Dry moly spray

[lead_her_fly]

I have heard about the moly tumbling kit available from Midway. I have read the threads about Rooster Jacket and have been using Lee Liquid Alox. I have had good results with non-"TL" molds and the Alox but it is really messy and you have to wait overnight for it to dry. Excuse the vernacular but "I ain't gonna use no blow dryer on my boolits."
I have some experience with maintenance in a foundry setting. They use dry moly spray on a lot of metal to metal surfaces. Sooooooo, lead to stainless steel is a metal to metal surface. :mrgreen:
Has anyone else tried this?
Any success?
Any failures?
Have I totally lost it?

I will give a range report after I shoot some!

:castmine:

[flyingstick]

I made some Moly lube using CRC Moly grease and beeswax. It really shot well but the smell of that moly made me feel sick. The guys I know who have used the Moly spray say about the same thing, "It just stinks too bad".
But to each his own, some may love the smell. I've actually grown fond of the LLA smell drying. The wife says otherwise. So it does it's drying outside of course:)

[lead_her_fly]

I love the smell of LLA! When I shoot indoors my friends say it smells like I am shooting crayons!

[pdawg_shooter]

Like flyingstick, I too have made luge with moly greese, only I used candle wax. Worked great but kind of messy. Im now using Vasilene and wax, with a little STP. Works great on my paper patched bullets, and its cheep !

[flyingstick]

I knew it smelled like something I recognized! No wonder I like it so much. It takes me back to my crayon days:)

[454PB]

I've experimented with various dry moly dips and sprays over the years, and never had a good result. I have not used the one you refer to, but I recently tried some Birchwood Casey dry moly lube, and it was a total failure resulting in severe leading at 1100 fps.

[leftiye]

Midway sells a moly powder to put in lubes. Good price too. Historically, the main objection to moly, and other powdered dry lubes (graphite and teflon) is the problem with getting uniform coverage in the bore. Clumps affect accuracy. MSmoly solves that problem by putting the lube on the bore too.

Perhaps a lube (grease/wax type) that leaves the bore pretty bright with smaller amount of moly would succeed.?

[scrapcan]

I shot quite a few cast boolits out of 38 special and 45 acp that were lubed with a spray on teflon lube, I think it was prism. you could spray it on and run through a push thru sizer then spray them again. It seemed to dry pretty fast, a couple of hours if I remember. Did that until I got an ruger 3 rew in 45 colt. Then I had to learn aoubt proper lube and boolit sizing.

I think I still have a partial can of prism teflon lube.

[lead_her_fly]

Well I took those boolits to the range today. Only shot 12 then quit. The bore was severly leaded. I quess I will just have to stick with LLA for now. I had absolutely no leading with it. Kind of disappointed. It would have been much less mess and faster turn around from furnace to case but, oh well. :D

[leftiye]

Years ago I used a moly lube called "Bullet Master Lube." It came liquid in a can, and you rolled the boolits in it. Then there was Ms Moly, but it dried up in the can so I never got to try it. I just sprayed a bunch or 200 grain .357 Max. boolits with lyman Moly Spray. It doesn't go on very thick, and it is real easy to scrape off at first. You probably need to age them at least a week, maybe more. I always run thes moly coated boolits through a sizer with a larger die than the boolit is sized (size them first, then heat treat them) and lube them with a good grease type lube too. This has worked on all of my most insane lead cast boolit loads. Next I am going to try copper plating my cast boolits, then sizing, then H.T. ing, then spraying, then lubing. Maybe maybe not.

[scrapcan]

Leftiye,

Can you expand on your proposed method of plating? I have always wondered if this was something you could as a home or hobby size operation.

[pdawg_shooter]

I use a dry molly spray from Midway to keep my moulds from rusting. A light spray after use and no problems. I clean the cavitys with carb cleaner and a q-tip before casting.

[leftiye]

Manly,
My guess is- it will probably be simple to plate boolits yourself. I'm looking at a gold plating machine right now that the previous owner did copper plating with too. These machines are expensive. With a little research as to voltage and amperage required, I'd bet that you could use a wall transformer with a rectifier attached, or a car battery charger maybe. Can anyone help me with determining what size transformer could be used?

After that you'll need a flat glass pan (visions cake pan), some copper nitrate solution, and a couple of copper sheets that are the right size. Attach one lead to a sheet (I can't remember + or - right now) stand your boolits on it nose down (if they are flat nosed) to get copper on the base. Put a couple of non conducting spacers on the bottom sheet (just longer than the boolits are). Put the other copper sheet on top of the spacers. Attach the remaining wire to the top sheet, cover both sheets with the copper nitrate solution, and turn it on. Thickness of plating corresponds to time plating is allowed to go on. I've seen pennies gold plated with a d-cell battery. Voltage and amperage will vary with resistance, and size of load to be plated repectively. So a little fiddling around may be necessary.