Powdered mica to remove stickyness

[Charlie Horse]

It seems that LLA never gets completely dry and it always remains sticky and messy. I keep a saltshaker full of mica on my bench. Sometimes I will lightly coat a batch of tumble lubed bullets with mica before loading. I have never noticed any adverse affects from this, and I wonder why it is not more widely done.
It seems like Hornady cast boolits are coated with mica. That's where I got the idea. Anybody else do this?

[grumpy one]

A while ago I switched from using graphite for neck-sizing lube to using motor mica, by buying a pound of the stuff labelled "mica wad slick". The seller said he'd previously sold a can to a guy who wanted to roll his lubed cast bullets in it. I've thought about it - I'm sure not going to use up a pound of it on case necks, and I use 50/50 lube, which does seem to get all over everything - but I'm conscious that mica, like graphite, is a mild abrasive. It scores the case necks considerably more than the graphite did. I really wouldn't want my bore to look like the case necks do.

[Mallard57]

I thought I read a post recently about someone who dusts their bullets with cornstarch to deal with the stickiness, I haven't tried it myself but I intend to.
Jeff

[Bass Ackward]

Yea I use it. But as grumpy says, it posses mild abrasive properties. Just keep that in perspective. Anything you put down a bore has some abrasive property. Certain lubes don't posses an abrasive property per say, but they do posses a lubricating property. But what if your bullets picked up dust, dirt or something else?

Abrasiveness can be tested for yourself. It's a great education. I used a properly sized wire nut and JB bore paste. I slightly .... polished a forcing cone in a handgun by rotating it with my fingers. Takes 5 complete turns of the nut and you can see rotational swirls with magnifiers. (I used a scope) Then I shot " X " number of rounds of a low pressure / velocity control load sized just under throat until the swirls polished away in that area making that areas finish look like the rest of the bore. (Always in multiples of 6)

You can see the difference between this mix or hardness or that. Between this lube or that. And the difference between stainless and chrome molly too if you want.

My base line was 20-1 with Lithi-Bee and absolutely no antimony, simply because I already had a ton of these made up. Mica appears to be about the same abrasiveness as LLA is as a non lubricator itself. And the effect was not additive.

Before I get jumped, the abrasiveness is about 1/3th the abrasiveness of ACWW (no tin added) itself.

[tnv]

This may sound a little unusual, but I just tried some baby powder (main ingrd. is talc) in the shaker bottle. After the LLA dried overnight, I dusted the bullets lightly with baby powder and loaded them into the cases. Now they don't feel tacky at all. Seems to shoot fine and smells "interesting." No problems so far, although the other shooters do look at me a little strangely. tnv

[DLCTEX]

Baby powder is basically corn starch with perfume added. Dale

[jonk]

My bigger question is, why bother? Who cares if they are slightly tacky? So long as they are dry and don't mess with powder, it doesn't bother me- one of the rare cases when I'm not anal......

[tnv]

For me, the reason is because of it's tacky nature, the lube tends to transfer to the dies. Then dirt/dust sticks to it. However, I do my reloading in the garage...in a cleaner environment I don't suppose it matters. tnv

[Whitespider]

.....why bother? Who cares if they are slightly tacky? So long as they are dry and don't mess with powder.....

It depends on the purpose for the bullets. When I’m bummin’ around the woods or along the river my extra revolver rounds get carried in a jacket pocket. All kinds of crud gets stuck to the LLA, like lint, dirt, fish scales, feathers, bits of leaves, small twigs, you name it. I just don’t want to put that junk down the barrel at somewhere around the speed of sound.

[Charlie Horse]

Yea, I don't like lint and stuff from my pockets sticking to the bullets. So what's better, baby power or mica? Now I wonder if Hornady uses mica, or baby powder, or something completely different.

[fatnhappy]

cornstarch is better, mostly because in the print industry we use it by the ton. It's used to coat freshly printed sheets to prevent offset.

so it's free.

[Ron]

I loaded 200 rounds the other day and after reading about a board member using cornstarch to dust his boolits I gave it a try. It really made handeling them a lot better and that as far as I was concerned was the whole idea. Some cornflower on the press but that's easily cleaned up. I didn't notice any difference when shooting them.

[mto7464]

Dale not all babypowder is corn starch. We have two container of it for the changing table, one says cornstarch the other doesn't. Both are the same brand.
I have heard you do not want to breath in large quantities of the non constarch stuff.
Baby powder is basically corn starch with perfume added. Dale

[MT Gianni]

The non corn starch powder is also a common allergen. If you are allergic it gives you a rash but is a good drying agent if you are not allergic. The stuff you remember after 20 years. Gianni.

[Hackleback]

Baby powder is talc, a very soft stone.

[Bass Ackward]

Supposedly, you do have to watch. Read in the FS where a fella was using talc because he ran out of mica. Forever had leading after that. The smearing kind from stem to stern no matter what he did. Finally had to fire lap with some JB paste to clean it out.

[tnv]

My sister in law left some Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder at my house after the last visit. It has a "shaker" top, so I just dusted the bullets lightly after allowing the lube to harden overnight. I've used the powder on three different loads (.357/.41/.454) at various speeds and have found no problems at all. The bullets are cleaner to load in the dies and there's no clean up afterwards. I don't think they would allow anything that could affect a baby's breathing to be sold as a baby care product. The bores look the same as without the powder dusting. At $2.73 per bottle, I figure I can dust about 3,000 bullets with a bottle. That's very "cost effective" in my book. tnv

[Charlie Horse]

Interesting thread.........

I used to work in a porcelin factory so I've heard a lot about this. Talc is a mineral. If you were to breath in large amounts you would develop silicosis which is a scarring of the lungs. We breath stuff like this all the time. Its in the dust in the air. It takes a lot to harm you.

I'm still wondering if Hornady uses mica. I think Midway markets their mica as a case lube AND cast bullet coating.

[Nazgul]

I have used baby powder fo awhile to keep all my cast, however they are lubed, from sticking to each other. It aslo helps keep the dies clean.

[REDTAIL]

other than midway who else sells mica by the pound?

[Echo]

FWIW, I intend to buy a box of cornstarch next time I go to the commissary, and use it on my boolits. I will also buy a box of COW, and keep both boxes out in the reloading room.

I have spoken.

[dromia]

Cornflour works good, its what I use, its cheap and odourless.

[Scrounger]

Cornflour works good, its what I use, its cheap and odourless.

Cornflour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornflour#column-one), search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornflour#searchInput)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Wiktionary-logo-en.svg/50px-Wiktionary-logo-en.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiktionary-logo-en.svg)

Look up cornflour (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cornflour) in Wiktionary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary), the free dictionary.

Cornflour may be:


Cornmeal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornmeal), flour ground from dried corn
Cornstarch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornstarch), the white, powdered starch of the maize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize) grain; in UK usage, cornflour normally has this particular meaning.
Masa harina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masa_harina), the flour of hominy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominy)
Wheaten starch, in Australia. In England (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England), where early Australian settlers came from, "corn" commonly meant wheat, gradually shifting to mean the New-World cereal maize; this may explain the usage. .[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]

[Rottweiler]

Bought a pound on ebay about a year ago. Was cheaper too.

Did a search for it and found it listed under cosmetics. The seller claimed this was much finer than the stuff used as a lube. I couldn't tell the difference. It works the same