it is an easy and fairly neat process once you have done it.

[j. clark]

I have used liquid alox to lube 140gr. boolits for my 6.5 carcano cav. carbine with fantastic results. I have got much better accuracy with this than anything I have tried before in this little carbine. This includes jacketed.

[Little Joe]

Now thats what I like to hear.

Im going to get some of the chain lube so I can try it out first hand but if the cost is up there to high it will be a one shot deal for me.Then its back to the good old Lee brown alox.

Next time Midway Shooter's Supplies have a sale on the brown alox I will be buying a dozen or so bottles and maybe two dozen.

You just can't have enough of a good thing.

Out of here for now,
Little Joe

[Ricochet]

With White Lightning being aprox three times the cost of LLA, I think I will stay with the latter, Just my own misguided opinion

Yeah, it costs about three times as much, for about three times as much. That's a 12 oz. bottle.

[cherok9878]

I only did one web search, all results found for white lightning were for 4 oz bottles at six to eight dollars. Anyone else get a price per bottle we could compare, not trying to step on anyone's toes, just searching for info on the net.

[rebliss]

Versifier--thanks!

[Little Joe]

Now that Christmas is over i will check out the chain lube.I own it to myself to try it.

Little Joe

[versifier]

I ordered some White Lightning to try it out on little RN handgun boolits. I have a new (to me) .45 mould, Ideal 452-374 that drops great boolits and puts them out at a decent rate despite the fact that it is a single cavity - not a single sticker in 300, never once had to tap the handle bolt. I found it in its original cardboard box covered in dust on a shelf in a dark corner of a small gun shop. The owner didn't even know it was there and threw it in for free when I bought some used die sets.
Then it sat on my shelf for several months until I tried it out the other day. I was looking at the box full of them, as yet unlubed, just thinking about how I'd have to make a total mess of them tumble lubing. Then I spotted Ricochet's post, thought about 22lr's, and decided to try it out. Then there's a 150gr .358RN, a full wadcutter, and a .356 TC that I hate making a mess with. All these boolits perform very well for me with LLA, but I'm interested to see if there will be a difference, positive or negative, in their accuracy/leading. I doubt I'll bother trying it on rifle boolits right away, unless I start to get some leading, which frankly hasn't happened yet, but I will likely be trying some higher velocity experiments when I come out of hibernation in the spring and I might be worth checking out on them at that point.

[Ricochet]

Cherokwhateverthenumberswere, I posted a direct link to a 12 oz. bottle of White Lightning for sale at $11.99 at Performance Bike Shop. If you have a bicycle shop in town, it'll be for sale at Performance's price or they'll match it, I'm sure. The big online marketers are the major competition for all local hobby stores. Guns, bikes, music... My home music store closed down Saturday night.

I've noted a good bit of variation in Lee Liquid Alox prices online as well.

[cabezaverde]

Little Joe,

Did you order your 444 barrel from Midway? I just ordered their last one, and was wondering what you thought of it? Fit, finish, features?

[Little Joe]

cabezaverde I bought my barrel from Fox Ridge Outfitters,TC Custom Shop.The fit and finish is very nice and im sure your TC barrel will be about the same.I hope it shoots as good as mine.

Lube up with that nice Lee brown alox and those bullets will be happy.

Out of here for now,
Little Joe

[cabezaverde]

Little Joe

Got my 444 Encore barrel yesterday, and shot it today. Kind of wierd as it came in a Thompson Center blister pack, but it is not a catalogued caliber. Normal T/C markings.

Anyhoo, this is a shooter. I grabbed a handload I had sitting around, and put 3 shots into the same hole at 50 yards. Recoil is not bad. I am going to like this barrel.

[Little Joe]

:drinks: