LLA and JPW: When and Why ?

[watkibe]

For some time ( and for some reason I don't remember, haha) I have been using JPW with LLA.
I can't follow the threads back far enough to find the original reason, but I wonder what it was.

I just got Dick Lee's new 2nd edition book. He says that LLA was someone else's idea that he liked so much that he bought it. And he never mentions JPW.
The LLA/JPW combo is messy, dries slow, accumulates in tumbling containers and puts chunks back in the mix, and accumulates in seating dies, driving me nuts with changing LOA.
I may have only purchased 2 or 3 bottles of LLA in the years I've been doing this. I have mostly used the bottles of lube that comes with the 12 or more die sets I have. I notice that old LLA gets thick and grainy and isn't as good.
Barring being persueaded to resume the orthodox LPW/LLA procedure, I am using JPW only for the other things it's great for, and I'm buying some new LLA and not trying to make the tumbling containers last for years anymore. And I am using LESS lube !

[Jailer]

Have you tried Recluse lube? It's a sticky at the top of the page and works quite well.

[dla]

I just recently tried the 45/45/10 mix and I like it better than straight LLA. It is less sticky and easier to apply a thin coat which reduces the gunk in my dies.

[Gohon]

Wow............my experience is just the opposite. LLA/JPW at a 50/50 mix dries faster and is less tacky when dried. The container for tumbling I use never never puts chunks back into the mix. Guess it has something to do with the one sheet of paper towel I use to wipe it dry when finished for the day.

One thing I have been doing lately is standing the casts up in a shallow dish with enough lube to cover up to the crimp point and then moving them to wax paper to dry. Once I've finished, usual after 200 or so casts I move the cast to a second location on the wax paper and use a putty knife to scrape all the lube up and put it back in the bottle. Since the lube is still wet it will dissolve immediately back into a liquid form with just a few shakes of the bottle. When the bullets are dry and with a now clean nose....no more mess in my seating die.

[Doby45]

Good Lord, after doing all THAT you would come out better with a lubrisizer.

[onondaga]

I use 45:45:10 now for everything and am super happy with how fast and tack free it dries.

Straight LLA can be thinned anytime it gets thick and gloppy to make it more fluid for tumbling. The mineral spirits thinner in it evaporates off fast, just add some more till it shakes easily.

Cleaning the tumble container with a spray of WD40 and a couple paper towels with a glove on is neat and not messy. That will remove any glop from the container. Really I just use a new 1/2 plastic gallon milk container cut half way down and just throw it away when done sometimes if I don't feel like cleaning. Dick Lee gets his LLA from Alox Corp. it is a commercial product used mainly in an after market professional spray undercoat rust preventative for cars and trucks.

The Alox company is local to me and they will fill containers up to one quart for free if you catch the guys in the parking lot at lunch time and tell them you cast boolits.

Gary

[mdi]

I have found alox and or 45-45-10 to be just as messy as you are. I usually don't spill any on my bench, don't get it on my hands, and the only time it touches me is when I set the bullets on their base (I do that so the excess thinned alox runs down to the base, off the nose, and leaves my seater die cleaner). Then 1/2 second with a paper towel cleans up my thumb and forefinger. Of course, if I put the stir stick down on my bench, or slop some alox out of the container, or dribble bullets/alox on my bench, mebbe that would be called "messy"

[dla]

I'm wondering if those of you who find 45/45/10 to messy aren't using way too much. It is extremely easy to use too much. I've lubed maybe only 1K bullets this way, and I've screwed it up multiple times as I have a tough time believing that such a small amount is sufficient.

[gunsablazin]

I use two light coats of 45-45-10, allowing the bullets to dry between coats. A little goes a long way! I have no problems with it gumming up my dies and the ease of use is unsurpassed. I shoot 500-800 cast bullets a month, and I like the ability to shoot 'em without sizing, and the lubrasizer is slow. The only drawback is that I have to clean my competition guns every 500-600 rds. or I get a little lead build up right at the edge of the chamber.

[saint_iverson]

I've recently done quite a few batches using this 45/45/10 method. I remember though, the first batch I ever did I managed a fairly accurate job of getting the 45/45/10 as precise as possible. These came out nicely coated, nontacky... relatively clear exterior that needed double-take to tell they were lubed.

The second batch i made though i cooked too long and evaporated off too much of the mineral spirits. Without the little extra MS there was more residual caught on the container, it didn't coat the boolits as evenly, and it left a tacky residue on the boolits when "dried".

If this is the case you can go through the trouble of fighting to retry the lubing process, but a quick fix is to have some powdered mica. Throw a lil in the tacky batch and it coats the tack quite nicely with no problems as the boolits seated and fired as well as my first micromanaged batch. If you do this, a little bit of mica goes a long way like the LLA/JPW/MS combo will if managed properly.

Again this is my own experience and it has expedited many reloading sessions as I believe the Lee pushthru sizers are faster than any handcranked lubrisizer mentioned above.

Note: I haven't done this with my rifle rounds, but handgun and BP loads have all worked well with this technique...


Clint

[watkibe]

Re-reading Dick Lee is always useful. He casually mentions that one bottle of LLA is enough lube for thousands of bullets...Less is more. I may be indeed be guilty here.
After carefully re-reading Recluse's excellent article on the process (wish the pics were still present) I still don't read why the mixture is better than straight LLA. Any volunteers ? I also admit to never measuring any recipe that doesn't include gunpowder or lead alloy; maybe 45;45;10 is magic.
I tried holding each boolit by the nose and dipping just the bands into the lube...just plain messy ! I tried setting each one down on the base so the lube would drain off the nose...not that effective, slow, and messy ! Now I just dump them on wax paper and all I do is make sure none are touching so they don't stick together, and so they seem to be more uniformly lubed.
Anyway, thanks for the many helpful replies.

[randyrat]

LLA used alone is a little sticky and takes a while to dry.
Adding carnauba wax or JPW to the mix aids in drying time and when it dries it dries fast and hard with very little stickiness.

Using too much of one or the other will cause grief,strife and can be a pain in the posterior also goo up your loading dies a bit.

One mention- you need a little heat when using or adding carnauba/ JPW and many have found an improvement over using LLA alone, including me.

[onondaga]

You take all the fun out of tumble lubing!!!! Shake em, spill em on wax paper and walk away!!!!

gary

[NoDakJak]

I have been experimenting with straight JPW on pistol boolits and also the 310 Greener. I simply drop a heaping tablespoon of JPW in a Ziplock bag and then add the boolits. Set it in the sun in warm weather or over the forced air heating vent in winter and then knead it around. Remove and let air dry for a few minutes. With the 310 Cadet/Greener cartridge it is a bit different. The group buy boolit is a heel type boolit with no lube grooves. I simply take some JPW in my hand, stick the nose of the loaded cartridge between my thumb and forefinger and rotate. This evenly applies a coat of lube that dries hard and clear in just a few minutes. I have had no leading problems at standard velocities up to this time. More testing is to follow. Many people report having trouble finding JPW. I buy mine at the local ACE Hardware. I hope that this info is of some use. Neil

[turbo1889]

I learned to add JPW to my LLA over on the handloads forum not this one. Then I started to mess around with the mix ratio and messing around with the method used to coat the boolits.

I have settled on using a mix that would be more correctly called adding X-lox (cheaper then LLA) to JPW since I'm mixing it in a 75/25 ratio (JPW/X-lox). I then heat the boolits to 350 degrees in the oven and tumble lube them while they are hot in a big cook pan and then dump them into a cardboard box lined with wax paper. It only takes a minute of very gentle swirling to completely coat the boolits so that the dents and dings are minimized and they dry completely in like ten minutes flat and they don't goober up my loading dies. I came up with the idea of heating up the boolits before tumble lubing them on a really cold winter day when I couldn't get regular tumble lubing to work and this is what allowed me to use a mix ratio with a very high percentage of JPW as well without having to add mineral spirits to thin the mix down to a more liquid form. This method can also be used to tumble lube with stick lubes as well like BAC lube and NRA 50/50 but it takes a lot more time swirling to completely melt the harder stick lubes and get them to completely coat the boolits and they don't cling to boolits as tenaciously once dried either so 75/25 is what I continue to use for hot tumble lubing.

I think the heating process, even though I only take them up to 350 degrees and only for a little while helps to make my boolits more uniform in hardness. I water drop everything to allow for higher production rates without denting boolits from dropping them while still just a little soft and this can result in variances in hardness if I do a long production run starting out with a 5-gal bucket of cold water and ending with a bucket that is filled with hot water.

I view JPW when added to LLA (or X-lox) as a hardener and an anti-gooeyfier.

I view LLA (or X-lox) when added to JPW as a binder or glue to make the mix stick to itself and the boolit and a gooeyfier.

Long story short, if its too soft and too gooey then add more JPW. If it is too hard, flakey, or brittle and isn't gooey enough then add more LLA (or X-lox).

[Gohon]

Good Lord, after doing all THAT you would come out better with a lubrisizer.

And a lot poorer. Besides it's a labor of love and I have plenty of free time. I can watch a full hour of Gunsmoke and lube a few hundred bullets at the same time.

[watkibe]

Before I found that "bullet" is correctly spelled "boolit", I never re-lubed after sizing. On this site I found that people who had actually read the instructions from Lee knew that Lee recommended re-lubing.
Dick Lee says most bullets shoot best unsized. OK for non GC boolits, and boolits that the mold doesn't make too big. However, I've always sized all bullets, both handgun models which never get GC'd, and rifle models, which always do.
Lubing needs to be simpler for me, so no more re-lubing, and let's see how that goes.