Hastings
09-30-2012, 12:56 PM
The problem I'm referring to being solved is the beveled part of the boolit base being filled with lube as if it were a lube groove. I've tried everything suggested before on this and other forums such as the Styrofoam and paper disks, and even rubber, soft plastic, rubber o-rings, and a number of other materials with only varying degrees of success.
The boolit I'm lubing is the Lyman #356637 9mm which has a pretty pronounced bevel. I gave up long ago using the Lyman with these, and went to pan lubing and shooting them as-cast without resizing instead. Then the other day I came up with the idea of using some sort of adapter or gasket that's the exact shape of the boolit base, bevel included. Then effectively they wouldn't even have a bevel during the lube process.
I used a sized boolit as my mold, and simply wrapped the bottom end of it with a thin strip of paper made sticky with a glue stick. The paper stuck beyond the base about 1/8th of an inch or whatever I thought was thick enough to give me a strong enough adapter. Then I filled it with J-B Weld, and ensured that the bevel part was filled and didn't have air bubbles by poking it down with a toothpick. Then I stood the bullet nose up, and let it dry for a day. Then I peeled off the paper and unstuck the J-B Weld gasket/adapter from the boolit base. It looks like a shallow little cup.
This I just placed it on the base of a boolit and sized it. The adapter cup stays in the Lyman and the boolit came out without even a hint of lube near the base. It turned out that it works this good only with absolutely perfect boolits. In order for it to be more forgiving, I discovered that if you just put a piece of paper over the hole with the adapter and place a boolit on top then push it into the sizer, it creates a paper lining in the adapter cup that forms itself better to the more imperfect boolit bases since even a tiny imperfection can let lube into places where you don't want it. I've sized about 1,400 boolits so far, and I can finally do them as fast as I can place them and pull the handle - and not a hint of lube anywhere but in the lube groove!
Next I'm going to experiment with epoxy resins and other materials that may be strong enough yet better mold to the natural imperfections and microscopic differences between the bullet and the base.
The boolit I'm lubing is the Lyman #356637 9mm which has a pretty pronounced bevel. I gave up long ago using the Lyman with these, and went to pan lubing and shooting them as-cast without resizing instead. Then the other day I came up with the idea of using some sort of adapter or gasket that's the exact shape of the boolit base, bevel included. Then effectively they wouldn't even have a bevel during the lube process.
I used a sized boolit as my mold, and simply wrapped the bottom end of it with a thin strip of paper made sticky with a glue stick. The paper stuck beyond the base about 1/8th of an inch or whatever I thought was thick enough to give me a strong enough adapter. Then I filled it with J-B Weld, and ensured that the bevel part was filled and didn't have air bubbles by poking it down with a toothpick. Then I stood the bullet nose up, and let it dry for a day. Then I peeled off the paper and unstuck the J-B Weld gasket/adapter from the boolit base. It looks like a shallow little cup.
This I just placed it on the base of a boolit and sized it. The adapter cup stays in the Lyman and the boolit came out without even a hint of lube near the base. It turned out that it works this good only with absolutely perfect boolits. In order for it to be more forgiving, I discovered that if you just put a piece of paper over the hole with the adapter and place a boolit on top then push it into the sizer, it creates a paper lining in the adapter cup that forms itself better to the more imperfect boolit bases since even a tiny imperfection can let lube into places where you don't want it. I've sized about 1,400 boolits so far, and I can finally do them as fast as I can place them and pull the handle - and not a hint of lube anywhere but in the lube groove!
Next I'm going to experiment with epoxy resins and other materials that may be strong enough yet better mold to the natural imperfections and microscopic differences between the bullet and the base.