NEW ! ! T/L Liquid Lube

[popper]

One (too) thick coat on 165gr TC in XDm40 worked fine for me. First time try and A OK. Bore is squeaky clean. Tried once for supers in the BO, didn't work but maybe my fault.

[big bore 99]

I tumbled some 45 colt boolits in Alox with a small knife blade scoop of Mothers past wax and it dried nice an didn't lead my Winchester with mild loads.

[DerekP Houston]

You folks that are buying 6+ bottles of Johnson's floor wax are stocking up for multi-generations of casting/lubing bullets. I bet you have 10+ cases of 22 LR ammo sitting on the floor. I bought 1 bottle in 2014 when I first read this thread along with a quart of LLA from the Forum's bulk supplier. 15K of 45 ACP bullets later and I'm still on my second bottle of Red's Tumble Lube.

Don't let the shelves collapse ! ! !

What, you don't plan for SHTF?!??! ain't like our $$$ is getting to be worth more...frankly wisely invested in lead futures. I still have yet to see a single bottle of this mythical johnson's product.

[RogerDat]

You folks that are buying 6+ bottles of Johnson's floor wax are stocking up for multi-generations of casting/lubing bullets. I bet you have 10+ cases of 22 LR ammo sitting on the floor. I bought 1 bottle in 2014 when I first read this thread along with a quart of LLA from the Forum's bulk supplier. 15K of 45 ACP bullets later and I'm still on my second bottle of Red's Tumble Lube.

Don't let the shelves collapse ! ! !

Buy heavier shelves or brace the ones you have. Ones I put in the garage are rated at 2k lbs. each shelf but lube and such goes inside where it is climate controlled. I'm fine casting outside but otherwise I want my components and self to be comfortable.

I figured a case of the Johnsons would do the trick, stopped looking at 11 cans, thanks for the reminder to buy quart (or two) of LLA from bulk supplier. However now that I have discovered the joys, and cleanliness of powder coat..... who knows maybe I can swap a few bottles for a bigger oven. Really for TL design lee pistol I can't beat the speed and ease of tumble with 45/45/10 or BLL. It just works very well with minimal effort. About the only reason I PC pistol is for fun, and to make sure wife and daughter can easily spot the pink .357 which are light loaded for their use. The quart containers of lubed are all liquid tumble with one or those two recipes.

[Bigslug]

Looks like over ten pages mostly related to hoarding Johnson's wax. . .probably time for another post on application. My pop the ROMOL (Retired Old Man Of Leisure) can take credit for this one. . .

With regards to getting multiple coats on, there's been some thought that drying and reapplying BLL may have a tendency to strip down the previous coat. What we've lately been doing:

1. Dump your bullets into a lidded plastic container and pour in a little more BLL than you think you need. Tumble to distribute evenly.

2. Dump them all out onto a cookie sheet covered with baker's parchment laid shiny side up (the dull side can start absorbing the lube, which you don't want). Glove up and get all the bullets lying on their sides.

3. As the lube starts to thicken and dry, periodically go back with your gloved hand and roll the bullets around in the excess lube thickening on the parchment.

End result is that you still get the thin film on the outer surface that will probably be more consistent than if you just let the bullets lie, and you get a greater buildup in your lube grooves - whatever their design format may be.

[popper]

Too much work. I just dumped ~ 50 in a lunch meat tub, poured some from coke bottle and swirled til no visible BLL left in the tub (a couple swirl sessions). Dumped onto rack I use to HiTek dry Took about 3 days to get hard.

[GhostHawk]

Mine is slightly different than this. I can see using the parchment paper shiny side, that makes sense.

First coat is light, covered plastic container, swirl for 3-4 minutes, remove cover, place in front of small fan. Let dry 5 min, add cover, swirl, uncover, dry some more.

Same for second coat only more drying periods with frequent swirls.

3rd coat I drop into a bankers box lid with plain computer printer paper. It is surprising how slow the paper is to soak up.

I think it is important to work out a system for how much to use.
Mine is based on caliber x grains devided by # of bullets devided by 3.

So for 100 bullets of .30 caliber I would start with 10 drops per coat x 3 coats. Adding an extra 3-4 drops for larger bullets or subtracting for smaller.

I suspect this starts to break down as you get into bigger calibers with large boolits.
Still my .444 bore still looks very nice clean shiny and lead free.

My eye's glance at PC threads and I shrug and move on past.
Why bother, this is so simple and easy. Not to mention low cost.

[jglenn21]

given I can't find any Johnson wax in the ATL area, I ordered some of the Luxmark liquid wax and mixed with Lee alox my first batch using the same 60/40 ratio... 1st impression is that it's a tad thinner than White label lube's 45-45-10..

so far I have only coated 200 or so bullets for my 38 super BE gun while doing another 500 with the White label stuff.... much thinner coating. dries faster too... loading some up this weekend to shoot next week in practice. I've used the White label stuff quite a bit on my Dardus 128gr SWC for the super.. Very low loads of BE 3.5-3.7 have been extremely accurate( 1.6-1.8" at 50 yds out of a RR).

probably not get a chance to use the new bullets with the Ransom next week but will test them to see how they compare to what I normally use..

[webfoot10]

webfoot10, I don't think you want to use the Mother's California Gold Liquid Carnauba wax in place of the One Step. Since auto wax's are meant to polish, they usually have some fine abrasive in them and the Mothers has up to 10% kaolin Clay, which means you will be fire polishing your barrel every round. Might think twice about that. The MSDS explains it.

Stu

stu1ritter, If you use the Mothers California Gold, Just buy the top coat wax, it has no abrasive
compounds in it. @ $9.00 a qt. its not that expensive. I couldn't find any of the Johnson's
liquid floor wax any where around here either.

[destrux]

Found a bottle of Boyd's Customs liquid yellow wax at Ollies Outlets for $2. It looks pretty promising. No abrasives, just wax and solvent, and it's pretty thin.

[jglenn21]

first test with the Luxmark floor polish and LLA went very well...shot 50 or so rounds in practice with my 38 super and no leading.. accuracy seems on par with the 45-45-10 but we'll have to test with the RR to really see.

stuff seems just fine

[destrux]

I tumbled some 45 colt boolits in Alox with a small knife blade scoop of Mothers past wax and it dried nice an didn't lead my Winchester with mild loads.

Just watch to be sure it's their abrasive free formula. Only a few of their waxes are.

[destrux]

What product number of the Lundmark wax are you guys buying? Our local store has three types. All appear to be water based not solvent based since they say they are non-flammable. Lundmark lists a dozen or more types on their website. There should be a 4 digit product number on the bottle though.

Edit: I think I figured it out from the MSDS sheets... you're all using their Liquid Paste Wax #3208 product, correct? It's mostly petroleum distillates, with some waxes and esters.

All the other Lundmark floor waxes are water based and some even contain metal oxides (could be abrasive) so take care not to use the wrong product.

[jglenn21]

yep I used 3208

http://www.lundmarkwax.com/6-2-15_SD...0Wax%20LVP.pdf

[jglenn21]

not that much different from the one step

http://www.scjohnson.com/en/products...ed_states.aspx

[popper]

Had a tough time getting BLL to harden, but started bringing them into the AC and they harden overnite. Leave in the tub and just 'bounce them' to prevent sticking. Read that RD got good accuracy @ 120 with 3 coats of BLL in an x39 > 2K fps. My turn to try.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I like to use 45-45-10 for a first coat of TL, I apply it using a heatgun to warm the boolits, then it dries in 15 minutes. Then I size if necessary, which is most of the time.
then the second coat, I apply BLL. The BLL usually takes overnight, especially in this humid weather.

Last night I did exactly that for my current project of reloading a bunch (1K) of 40 cal.
My 175gr TC Lee mold (traditional lube groove style) drops a nice consistent .402
So these didn't get sized...they are ready to load today.

[popper]

Tried the BLL with 170gr PB in 30/30 today, really like it. No smoke with 9 1/2 gr. Unique. About the same size group as PCd, after I changed the scope to x9 vs x3. No leading, 3 coats. Was going to chrony several loads but battery was dead - I just changed it today - forgot to take a spare. Frustrated so shooting wasn't great, rain & clouds that last week delayed/irritated me but results were reasonable. At least the temp was mid 80F vs the high90 from before. This mould is working better for me than the old RD Lee PB.
edit: 10gr. gave 1445 fps, 9 1/2 = 1400.

[hutch18414]

Tried some BLL 185 gr. in 03A3 today. Load was 34 grs of IMR 4895. 7 out of ten just made one big white spot slightly larger than a quarter on the shoot'n'see target. The 3 that were not in the group were all about 3/4" to the left. And absolutely no leading. I don't have access to a chrony any more so I have no idea about velocity but it had a reasonable amount of recoil. Oh, that was only 2 coats and the distance was 100yds. It seems everytime I think I am going to put BLL to the test, it passes with flying colors. PS: the best accuracy I have ever achieved with cast in this rifle.

[GhostHawk]

Hutch where in the string were the 3 fliers, do you know?

It has been my experience that switching lubes will get you 2-4 shots fired before it settles into the new groove.
A patch dampened with Dextron II or III atf or good gun oil seems to help reduce those.

Might want to try a few seasoning shots before trying for a good group next time.

Good news is your O3A3 should be good to go.
I have had nothing but success with BLL as long as the bullet is big enough.

Give it smaller than what it wants and I get patterns and can see a little leading.