Teflon tape for lube ?

[Johnch]

I was at the range last night .
As I waited to go down range to post a target ,I saw a guy shooting a 44 mag with CB.
I ask what he was loading , he stated he was shooting a almost pure lead GC bullet lubed with plumbers teflon tape .
He claimed almost no leading .
I ask HOW
He said you wrap the bullet 4-6 times and size , then load right away.

IMO this would be slow .

I have never heard of this , has anyone else ??


I may try it ,as few rounds as needed for hunting it might be do able but a pain in the @$$

Johnch

[45 2.1]

Its been around for a long time. Usually in relation to patching high speed cast bullets.

[Bass Ackward]

I was at the range last night .
As I waited to go down range to post a target ,I saw a guy shooting a 44 mag with CB. I ask what he was loading , he stated he was shooting a almost pure lead GC bullet lubed with plumbers teflon tape .

I have never heard of this , has anyone else ??

Johnch

John,

Oh yea. Some experts have told me multiple reasons to use it over the years. Let's see if I can remember a few.

One guy said it increased bullet diameter.

Another said it was the only way to make Liquid Alox work.

Another said that he accidently ordered a case of teflon tape instead of electrical tape and by goodness, he was going to use it for something.

Another guy said that he was a $hity caster and mummifying his bullets was the only way to .... respectability.

Those were the best reasons I heard.

[Buckshot]

...........Yup, another way to 'Paper patch' boolits without paper .......er, ah, and no spit, neither . I've also heard of wrapping with sticky backed address lables and masking tape. I HAVE told muself several times that I would try some Teflon wrapped boolits, but as yet haven't indulged. You can buy different width Teflon pipe tape so if you were doing a 540gr 45 slug, you wouldn't have to use that 3/8" wide stuff to wrap it up like a barber's pole.

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

[castalott]

It does work ... a friend wraps .452 tumble lube bullets with several wraps and
shoots it in his 45/70...at +45 acp velocities or so. It stays on our sillly-ette animals if you do your part offhand. (1/2 size but closer than 1/2 distance for iron sighted leverfun!)There is no leading at low velocity...the barrel looks great! The sheep go over with authority too. And we stand at attention after each 'shot' as we think all the confetti means a Parade is coming!

[buck1]

I found this thread in a search. Any advice before I try it?? ...Buck

[Johnch]

I used a modifed version for deer hunting last week with good results .( 3 does with 3 shots , 10' to 80 yds)

It is a pain to wrap the bullets .
It is time consuming .

I wraped 1 bullet ( I used 5 wraps , I picked a number ) took the tape off and cut a bunch of peices the same length .

I then seated the gas check and sized the 44 bullet .
This pushed some teflon onto the side and the rest filled the grease groves

I then lubed with Lee liquid Alox .
BUT several pointed out to me that this step is probely not needed .

I used 296 and a Fed mag pistol primer , someone stated this in his tests hurts accurey.( mag primer)

I am going to do a lot of testing in the coming months to see what works and what dosn't for me .

You can read the posts in my post 40 - 1 on deer

Johnch

[buck1]

Thanks johnch! ...Buck

[kavemankel]

This is a great thread. I am going to try some teflon my next cast loads.

[John in WI]

I never thought about Teflon tape for patching. I was curious about it because I heard part of the magic towards making accurate 12 gauge slug loads was getting the proper slug/bore fit and I was wondering if a little Teflon would help take up a little bit of slop in the fit up.

At least this makes it sound like it's worth a try. Cool idea! Thanks for that tip.

[nhrifle]

I came across this subject a few years ago when I was first interrested in patching. Some people said yeah, best thing ever. Others said waste of time, didn't work (which usually means to me that their first attempt didn't work and they wouldn't put any more effort into it). One thing I do remember was a conversation about the tape giving off poinsonous gasses as it is fired. Might be something for anyone contemplating using this at an indoor range.

[brstevns]

My cousin uses the tape on a Lee 255gr pistol bullet, to bring it up to size for his 45/70 siamese mauser. Not sure what powder he uses but it clock over 2400FPS and shot 1 1/2 100 yard groups.

[Infidel]

Nhrifle mentioned the poisonous gasses. I don't exactly know what they are, but they are related to the teflon itself. OK I guess that was a dumb statement, huh? Anyhow, there is a town on the north side of the Ohio river that was polluted with the **** Dupont was spilling or dumping or pumping into the groundwater. ALL of the residents have sky high levels of this stuff in their blood. They won some kind of class action suit, which means some attorneys got rich. It can't be cleaned up. The teflon frying pans we've all been eating off of for years, has deposited some of this stuff into every one of us. Supposedly everyone in the country has some level of it in their blood, depending on how much exposure there was. If your teflon pan is scratched, you get some. Makes casting boolits out of those stinky ol' wheelweights seem a lot safer, huh?

[Infidel]

Nhrifle mentioned the poisonous gasses. I don't exactly know what they are, but they are related to the teflon itself. OK I guess that was a dumb statement, huh? Anyhow, there is a town on the north side of the Ohio river that was polluted with the pooh Dupont was spilling or dumping or pumping into the groundwater. ALL of the residents have sky high levels of this stuff in their blood. They won some kind of class action suit, which means some attorneys got rich. It can't be cleaned up. The teflon frying pans we've all been eating off of for years, has deposited some of this stuff into every one of us. Supposedly everyone in the country has some level of it in their blood, depending on how much exposure there was. If your teflon pan is scratched, you get some. Makes casting boolits out of those stinky ol' wheelweights seem a lot safer, huh?
Sorry, I had to use pooh, the site didn't like cra p

[Nobade]

I still don't see why folks insist on using teflon for patching when paper is well proven and is like 1,000th of the cost. Plus a lot less hassle to work with and far more repeatable.

[John Boy]

John, here's more on the subject of teflon. Been a topic discussion for a long time ... http://castboolits.gunloads.com/sear...earchid=182565

[dverna]

JB
Link does not work.

[Bullwolf]

I used to be able to find a few threads about paper patching with Teflon tape. Haven't seen one here for a while now.

I tried an experiment with Teflon tape myself once using a 44 Magnum Rossi lever action rifle that had a bit of an oversize bore. I wanted to shoot a really fat boolit through the Rossi, and see if it would improve it's accuracy at all.

I cast 10 unsized Lee C429-240-SWC's using a high tin alloy for max diameter.



I did not use a gas check for this mild load. A 240gr boolit over 10.0 grains of Unique. If memory serves, I used 3-4 wraps of Teflon tape to build up the outer diameter. I also remember pulling a boolit to measure it, and being surprised at how the Teflon tape had sort of swaged itself into the lube grooves.
(sure wish I had taken a picture of that now)

I only shot 10 of the wrapped Teflon tape boolits through the rifle, not very scientific I know but it worked out decent enough. Accuracy was as good as the J-word stuff that I shot alongside of it for comparison. there was no leading, or any fouling in the rifle bore after shooting the Teflon tape patched boolits.



- Bullwolf

[pdawg_shooter]

I started paper patching back in the 60s and all my rifle loads get patched. Someone told me about teflon tape years ago so I tried it, once. What a mess. Strings of teflon went every where, and so did the bullets. Had to spend about 2 hours getting the lead out of the barrel and the teflon mess off the rifle, scope, and me. Went right back to paper. Paper works and has for a long, long time. Plus the paper cleans and polishes the bore. The teflon does not support the bullet from deformation caused by acceleration. It does not protect the bullet from gas cutting. It has none of the benefits of paper. just MHO. I will stick with what works for me.

[Bullwolf]

I started paper patching back in the 60s and all my rifle loads get patched. Someone told me about teflon tape years ago so I tried it, once. What a mess. Strings of teflon went every where, and so did the bullets. Had to spend about 2 hours getting the lead out of the barrel and the teflon mess off the rifle, scope, and me. Went right back to paper. Paper works and has for a long, long time. Plus the paper cleans and polishes the bore. The teflon does not support the bullet from deformation caused by acceleration. It does not protect the bullet from gas cutting. It has none of the benefits of paper. just MHO. I will stick with what works for me.

I only tried wrapping Teflon tape around boolits one time, and on a small quantity of low velocity pistol boolits at that. I wanted to try it out after reading about others doing so successfully, and because I was curious. I found no pieces of Teflon tape residue after my test shots... However, I forgot to mention that I used a Bic Lighter to lightly flame the Teflon tape on the boolits before loading them. I read about someone else doing the same thing to keep them from unraveling during loading or firing. I can't begin to guess how Teflon tape would behave with rifle calibers, or at higher velocities, not having tried it myself.

This wasn't exactly a high stress application. I have had similar results with 44 Special using dry Molly coatings at these pressures and velocities. Like others here, I have tinkered around with dry lubes, spray paint, and even powder coating. I will mention that the dry lubes were not good performers. Some of the dry Molly coatings also stink pretty badly when fired. The Teflon dry coatings I tried did not work very well (poor accuracy and leading, gave high velocities though) and that's before even considering any potential health hazards.

Take my experiment with a grain of salt, and for what it really was. - Me taking the lazy way out of beagling a 44 mould. Of course if you don't try new things, who knows what you will miss out on. In my case it seemed to work decently. It was also way more hassle than it was worth, compared to simply tumble lubing boolits.

I am not skilled in the art of paper patching. I recommend listening to the opinions and advice of those who actually do practice it, and have repeatable results.


- Bullwolf