Recovered boolit still has lube...

[tacotime]

115gr hard cast fired from .32 S&W long at unverified likely near-medium velocity... found the slug and it still has what appears to be virtually untouched lube in the groove about 2/3 around, and then a missing section of lube that looks like it broke out of the groove rather than was melted. So... bad lube, or just not a hot enough load?

[Beagle333]

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chap...ubrication.htm

There's some light reading on just the subject.

[JSnover]

As long as it works inside your barrel, don't worry about it. I've dug hundreds of lubed boolits out of the berm. Aside from normal engraving and having the cr@p knocked out of them when they hit the dirt, they looked pretty good (no evidence of stripping or gas-cutting).

[geargnasher]

Lube too hard for the pressure, soften it with some Vaseline. Lube either needs to all stay or all go right at the muzzle crown unless you're just shooting short distances where the unbalancing effect of erratic/partial lube fling-off isn't noticeable. A partly filled groove IS noticeable at 100 yards, trust me on that one. It's part of what started the Extreme Lube Quest.

Gear

[tacotime]

Thanks for the excellent technical article and thanks for the "all stay or all go" comment - I can see that now.

So to soften the lube, just put some vaseline on the already lubed groove? (These were commercial cast, pre-lubed).

[5Shot]

Lube remaining in the grooves improves aerodynamic airflow and reduces surface turbulance, resulting in better accuracy and deeper penetration.

Just so you know...a rough surface is more aerodynamic at high speeds. Laminar flow has more friction than turbulent flow, and slows the projectile down faster. Just an FYI

[Janoosh]

Gear, thanks for straightening that out for me.
I do believe Outpost75 was being a touch sarcastic. ..but I have been known to be wrong at times.

[geargnasher]

"All stay or all go" is actually a Runfiverun-ism. I've never seen it put better. I've also never had any luck making it "all stay" reliably in hot weather, long strings of fire, or anything past mild handgun velocities/pressures. My solution is a soft lube that retains enough viscosity through use of metal soap grease matrix that it jettisons reliably at all times, yet doesn't get too thin and slippery when the heat and pressure are up.

Gear

[Char-Gar]

I do not like the lube to hang around in my bullet on it's way to the target and it very seldom does. However the worthless hard wax, generally blue, lube used by commercial casters loves to cling to the bullet, another reason why it is worthless.

I use a rather soft lube made from a mixture of beeswax and Vasaline. It does not require a heater, I had never had it run in the summer and it goes by-by from the bullet pretty damn quick you betcha.

[Grump]

Well, all my .45 and .38 loads with RandyRat's Tac#1 Lube keep all of their grooves full all the way to the 50-yard target.

With iron sights, my best boolits also go into 2- to 2-3/4 inches with iron sights over sandbags.

So here's some evidence that "all stay" in handguns up to 850 fps at least can shoot fairly accurately. And this is with an alloy that the SAECO tester says is only BHN 8. The SAECO number goes up to 7 but drops back to 5 by the time the index mark lines up. The way the sprues "ding" I really thought it would be more like BHN 9-11 or so...

But I'm NOT going to argue with what works. Lately I have to heat up the sizer to 95-110° F to get easy and reliable filling of the lube grooves. Leaving the boolits in the flow of the hot air helps a lot too.

[geargnasher]

I do not like the lube to hang around in my bullet on it's way to the target and it very seldom does. However the worthless hard wax, generally blue, lube used by commercial casters loves to cling to the bullet, another reason why it is worthless.

I use a rather soft lube made from a mixture of beeswax and Vasaline. It does not require a heater, I had never had it run in the summer and it goes by-by from the bullet pretty damn quick you betcha.

Vaseline has the unique property of going liquid under pressure alone. Point-blank spatter tests that I've done with an identical lube shows nothing but wet mist, no blobs or chunks leaving the bullet. Good stuff.

Gear

[tacotime]

So let me ask the basic question then, if a lube stays put all the way out of the barrel, what lubrication is it providing?

[Char-Gar]

Vaseline has the unique property of going liquid under pressure alone. Point-blank spatter tests that I've done with an identical lube shows nothing but wet mist, no blobs or chunks leaving the bullet. Good stuff.

Gear

Back around 1960 I needed bullet lube and didn't have much money for store bought stuff and I read somewhere that beeswax with enough Vaseline to soften it for use in a Lyman 45 machine did the job just fine. I went to a local saddle shop and bought a pound of beeswax and stopped at the store for a large jar of Vaseline.

I took and old 1 pound coffee can and bent a spout in it, put the beeswax and some Vaseline in it, set the can in a pan of water on the stove and heated it all up until it melted. Using Vise Grips as a handle I poured some from the can into the Lyman 45, replaced the collar and top and let it cool.

I lubed and sized some bullet for my 357 Magnum and went shooting. Good accuracy and not lead was the result, fully as good as the store bought stuff. Since then it has worked on all handgun and rifle loads up to 2,000 fps just fine. I have tried others over the years, and while some worked just as well, none worked better.

Thus ended my search for bullet lube, 54 years ago!

[geargnasher]

When I was at that stage of the game, a starving engineering student with a chronic shooting habit, free and bottomless supply of wheel weights, and a good .38 revolver, I made tumble lube out of dried-out turtle wax, acetone, and Lee liquid Alox. It did ok, but not great. There wasn't money for a lube-sizer, though the kind old gentleman who introduced me to shooting cast bullets back in high-school had let me use his a few times, so at least I was familiar with the tools. A few years later, when I could afford it, I went in halves on a Lyman 450 with a friend and used what I thought I was supposed to, the venerable Lyman Alox. Used that for over ten years and eventually bought out my friend's half of the sizer and dies. Then I found this site. The rest, as they say, is history.

If I'd had an old Lyman 45, some beeswax, and some old yellow Vaseline back when, I would have been far happier.

Gear

[Outpost75]

Gear, thanks for straightening that out for me.
I do believe Outpost75 was being a touch sarcastic. ..but I have been known to be wrong at times.

I plead guilty to sacasm, but am delighted that someone intelligently corrected my error.

[Grump]

So let me ask the basic question then, if a lube stays put all the way out of the barrel, what lubrication is it providing?

In my case and in at least four handguns, enough.

[geargnasher]

So let me ask the basic question then, if a lube stays put all the way out of the barrel, what lubrication is it providing?

That may be a simple and basic question, but is difficult to answer. For one thing, nobody really knows for sure, but there are theories.

One fact is that it takes very little lube to "lube". I have adequately lubed .30-caliber bullets fired in a 24" barrel by only filling the area ahead of the gas check. The rest is fluff. Depending on the bullet's groove style, alloy composition, and pressure, excess lube may or may not be "pumped" into the gap ahead of the cartridge case mouth or blown out ahead of the bullet before it gets fully engraved.

If the lube mostly stays in the groove and no other problems exist, is there a problem? I don't see one.....however.....often other problems DO exist like trailing-edge leading due to slight gas leaks because the lube lacked fluid sealing properties in that particular situation, or maybe there's some lead rings forming in the revolver throats or forcing cone due the lube failing to flow and make a "ramp" or "bridge" to seal powder gas as the bullet passed these chasms (too-hard bullets exacerbate this sometimes), or perhaps the lube just doesn't leave a good film in the bore that's consistent from shot-to-shot or during brief cooldowns. But, enough lube to fill the groove and stay on the bullet all the way to the target can provide adequate lubrication because a) it doesn't take much to "lube" and "seal", and b) that little bit can be provided by what is displaced by the lands.

Gear

[PalmettoProjectiles]

iirc the lube doesn't all come out of the grooves. the idea is just to help seal up the barrel for the next bullet. it doesn't take much to do that.

[pjames32]

Great article Beagle. THX!

[EMC45]

I use a 50/50 mix of Moly-sulfide axle grease/Beeswax lube. Last batch I made I did a couple squirts of Kroil and threw some of my kid's crayon stubs in it for color. Still turned out puke green. I have also "hardened" up lube with beeswax recently that I got off of here. Soft BP style lube that did right once I threw some beeswax to it. With all my lube I get a nice "lube star" on the crown and last time I shot my .32 S&W-L with the 3118 (one groove lubed only) & 3.5gr. Unique at around 10 yards I got lube spatter on target, hunks of it. Barrel still looked good and still had a nice "star".