Remove crayon lube

[JudgeBAC]

Recently I found a bunch of commercial cast boolits for sale at ridiculous prices. ( 2 boxes of 500 230 gr. 410 for $10.00 per box). Fortunately the BHN is 13 which is unusual for commercial boolits. Most are in the 22-23 BHN range. Unfortunately, they are lubed with the usual commercial lube that looks like a crayon, very hard and worthless as lube.

So, how do you remove the crayon lube? Or, should I just lube with LLA and leave the crayon lube on?

[Ben]

I'd think that a thin coat of Lee Liquid Alox would be just fine for your bullets. They should shoot just fine.

Ben

[MT Gianni]

Find out how they shoot and if they lead with what is on them before you fix what might not be wrong. Solutions as boiling to remove lube could anneal the alloy and scraping old lube out with a dental tool takes more time than most of us have. Gianni

[Bret4207]

Agree with Gianni. Some folks say the hard lubes work OK. Try it and see first.

[pumpguy]

Before I got my mold for my .357, I bought commercial crayon lube and tumbled in LLA. It worked just fine.

[MtGun44]

I've never used it personally, but a friend that didn't cast but shot a lot
would by commercial cast bullets, freeze them in the freezer and shake the
bullets (cold) in a box and they knock the brittle crayonlube off, apparently
pretty thoroughly. He would then run them thru the lubsizer and use normal
alox/beeswax lube. He claims it is easy to do.

Bill

[Larry Gibson]

Might have to try the freezer method but for years I've been washing the lube off with Coleman fuel (white gas works fine but is now almost impossible to find). I put the bullets in a coffee can and fill will fuel until bullets are covered. Let them sit a while, overnite is usually pretty good. Drain off the fuel ( I started with a half can of Coleman and drain it back into the can to use over and over). Spread a thick layer of newspaper down ( put it on my graveled walk out back) and pour the bullets out onto it. If I've drained the fuel well there is not any real soak through. Spread the bullets around a bit then I put them on a large old bath towel and take inside to dry thoroughly. I either then tumble lube them or run through the 450 to lube with Javelina. Sounds a lot harder and more involved than it is. It really is a pretty simple process and well worth the effort with the quanity of bullets you have.

I've had limited results with just tumble lubing the bullets leaving the wax lube on. Sometimes it word and sometimes it doesn't and leading is the result. With the washed and relubed bullets I've never gotten any leading.

Larry Gibson

[dbldblu]

I have a box of Meister cast 115 RNFP that are lubed with the hard blue lube. Among other things I use them for subsonic 30-30 loads. I always noticed that the first group of 5 would be great and then the next group would be larger. I tried this several times and it was always the same. Then, on a hunch I took my cleaning rod along. The drill was fire 3 rounds, run a dry patch through, 3 more rounds, etc. Bingo, no more group size decay. Next I will try the freezer trick (thanks for that one) and lube with something else.

[imashooter2]

Boil them. The lube melts and floats. Then let the pot cool and pull the disk of lube off the top.

[standles]

+2

This is a method I used a couple of times and it works well.

Steven

Boil them. The lube melts and floats. Then let the pot cool and pull the disk of lube off the top.

[MT Gianni]

If you boil water dropped you will anneal the alloy to an unknown hardness unless you retest it. If it takes more than 1 batch to do they will not be the same hardness. Gianni

[hpdrifter]

is 13bnh a water dropped hardness?

[imashooter2]

is 13bnh a water dropped hardness?

Probably not.

[DanM]

No need to remove the commercial crayon lube. I used to use store bought boolits, and always gave them a tumble with LLA over the top of the crayon stuff. Worked just fine with .45acp....