SEVERE leading

[waksupi]

I tried out some of the White Lightning chain lube someone suggested awhile back. The load was 3.6 Gr. Bullseye, behind a Lee 158 gr. bullet, in my .38 Special. After about four shots, the bullets were rather poetic in thier flight, and you couldn't hit a bull in the ass with them. The barrel was VERY badly leaded. So, now I have a lot of cartridges to pull down. I recommend you stay away from this stuff!

[Ricochet]

Ric, did you shake the stuff up really, really well in the bottle before you used it? I've shot 2000 FPS rifle loads (checked) lubed with this stuff that didn't lead a bit. They may actually be easier on the boolits than those Bullseye charges, though. There's a white substance in the mixture that precipitates out in the bottle and sticks to the side and is hard to get back in suspension; it's apparently critical to the lubrication function. It also shows up at the muzzle as a white sootlike deposit from the muzzle blast (and likely is the source of the chamber deposits that the other gentleman with the Glock was troubled by.) At any rate, since others have had trouble with WL, I'm not recommending it, but I do still use the stuff. Have a bottle on the desk in front of me now. Haven't personally run into any problems with it. Since I no longer ride bikes and thanks to Wiljen I now have a big can of liquid Alox in the basement, I doubt I'll be replacing the WL, but it is neater in appearance and to handle than LLA. I've got a bottle of Boeshield T-9 I bought for bike chain lubrication purposes and plan to try out on boolits one of these days, too.

[waksupi]

Richochet, I shook the beejeebers out of it, and double dipped. May be the dry conditions here, but I haven't seen a barrel leaded so bad in years. The same load, with FWFL shoots into about an inch and a quarter at 25 yards. These went into minute of Glacier Park.

[Ricochet]

Well, doggone. I'm buffaloed. Obviously WL isn't the answer for every situation, if it won't stand up to a basic .38 Special load with Bullseye!

But it has performed pretty creditably where I'd applied it heavily (multiple coats) and the bullet was being followed by a gas check. Maybe that was just scraping the lead out, but all I was seeing was that slight grayness at the muzzle, no buildup.

[waksupi]

Well, I'm shooting plain based bullets. Maybe that is part of the explaination?

[Ricochet]

Must be.

[Lloyd Smale]

I ran into the same thing with cable pulling lubricant. Im a lineman and we have 2 gallon tubs of it and figured id be set for life with a couple of them. A hundred rounds later out of my 38 smith thats never leaded before and it the rifling was about plugged solid.

[Ricochet]

Yuck!

Worst leading I've seen is with my Walker replica, pure lead balls, full 60 grain charges of black powder, and any of the traditional blackpowder lubes like Crisco, Dixie's "Old Zip Patch Grease," Minie Lube, etc. smeared on top. The rifling disappears in short order. Funny thing, that "Brown Thunder" glop I came up with from progressively adulterating a can of Johnson's Paste Wax with Lee Liquid Alox, toilet seal ring wax, lanolin and beeswax, is just soft enough to dip out of the can and smear on top with a knife, and cuts the leading to a minimum, mostly a streak along the edge of one land near the muzzle that must have a rough edge.

In rifles with gas checked bullets, it leaves essentially no leading with my favorite full loads of 7383, just a bit of gray at the muzzle. In the Super Blackhawk with soft plain base bullets over full loads of WC820 it gives mild leading, and just a gray trace with gas checks. I made that stuff for melting and dip lubing.

I learned long ago that I could get away with soft plain based bullets and hot loads of W296 or WC820 in my SBH with tolerable levels of leading, but trying to do the same thing with 2400 would quickly fill my bore with lead. The Alliant double based powders simply burn a lot hotter than the Ball powders do, and it makes a big difference in how the lead melts off on the bore surface. The old 240 grain swaged Speer semiwadcutters, about as soft as .22LR bullets with a similar light dry wax coating, don't lead any worse over 22 grains of WC820 at 1575 FPS than they do over 8 grains of Unique at maybe 900-950 FPS. (I'm guessing, I've never shot that plinking load over the Chrony.)