Lube grooves in J-boolits

[rvpilot76]

Has anyone ever done this? I think it would be interesting to see how a good high-speed lube would affect group sizes and time between cleaning. Come to think of it, those Barnes Triple Shock bullets have grooves that lube could go in. Hmmmm....ideas?

Kevin

[carpetman]

rvpilot76----Just because something works in one application,does not mean it will in another. Lube on moving parts for example is usually a good idea but don't go greasing the brakes on your car. I knew a guy that him and his wife got ran over by a train. Don't know if this had anything to do with it,but at one time he had two spark plug wires disconnected on his V-8 engine because 6's got better gas mileage. Now to your question. I think the metals jackets are made of are self lubing--somehow they create lube. To do what you are speaking of,ofcourse you would need to know the BHN and would probably find they are too hard,so you'd need to soften them up a bit. To do this you would need to remove the jacket material. You would ofcourse replace the removed metal with something--maybe melted wheel weight would work. Without the jacket for rifle velocity you would need a gas check. The core wouldn't hold a gas check so you would need to melt it down and reshape it(easiest way would be in a mold)so that it would hold a gas check. Most likely this mold would have lube grooves,so just fill em up. There you go you have a lubed jacketed bullet complete with gas check.

[357maximum]

rvpilot...
You could try lees liquid alox on 20 rounds of j bullets, comparing it to 20 rounds of a standard j bullet and see what if anything it gains you. Check em for groups,vel,and standard deviation, then report back your unbiased findings. Or lube the barnes and see. You are never gonna know till you try.....other than gaining velocity and accuracy, I bet you do not gain anything, but sticky abortions of a boouulleiit.

I believe it was winchester to had at one time had a jacketed bullet with a single lube groove somewhere near the base. I cannot tell you for sure, but for some reason, I believe they did. This was proably before my time, but it seems as though they did.

Michael

[dragonrider]

as there are no lube grooves in j_bullets one would have to form them somehouw. doing so would increase the length of the bullet as the moved material would have to go somewhere. Just rolling a groove into the bullet would deform it to the point of uselessness. S o it would have to be done some kind of a die using hydraulic pressure. Can it be done???? abosulely it can. Is it feasable???? Absolutely not.

[GooseGestapo]

I pulled some 60gr SilverTips from some Winchester factory .32acp.

It had a small groove (cannulure) near the base and something resembling a 50/50 alox mixture in it.

Perhaps the aluminum jacket needed some, for some reason.

About the only advantage of lubing a jacketed bullet is to reduce metal fouling of the bore.
This is the touted advantage of the Moly coatings, and Barnes Blue coating on some of their bullets.

The grooving of the TSX eliminates the need and makes the bullets perform like "normal" jacketed bullets as metal displaced by the lands has somewhere to go.

[BruceB]

Some decades back, it was fairly-common in long-range matches in Canada (service-rifle matches, with match-prepped #4s in .303) for some competitors to apply lube to the ogives of the .303 rounds.

Most DCRA matches used (and required) military ammo issued at the range. The lube was available commercially in small round tins like snuff cans, and the shooter just stuck the nose of the bullet into the black gunk and gave it a twist or two, which left a good coating right back to the case mouth.

Shooters using this approach reported drastically-flatter trajectories, as judged by the number of minutes-of-angle applied to their Parker or Parker-Hale match sights, over the longer distances (out to 1000 yards) and also somewhat less wind-sensitivity due to the apparently-higher velocity. Issue MkVII .303 Ball has a nominal velocity of 2440 fps with the 174-grain spire-point. I have no idea what the actual speeds of the lubed rounds were.

Most competitors didn't bother with lubing the rounds, mostly due to the messiness and perhaps some unpredictability from varying amounts of lube from round to round. The matches were fired by single-loading only, so there were no worries about crudding-up the magazine.

I doubt there'd be any risk in trying TSX bullets with lubed grooves...it might even be interesting. I suspect that increased charges would be necessary to equal un-lubed speeds, since the pressure rise would be aomewhat different. Dang...I might just try this, since I have some TSXs on hand. Hmmm....what sort of lube to use????? I'd like to see what magnitude of increase might be available.

[StarMetal]

Goose,

I had to laugh, I have a box of those Win Silver tips in 32acp. Boy, let me tell you, that you pulling the bullet wasn't too far below the velocity of a fired one in those very anemic rounds. They have to be the most anemic 32acp round I've ever fired.

Joe

[omgb]

Try this. Using Tetra gun grease, rub some on the ogive of a few J bullets and fire them over a chronograph. My experience with this indicates a in crease of about 100 fps over non-lubed bullets. Of course, the lube will not stay put for long so you can't do this ahead of time.

[quack1]

Be careful about lubing the ogives of jacketed bullets. I read several accounts of bolt lugs shearing from the practice of dipping the nickle jacketed service bullets in oil or grease to prevent jacket fouling. It seems that was a popular thing in the 20's. The lube slowly migrated into the chamber once the barrel heated up and caused excessive bolt thrust by not allowing the case to grip the chamber walls. I'm at work now and can't look and see what the title is of the book I have,but do remember that it was a collection of old articles published in the teens thru the 30's.

[Dale53]

quack1;
I seem to remember that article was in "Hatcher's Notebook". I'm away from my copy, right now, but I believe I am correct.

The grease is not compressible and when it got between the neck of the case and the chamber, it interfered with bullet release. At any rate, several rifles were blown up at Camp Perry. This was well documented at the time.

Dale53

[omgb]

I should clarify, you take a smear of the Tetra grease and lightly coat the bullet nose. There's not enough to build up or flow back any where. I can imagine that putting a heavy grease in the action would cause all of the problems described. Perhaps even the Tetra stuff would dothat too if enough were smeared in the action. It does bear consideration.

[w30wcf]

rvpilot76,

A few months ago, there was a thread over on leverguns.com regarding this subject. I searched for it but can't find it.

As I recall, accuracy was equal to non lubed bullets and there was a velocity increase of about 5%. I think the test firearm was a .357.

Regarding grease on bullets at Camp Perry back way back in the days of yore, another reason for high pressures that resulted is that grease on the case neck could prevent it from expanding and releasing the bullet as I recall.

w30wcf

[cherok9878]

Don't know if this has anything to do with the thread. I have a partial box of 150 grain 308 Jacked that is very old, they were starting to corrode. I tumble lubed them in Lee Liquid Alox thinned 50/50 with mineral spirits, cured corrosion. I was looking thru some of my loading data and came across a load for my favoriate .308 with this 150 grain load. Assembled 10 and went to the shooting bench. Rifle zero with 165 gr bullet. 150 gr printed aproximately 1/2 in higher than point of aim with best 5 shot group of about 1 in. No pressure indications with extraction or primer. Rifle did seen to clean a might easier. Just my experience FWIW..................larry

[rvpilot76]

I started this thread to see what your experiences were with lubed J-boolits. I also wanted to cut down on the amount of cleaning from copper fouling. However, after looking at the price of the TSX bullets, I don't think I'll have any problem with copper fouling due to excessive rounds launched downrange. Holy sticker-shock Batman, they are proud of those bullets!

Kevin

[steveb]

rvpilot76,

A few months ago, there was a thread over on leverguns.com regarding this subject. I searched for it but can't find it.

As I recall, accuracy was equal to non lubed bullets and there was a velocity increase of about 5%. I think the test firearm was a .357.

Regarding grease on bullets at Camp Perry back way back in the days of yore, another reason for high pressures that resulted is that grease on the case neck could prevent it from expanding and releasing the bullet as I recall.

w30wcf

John, I may be wrong(always that possibility:roll: ) But I think JimT started that thread. I couldnt find it either.

[sjohnson]

quack1;
I seem to remember that article was in "Hatcher's Notebook". I'm away from my copy, right now, but I believe I am correct.

The grease is not compressible and when it got between the neck of the case and the chamber, it interfered with bullet release. At any rate, several rifles were blown up at Camp Perry. This was well documented at the time.

Dale53"Hatcher's Notebook" Chapter XIV, pages 334 and 335 of the Third Edition
Up near the muzzle there would be what seemed to be lumps in the bore which no amount of scrubbing could get out.
...
It develped that these lumps were cupro-nickel,
...
A theory was developed that the way to prevent metal fouling was to provide some kind of lubricant
...
it was routine for the well equipped rifleman to carry with him a small tin pill box of grease called Mobilubricant
...
The bullet was dipped into this just before each shot.

Hatcher goes on to describe the sloppy manner in which some shooters jammed entire cartridges or clips of cartridges into the grease, causing some unfortunate firearm failures, leading to an order prohibiting any lubricant.

[Buckshot]

...........Not germane to lubed bullets but the Swedes using the semi-auto Ag42B would apply a few drops of oil onto the top few rounds in the magazine as a case lube. Due to the direct gas impingement operation and the violence of the extraction process, this eased extraction and lessened broken extractors.

I would suppose that it's possible some oil might also have found it's way to the bullet. I never had any extraction issues with my Ag42B (other then the violence of it). But after reading the above I tried it and in my case it didn't seem to make much difference other then there was a bit more smoke from the breech then normal.

...............Buckshot

[Bucks Owin]

I wonder if what is being called "lube" regarding jacketed boolit loads isn't really sealer. Some factory (and military) ammo I've seen have a sealer applied to the bullet to kinda "glue" the projectile to the case to give more consistent ballistics due to bullet pull....

Sometimes it's like an "asphalt looking" glop....

FWIW,

Dennis [smilie=s:

Lube grooves in J-boolits? More likely cannelures for different seating depths or "crimps" to bond jacket and core more securely...

[bruce drake]

I think the discussion is regarding these bullets produced by Barnes.

I'm a Nosler and Sierra guy when it comes to J-bullets but to each his own.

Bruce

[Blackwater]

Harvey Donaldson used to advocate graphite wads under the bullets of his .220 Swift, and I think he used them with yellow bullets in his .219 Wasp and other calibers as well. He stated the graphite wads significantly extended barrel life of the Swift.

As someone stated, lubes don't need to be on ctg. cases, since that'll increase backthrust on the bolt significantly, and may shear off lugs, etc., but used properly, I don't see any reason that lubing some TSX's wouldn't prove interesting, at worst. The grooves are there to provide places for the metal displaced from the driving bands to go, without increasing pressures, and they make the bullets "fit" a lot more barrels than non-grooved bullets and give better accuracy in a much wider range of barrels.

The only caviat I see is that using lube would likely reduce pressure, so you'd likely have to use more powder just to reach the same velocity and pressure as with unlubed bullets, much as you have to use more powder with moly coated (that's a lube on a bullet, too) bullets.

Haven't done any testing, but that's what seems most likely from the other experimenting I've seen for comparable bullets.

[Bob S]

The grease used in U.S. cal .30 at Perry only caused a problem with a special lot of tin-plated bullets loaded for the 1921 (or 1922?) National Matches: shooters had been greasing bullets for years before this with no reported major difficulties. With the tin-plated bullets, the hope was that the tin plating would eliminate the metal fouling in the bore from the cupro-nickel bullet jackets in use at that time. It did eliminate the fouling, but the bullets "cold soldered" into the case necks, which increased the bullet pull ten-fold, and raised pressures to very high levels, but still within spec (barely). The grease put it over the top. This was discovered at Frankford Arsenal before the matches, and there were ample warnings to shooters at the matches.

There was one rendition of the Krag service bullet that had three grooves that looked a lot like the pic that Bruce Drake posted of the Nosler bullet. These were filled with a waxy substance that reportedly helped minimize throat erosion (probably by helping to provide an effective gas seal during the discharge) and fouling and synergistically functioned as a moisture seal.

Any of you who have fired Swiss GP-11 ammunition made before about 1985 probably noted the green waxy ring at the joint of the bullet and case neck. It's there for the same reason that the Krag bullets were greased: decreased errosion, decre4ased fouling, water sealant). The Swiss decided sometime in the mid-80's that the wax/grease wasn't required, and so deleted it from later production of GP-11. Swiss target shooters evidently thought the stuff had some positive effects on accuracy, because they developed a little device to apply that wax/grease to late-production ammunition issued at Swiss matches. You could probably get one of those gizmos from Swissdagger.

Resp'y,
Bob S.