Is pan-lubing inherently messy?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Every now and then I'll see a beautiful picture of a cast boolit posted on these forums. They are clean, shiny, lead with crisp colorful lube bands.

Are those bullets "prepared" for photographic purposes? Or do you guys have a method or tool that lubes boolits that cleanly?

I pan-lube mine, cut them out, then push them through a Lee sizer. They come out of the lube-cake looking greasy. Then after a trip through the sizer the bands look sharp, but there's usually a ring of lube right at the start of the ogive on the nose. Normally, I just shot ugly boolits, but that was with lever actions and wheel guns. Now I'm tinkering with a 9mm and it helps the auto-loader to have clean ammo.

So what am I doing wrong?

Lube is 50-50 beeswax and deer tallow. Pretty tacky stuff.

[Arkansas Paul]

My lube is pretty soft, so my boolits are not always clean. Sometimes I have lube on the base or a little that comes off when I pluck them out of the lube.

I suspect that a harder lube would be less messy.

I know that some methods produce cleaner boolits, at least for me. If I take needle nose pliers and pluck them out, they are kind of messy.
If I remove the cake from the pan and push them out, they are much cleaner.

[Rcmaveric]

They are most likely using a lubrisizer. I started pan lubing 9mm and would use an old dryer sheet to clean then. I made a Kake Cutter and would clean them as they came out the back end of the cutter made from an old case with the web cut off. It would keep the Lee sizer cleaner and would normal need the bases wiped off. Upgraded to the lubrisizer but i still ocassionale pan or dip lube when testing various lubes.

[Bazoo]

When I pan lube, I clean the nose of the bullets with a rag and something to cut the lube. Normally lighter fluid. I have done a lot with 2:1 beeswax/crisco and didnt have any complaints for standard velocity loads.

I have a lube sizer now, but it went for like 8 years without one. The bullet noses do come out much cleaner and could be loaded without cleaning, provided one is careful to keep the seater die/plug clean.

[Beagle333]

I don't think you can do it as clean as a lubesizer. But they'll definitely be cleaner if you size them before you pan lube. If they won't size easily, give them a tumble of a ridiculously light coat of Alox first, then size and pan lube.

[44Blam]

When I lube, it is usually because I want to shoot some within a week and don't have time to PC them.
BUT, I have a lube sizer and I run them through that and put them nose down in the box I am eventually going to load them into. Then when I load them, I flip the box onto a pad of paper and load them back into the box. Right after I crimp, I wipe the nose with a paper towel.
The lube I use is Ben's Red, so it's about 50% beeswax and then mostly lithium grease with some other lubricants in there. This lube is super soft, but I have not had leading when using it.
Anyway, my boolits are pretty shiny.

[Wayne Smith]

In short, yes! That's why I quit and invested in two lubesizers - the mess in the kitchen. We both cook, but I'm the kitchen cleaner - LOML organizes and picks up, I scrub. It all gets done.

Anyway, I could not figure out how to do it without messing up the kitchen - and the mess is now contained in the lubesizers and only gets into the kitchen when I need to melt lube. One sizer has Ben's red for highspeed and the other has modified Emmerts for BP and pistol.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Ok. So those picture-perfect boolits are either lubed with a piece of equipment I don't have, or cleaned up by hand.

The Lee 6-cavity molds are awesome for making boolits, but cleaning that many is a pain.

[toallmy]

I pan lubed 20 cast boolits yesterday to test , then last night I ordered a lube sizing die . After watching me make such a mess she gladly told me to order the die .

[Kraschenbirn]

Everything I pan-lube is for my BPCR rifles and loaded 'as-cast'. I use three dedicated cake pans - one for each caliber (45-70, 40-65, and 38-55) - and lube my boolits 50 at a time and I don't use a cookie-cutter. Just stand the boolits up in the melted lube, allow the lube to cool, drop the entire boolit/lube cake out of the pan, push the boolits, base-first, out of the lube. Put the lube cake back in it's pan, stand another batch of boolits in the holes from the previous batch, reheat the pan (adding a little more lube to keep all the boolit grooves filled), and repeat until you run out of boolits needing lube.

When you're done and have pushed the last boolits out of the cake, put the cake back in the pan, and store in a large plastic bag. No mess, no fuss. Oh yeah, Emmert's lube works just fine with both BP and smokeless at BP velocity levels, too.

Bill

[gwpercle]

Since I'm a messy person.....I can make the biggest mess doing anything...it amazes me what happens, my pan lubing experience resulted in hot melted lube spilled on the floor, my clothes, the kitchen table , on wife's good dish towels, on my pants, shirt and the dog tracked it around the house after walking through the kitchen. After the mess was cleaned up and the wife calmed down , I went to gunshop and bought a Lyman 450 lube/sizer and mounted it on bench in garage....best thing I ever bought. Not near as messy as my pan lube experience. You can have pan lubing , too much clean up .
Gary

[Bazoo]

I never made a mess in the kitchen pan lubing, did make a horrible smell when I tried making some lube that didnt turn out right. But my beeswax crisco lube didnt give any problem. I have a couple round cake pans I use. When they are cool enough that the lube cake will release, It pops right out, and the bullets push out no problem. Its slow, but I always did it while we were watching tv or I was working on something else, and come back to it ever half hour or so.

[GhostHawk]

Pan lubing is why I switched to BLL.

Greasy sticky lube everywhere. And by the time I got it hard enough that it was not greasy it did not work for @!#$!.

Enter BLL, still have half a bowl of Ben's Red, sits in the corner.

Light coats, 2 for pistol, 3 for rifle over 1400 fps. Slow rifle seems ok with 2.

I do add a bit of Carnuba wax to mine. Seems to make them less sticky, dry faster. Love what it does to the bores.

If your not up for searching out the unobtainable johnson's floor wax either find some lundmark or order some 45/45/10 from White Label. Does not take much. No more mess.

[TXGunNut]

I'm in the process of loading about 1100 assorted 45acp (mostly range pickup) cases with some beautiful NOE H&G 68 clone boolits. As part of the process I'm lubing these pretty boolits with LLA so obviously they're not photogenic afterwards but I'm a lousy photographer so it's all good. If pan lubing gives you the results you want, go with it. My autoloaders don't mind a bit of extra lube and they don't pick up any dirt between the box and the mag so I don't think the exposed lube is a problem.

[Green Frog]

Everything I pan-lube is for my BPCR rifles and loaded 'as-cast'. I use three dedicated cake pans - one for each caliber (45-70, 40-65, and 38-55) - and lube my boolits 50 at a time and I don't use a cookie-cutter. Just stand the boolits up in the melted lube, allow the lube to cool, drop the entire boolit/lube cake out of the pan, push the boolits, base-first, out of the lube. Put the lube cake back in it's pan, stand another batch of boolits in the holes from the previous batch, reheat the pan (adding a little more lube to keep all the boolit grooves filled), and repeat until you run out of boolits needing lube.

When you're done and have pushed the last boolits out of the cake, put the cake back in the pan, and store in a large plastic bag. No mess, no fuss. Oh yeah, Emmert's lube works just fine with both BP and smokeless at BP velocity levels, too.

Bill

If I didn't know better, I'd swear this was written by Dale53. This is virtually word for word and step by step identical to what he said to me when he showed me his method for pan lubing, right down to the Emmert's lube! He was showing me that I was wrong when I said there was no way to do pan lubing neatly when I didn't have the die I needed for my lubrisizer or my Pope style lube pump. He was right and I was wrong! OP... this is the answer to your question. It has been published elsewhere and I can probably look it up (or ask Dale directly) if you need details.

Froggie

[rhouser]

To me, pan lubing is inherently messy. v/r RCH

[Walter Laich]

taking a slight detour:

all of the above reasons is why I went to powder coating (PC)

It does have a slightly messy part but that is before the baking so you end up with 'jelly beans' that don't have any problems with sticky stuff on them

as you know PC bullets don't require any additional lube so when they are still in my garage in Houston all Texas-summer long I don't have to worry about the lube melting off or attracting dust

[dverna]

With any traditional lube, there will be some degree of "mess". Pan lubing has its place...just not at my place. I have never pan lubed as it did not address my needs. I am a high volume shooter of a few calibers. If I needed to lube less than 50 bullets for a lube trial, I would finger lube them with a lube that permits that method. Some people get their jollies making different lubes and experimenting. For them pan lubing makes sense as it is a pain to clean out a lube/sizer and change lubes. I buy excellent commercial lube from LsStuff or less than $2/stick that works.

I do not listen much to what others say unless they have very similar needs to mine. And nowadays you can go on the net and watch videos of most processes to further evaluate options and make an informed decision.

Some have mentioned having more than one machine so they can run different lubes for different applications. That is what I do. Used Lymans can be had for about $75 so it is not a large investment. Currently have a Star and two Lyman 45's. Pan lubing is cheap, effective, slow and messy. It can never be fast enough, or clean enough for me. YMMV

[Bent Ramrod]

It sort of depends on your lube formula and your technique. If you have a mixture that hardens nicely in the refrigerator AND sticks in the lube grooves, AANNDD is thick enough and stout enough to stand some strain, you can take the lube cake full of boolits and press them out with your thumbs without getting more than a slight amount of grease on your fingertips. If you are quick and the cake and boolits stay cold, you can fill the gaps with fresh boolits, put the cake back in the pan for another warming session and put the boolits into storage. They will look pristine, the lube grooves will be full and you will be able to wipe the ends of your fingers clean with your serviette.

On the other hand, if your lube stays soft, the cake is weak and breaks along a line of boolits, it doesn't stick in the grooves so you have to replace the lube on boolit after boolit with your fingers, and your nose starts to itch whilst you are doing all this good stuff, yes; it can be messy. Really, REALLY messy.

I pan lube cap&ball, muzzleloader, capping breechloader and weirdo experimental boolits that I don't have the dies for. Everything else goes to the lubrisizers, with a prayer of thanks.

[toallmy]

For a small batch to test , I try to dip lube the boolits set them base down on wax paper until cooled then cake cut the extra lube off .