Is pan-lubing inherently messy?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Every now and then I'll see a beautiful picture of a cast boolit posted on these forums. They are clean, shiny, lead with crisp colorful lube bands.

Are those bullets "prepared" for photographic purposes? Or do you guys have a method or tool that lubes boolits that cleanly?

I pan-lube mine, cut them out, then push them through a Lee sizer. They come out of the lube-cake looking greasy. Then after a trip through the sizer the bands look sharp, but there's usually a ring of lube right at the start of the ogive on the nose. Normally, I just shot ugly boolits, but that was with lever actions and wheel guns. Now I'm tinkering with a 9mm and it helps the auto-loader to have clean ammo.

So what am I doing wrong?

Lube is 50-50 beeswax and deer tallow. Pretty tacky stuff.

[Arkansas Paul]

My lube is pretty soft, so my boolits are not always clean. Sometimes I have lube on the base or a little that comes off when I pluck them out of the lube.

I suspect that a harder lube would be less messy.

I know that some methods produce cleaner boolits, at least for me. If I take needle nose pliers and pluck them out, they are kind of messy.
If I remove the cake from the pan and push them out, they are much cleaner.

[Rcmaveric]

They are most likely using a lubrisizer. I started pan lubing 9mm and would use an old dryer sheet to clean then. I made a Kake Cutter and would clean them as they came out the back end of the cutter made from an old case with the web cut off. It would keep the Lee sizer cleaner and would normal need the bases wiped off. Upgraded to the lubrisizer but i still ocassionale pan or dip lube when testing various lubes.

[Bazoo]

When I pan lube, I clean the nose of the bullets with a rag and something to cut the lube. Normally lighter fluid. I have done a lot with 2:1 beeswax/crisco and didnt have any complaints for standard velocity loads.

I have a lube sizer now, but it went for like 8 years without one. The bullet noses do come out much cleaner and could be loaded without cleaning, provided one is careful to keep the seater die/plug clean.

[Beagle333]

I don't think you can do it as clean as a lubesizer. But they'll definitely be cleaner if you size them before you pan lube. If they won't size easily, give them a tumble of a ridiculously light coat of Alox first, then size and pan lube.

[44Blam]

When I lube, it is usually because I want to shoot some within a week and don't have time to PC them.
BUT, I have a lube sizer and I run them through that and put them nose down in the box I am eventually going to load them into. Then when I load them, I flip the box onto a pad of paper and load them back into the box. Right after I crimp, I wipe the nose with a paper towel.
The lube I use is Ben's Red, so it's about 50% beeswax and then mostly lithium grease with some other lubricants in there. This lube is super soft, but I have not had leading when using it.
Anyway, my boolits are pretty shiny.

[Wayne Smith]

In short, yes! That's why I quit and invested in two lubesizers - the mess in the kitchen. We both cook, but I'm the kitchen cleaner - LOML organizes and picks up, I scrub. It all gets done.

Anyway, I could not figure out how to do it without messing up the kitchen - and the mess is now contained in the lubesizers and only gets into the kitchen when I need to melt lube. One sizer has Ben's red for highspeed and the other has modified Emmerts for BP and pistol.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Ok. So those picture-perfect boolits are either lubed with a piece of equipment I don't have, or cleaned up by hand.

The Lee 6-cavity molds are awesome for making boolits, but cleaning that many is a pain.

[toallmy]

I pan lubed 20 cast boolits yesterday to test , then last night I ordered a lube sizing die . After watching me make such a mess she gladly told me to order the die .

[Kraschenbirn]

Everything I pan-lube is for my BPCR rifles and loaded 'as-cast'. I use three dedicated cake pans - one for each caliber (45-70, 40-65, and 38-55) - and lube my boolits 50 at a time and I don't use a cookie-cutter. Just stand the boolits up in the melted lube, allow the lube to cool, drop the entire boolit/lube cake out of the pan, push the boolits, base-first, out of the lube. Put the lube cake back in it's pan, stand another batch of boolits in the holes from the previous batch, reheat the pan (adding a little more lube to keep all the boolit grooves filled), and repeat until you run out of boolits needing lube.

When you're done and have pushed the last boolits out of the cake, put the cake back in the pan, and store in a large plastic bag. No mess, no fuss. Oh yeah, Emmert's lube works just fine with both BP and smokeless at BP velocity levels, too.

Bill

[gwpercle]

Since I'm a messy person.....I can make the biggest mess doing anything...it amazes me what happens, my pan lubing experience resulted in hot melted lube spilled on the floor, my clothes, the kitchen table , on wife's good dish towels, on my pants, shirt and the dog tracked it around the house after walking through the kitchen. After the mess was cleaned up and the wife calmed down , I went to gunshop and bought a Lyman 450 lube/sizer and mounted it on bench in garage....best thing I ever bought. Not near as messy as my pan lube experience. You can have pan lubing , too much clean up .
Gary

[Bazoo]

I never made a mess in the kitchen pan lubing, did make a horrible smell when I tried making some lube that didnt turn out right. But my beeswax crisco lube didnt give any problem. I have a couple round cake pans I use. When they are cool enough that the lube cake will release, It pops right out, and the bullets push out no problem. Its slow, but I always did it while we were watching tv or I was working on something else, and come back to it ever half hour or so.

[GhostHawk]

Pan lubing is why I switched to BLL.

Greasy sticky lube everywhere. And by the time I got it hard enough that it was not greasy it did not work for @!#$!.

Enter BLL, still have half a bowl of Ben's Red, sits in the corner.

Light coats, 2 for pistol, 3 for rifle over 1400 fps. Slow rifle seems ok with 2.

I do add a bit of Carnuba wax to mine. Seems to make them less sticky, dry faster. Love what it does to the bores.

If your not up for searching out the unobtainable johnson's floor wax either find some lundmark or order some 45/45/10 from White Label. Does not take much. No more mess.

[TXGunNut]

I'm in the process of loading about 1100 assorted 45acp (mostly range pickup) cases with some beautiful NOE H&G 68 clone boolits. As part of the process I'm lubing these pretty boolits with LLA so obviously they're not photogenic afterwards but I'm a lousy photographer so it's all good. ;-) If pan lubing gives you the results you want, go with it. My autoloaders don't mind a bit of extra lube and they don't pick up any dirt between the box and the mag so I don't think the exposed lube is a problem.

[Green Frog]

Everything I pan-lube is for my BPCR rifles and loaded 'as-cast'. I use three dedicated cake pans - one for each caliber (45-70, 40-65, and 38-55) - and lube my boolits 50 at a time and I don't use a cookie-cutter. Just stand the boolits up in the melted lube, allow the lube to cool, drop the entire boolit/lube cake out of the pan, push the boolits, base-first, out of the lube. Put the lube cake back in it's pan, stand another batch of boolits in the holes from the previous batch, reheat the pan (adding a little more lube to keep all the boolit grooves filled), and repeat until you run out of boolits needing lube.

When you're done and have pushed the last boolits out of the cake, put the cake back in the pan, and store in a large plastic bag. No mess, no fuss. Oh yeah, Emmert's lube works just fine with both BP and smokeless at BP velocity levels, too.

Bill

If I didn't know better, I'd swear this was written by Dale53. This is virtually word for word and step by step identical to what he said to me when he showed me his method for pan lubing, right down to the Emmert's lube! He was showing me that I was wrong when I said there was no way to do pan lubing neatly when I didn't have the die I needed for my lubrisizer or my Pope style lube pump. He was right and I was wrong! OP... this is the answer to your question. It has been published elsewhere and I can probably look it up (or ask Dale directly) if you need details. :coffeecom

Froggie

[rhouser]

To me, pan lubing is inherently messy. v/r RCH

[Walter Laich]

taking a slight detour:

all of the above reasons is why I went to powder coating (PC)

It does have a slightly messy part but that is before the baking so you end up with 'jelly beans' that don't have any problems with sticky stuff on them

as you know PC bullets don't require any additional lube so when they are still in my garage in Houston all Texas-summer long I don't have to worry about the lube melting off or attracting dust

[dverna]

With any traditional lube, there will be some degree of "mess". Pan lubing has its place...just not at my place. I have never pan lubed as it did not address my needs. I am a high volume shooter of a few calibers. If I needed to lube less than 50 bullets for a lube trial, I would finger lube them with a lube that permits that method. Some people get their jollies making different lubes and experimenting. For them pan lubing makes sense as it is a pain to clean out a lube/sizer and change lubes. I buy excellent commercial lube from LsStuff or less than $2/stick that works.

I do not listen much to what others say unless they have very similar needs to mine. And nowadays you can go on the net and watch videos of most processes to further evaluate options and make an informed decision.

Some have mentioned having more than one machine so they can run different lubes for different applications. That is what I do. Used Lymans can be had for about $75 so it is not a large investment. Currently have a Star and two Lyman 45's. Pan lubing is cheap, effective, slow and messy. It can never be fast enough, or clean enough for me. YMMV

[Bent Ramrod]

It sort of depends on your lube formula and your technique. If you have a mixture that hardens nicely in the refrigerator AND sticks in the lube grooves, AANNDD is thick enough and stout enough to stand some strain, you can take the lube cake full of boolits and press them out with your thumbs without getting more than a slight amount of grease on your fingertips. If you are quick and the cake and boolits stay cold, you can fill the gaps with fresh boolits, put the cake back in the pan for another warming session and put the boolits into storage. They will look pristine, the lube grooves will be full and you will be able to wipe the ends of your fingers clean with your serviette.

On the other hand, if your lube stays soft, the cake is weak and breaks along a line of boolits, it doesn't stick in the grooves so you have to replace the lube on boolit after boolit with your fingers, and your nose starts to itch whilst you are doing all this good stuff, yes; it can be messy. Really, REALLY messy.

I pan lube cap&ball, muzzleloader, capping breechloader and weirdo experimental boolits that I don't have the dies for. Everything else goes to the lubrisizers, with a prayer of thanks.

[toallmy]

For a small batch to test , I try to dip lube the boolits set them base down on wax paper until cooled then cake cut the extra lube off .

[Bazoo]

The Beeswax / crisco I use, firms up and comes out without mess.... Its the sizing afterwards that is messy. It never occurred to me to size first. I wouldnt even have to use a cakecutter.

[RED BEAR]

Rcbs lumber sizer if adjusted right gives nice clean bullets lube only in grooves. Must agree pan lubing is messy but worked did it for a long time.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

OK. Thanks to the fellow who said he powder coated all his boolits. That caused me to go searching for what the heck that meant.

I've experimented with VHT epoxy paint, and so far it looks good (haven't shot it yet). But I keep reading posts that puzzle me. I read claims that powder coating or spray-painting and baking the boolits for a few minutes is somehow much slower than traditional lubing. I just don't get it.

I stood some boolits on an old pizza box. Sprayed VHT epoxy from a few different directions, let sit until dry to the touch, stood the same boolits on a metal pan and popped 'em in a toaster oven for a while. Turned off toaster oven and let it cool. Pushed through sizer - and they're ready to load!

To do traditional lube, I stand boolits in pan while waiting for lube to melt. Pour lube in pan til lube grooves are full - oh crud! Half the pan has lube up past the crimp-groove! Wash hands, wait til cake is hardened. Cut out boolits with fired case. Push boolits through sizer, clean nasty gunk off sizing die, examine boolits, aw nuts! They all have lube high up on the nose, past the ogive! Wash hands. Using dry towel clean lube off the nose-end of boolits. Wash hands. Load boolits. Wash hands. If I leave the lube on nose of boolits the seating die get fouled with lube and after some time I get erratic seating depths.

For $9 at Autozone I can get a can of VHT epoxy paint and coat what I'm guessing would be 100's of boolits. Say 500, That would be $0.02 per boolit. So if that $0.02 per boolit saves me the hassle of having to individually wipe off excess lube, or keep my seating die from getting fouled, it seems well worth it. Plus if I can shoot softer lead had higher velocity (treat it like a paper-patched boolit) that would be perfect for .357 magnum in a rifle.

Now I suppose I'm comparing pan-lubing to epoxy/powder coating. But lube sizers ain't cheap. If I did the powder coat, I would probably do the BBDT method since I don't really want to spend any money on more equipment.

[D Crockett]

I started with pan lubing (what a mess) then went to tumble lubing (what a mess) the I bought a lube sizer the best money I have ever spent as far as getting rid of the mess I was making plus it turns out it was way faster to do the bullets live and learn D Crockett

[Chill Wills]

posts 10 and 15 are on to it. No mess at all. (how can that be you wonder?!)
BUT, like anything, (like casting) if you don't know how to do it, it will be a mess and working it out on your own takes some persistence.
There is so much bad info on here about pan-lubing that a mess is just about assured! So, you try it once, you won't make that same mistake again.:razz::grin: Then, ....off to the next method.

Here is the first hint. Loose the Kake Cutter.
Okay........ I am ready for the hate mail and letter bombs! :razz: :dung_hits_fan: :popcorn:
P.S. if you are going to send a letter bomb, I like 2F Swiss powder. :not listening:

[beagle]

Yeah man. I started pan lubing 311291s way back when and sizing through a 310 tool sizing die. Lube was Lyman's old graphite lube. I commenced to get my bench black, my clothes black, the management's stove black (I was melting on her burners) and the light switch covers all over the house black. Management was not pleased with this sizing method at all but it works. The newer lubes minus the graphite are better and less messy./beagle

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Chill. Thanks. You've caused me to start searching other problems with pan lubing.

Looks like I have some options and the good news is none of them involve purchasing more equipment (I've already blown my tax refund on shootin' iron).

[Drew P]

Hitek coating is a great way to reduce mess. Both inside the gun and out!

[EMC45]

To me, pan lubing is very messy. Very tedious as well. I began pan lubing when I started casting. I used 50/50 beeswax and Crisco in the pan and then push them through Lee dies. I got a Lyman 4500 and dies for it. I then got a Lyman 45 off here and dedicated it for .358 sizing. I despise pan lubing, almost as much as I despise trimming brass.

[Chill Wills]

To me, pan lubing is very messy. Very tedious as well. I began pan lubing when I started casting. I used 50/50 beeswax and Crisco in the pan and then push them through Lee dies. I got a Lyman 4500 and dies for it. I then got a Lyman 45 off here and dedicated it for .358 sizing. I despise pan lubing, almost as much as I despise trimming brass.

I hear you. A lot of people feel this same way.

Pan lubing can be the easiest, fastest, least messy way to lube, but, you have to know how.

Powder coat does not work for BPCR. For pistol shooting, once setup to do a lot, it may be a good way to go. The jury is still out on accuracy.....match accuracy.

[RogerDat]

I read all about pan lubing, and then decided I really liked tumble lubing and shake and bake powder coating. :-) The first takes a squirt of alox based lube in a big zip lock bag, tumble and dump on tray. The powder coat is a bit more work but works so freaking well and looks great doing it. Tallow/Crisco & bees wax for black powder is dip lube and messy but that's ok it's like baking cookies, you get to look forward to enjoying the finished product the whole time you're making it.

Lube sizer bullets look great but another piece of equipment, and more consumables to buy and keep on hand I just don't feel a compulsion to get started down that path. Saving it for retirement I guess.

[bangerjim]

In a word(s)......................HECK YES!!!!!!! Messiest procedure I ever performed, short of the frontal-lobotomy I once performed.....or was that a bottle-in-front-of-me? I forget.

But it is very messy and I now use PC for all my loads. I would recommend you drop your pans and go to powder coating! You will not be sorry. No greasy mess, no smoke shooting, no leading to mine out of your guns.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

What kind of respirator and cartridges do you use for powder coating? That's one plus for traditional lube - no health risk

[dsayer]

If I didn't know better, I'd swear this was written by Dale53. This is virtually word for word and step by step identical to what he said to me when he showed me his method for pan lubing, right down to the Emmert's lube! He was showing me that I was wrong when I said there was no way to do pan lubing neatly when I didn't have the die I needed for my lubrisizer or my Pope style lube pump. He was right and I was wrong! OP... this is the answer to your question. It has been published elsewhere and I can probably look it up (or ask Dale directly) if you need details. :coffeecom

Froggie

It's also pretty much spot on with the linked article below from SPG. I'm only casting for my muzzleloader currently but this is the method I use to lube my 380gr Lee REALs. The only difference is that the SPG article recommends pushing the boolits out point first. I've actually found the easiest and cleanest method for my purpose is to use one of my plastic speed loader to cut them out. Learned that method from FrontierMuzzleloading on this forum.

http://www.blackpowderspg.com/HTML/images/Pan%20Lubing%20article%20for%20web.pdf

[quilbilly]

I guess it just is personal preference and I don't find it particularly messy. I pan lube with Alox in a special 8" pan used only the job and dry overnight on aluminum foil. I don't do that many boolits at a time (in a day) since I make my alloy for cast boolits after finishing making a fishing jigs commercially. I rarely do over a hundred boolits in a sitting. It might be different if I was doing hundreds of boolits at a time.

[JSnover]

Been pan-lubing for ten years and haven't had half the problems mentioned here. It's like anything else: as messy as you make it.

[JBinMN]

Been pan-lubing for ten years and haven't had half the problems mentioned here. It's like anything else: as messy as you make it.

Not messy for me either... I agree with the underlined above.
:)