Tumbling you boolits

[mattbowen]

I just had a friend ask me if I tumbled my boolits after i cast them? I told him no because I didn't think you need to. He doesn't cast so I wanted to ask someone who knows, thats why I am asking.

Thanks

Matt

[Tazman1602]

Ask him why he tumbles them and then let the rest of us know why we should be doing this? Maybe he actually meant Tumble Lubing?

Nah, nobody who casts would actually ask that I don't think..................

Art

[LAH]

I guess you could tumble frosted bullets & make them shine but talk about lead dust! I wouldn't want anywhere near that media.

[excess650]

I would think it detrimental to do this to plainbase bullets as the bases would get damaged. The only reason I could think of to tumble cast bullets would be to apply moly.

[MakeMineA10mm]

He's probably talking about tumble-lubing, which is something that is done with liquid alox. (There's a couple companies that offer it, Lee being the most commercially famous, but Lars, who is a member here, sells his version too, which happens to be cheaper than Lee's.) Basically, it's a liquid lube, and you put a handfull of boolits in some wax paper, pour on a small amount of the lube, and then roll them around until thoroughly coated. Then, stand the boolits on another piece of wax paper to dry overnight before loading.

Anyway, some people love tumble lubing, and some people don't like it at all. A few people do both and tumble lube, then run the boolits through a lubri-sizer to put lube in the grease grooves. I think this has had mixed results, if I remember correctly.

My main issue with tumble lubing is the dry time. A lot of people don't like the mess involved. Still others question if it does that good of a job of lubing.


The other (remote) possibility is if he was talking about moly-coating your cast boolits. I think this is mainly a loading technique for jacketed bullets and haven't heard of a lot of experimenting with this in cast.

[Jim]

I have tumbled jacketed bullets that were old and tarnished, but never cast Boolits.

Matt, I sent you a PM the other day.

[mattbowen]

I asked him why he would tumble them and he said something about to remove the imperfections. I told him that I didn't know about that but if the boolit had imperfections I would just melt it back down and pour it again. Thanks guys

Jim I never think to check the welcome box I just looked and will be sending you something back.

Matt

[Rangefinder]

I've known guys with OCD that will tumble RB's to take off what's left of the sprew bump---but for a boolit it would completely eliminate the purpose of a good mold by producing consistently terrible boolits.

[mattbowen]

That might be what he was referring to about tumbling, that would make more sense.

And how true a statement on you signature

[GabbyM]

I’ve talked to a few people who thought commercial casters tumbled there bullets. What they are seeing is indeed a tumbled bullet. Tumbled in the collator as an incidental negative side effect of that operation. Collators are another reason hard cast bullets work better for commercial operations.

[mattbowen]

Thanks , When I see him tomorrow I will let him know.

Thanks again

Matt

[MakeMineA10mm]

I’ve talked to a few people who thought commercial casters tumbled there bullets. What they are seeing is indeed a tumbled bullet. Tumbled in the collator as an incidental negative side effect of that operation. Collators are another reason hard cast bullets work better for commercial operations.

Yep, exactly. I had the good fortune of buying the commercial casting equipment I have off a guy who was OCD, and he refused to use the collator on his Magma sizer. He took it off and sold it. Instead, he cut off ~3' sections of appropriate-diameter PVC tube, capped one end, and filled them with boolits after they had cooled from casting. When it was time to size, he had a mount that held the inverted tubes on the sizer and allowed the boolits to slide right through. No nicks, dents or other imperfections, and the system also is compatible with softer boolits, but it is more labor intensive than a collator.