Home made case lubes......

[1hole]

"I heard that GB Wire Aide ( Gardner/Bender) which can be bought at Lowe's for one place for about $5 a quart is the same thing as Lee's water soluble case lube"


I'm no chemist but I've done a LOT of experimention with commercial and substitute case lubes. Don't know if Lee and wire lube is the "same" but it sure seems so. And that means they are liquid soaps, much the same as any of the very expensive (comparatively) commerical water soluable lube. Such soaps can be thinned and sprayed but, if it gets too thin, the coating will be insufficent and cases will stick. Sprays are good for those loading hundreds of cases at a time, especially pistol cases.

Several auto oils and greases such as STP have great film strength and work fine as a case lube. Problem is, as stated above, it's hard to remove and it's messy to use. I hate the stuff!

Waxes do very well. Soft waxes are easy to apply with finger tips as the cases are picked up, easy to clean off and work very well. Imperial and Unique are good examples. Again as has been mentioned, Kiwi and other "Mink Oil" or "Sno-Proff" type boot treatments are equally as good. They are easy to find and inexpensive too. For loading small to modest quanities of cases I much prefer a finger applied wax to any other type lube, MUCH more prectical than attempting to mix up some magic potion of sticky oils and greases!

Some other things that also work pretty well: Chap-Stick; women's lip sticks (not all); any color of Kiwi, et al, shoe wax/polish' Johnson, et al, floor wax; stick auto door latch lube; stick circular saw blade lube; outboard motor "high pressure" greases; bar type hand soaps that contain high levels of lanolin; ...

[donald duck]

I change my own oil and always add a quart of Shaler Rislone with the new oil and new filter. I drain the Rislone can in a separate container and then pour it in a small bottle to take to my loading area. Use a q-tip to coat inside mouth of cases and wipe outside of cases very lightly with the Rislone. Have never had a stuck case when using it. After sizing I do place my cases back into corn cob cleaner and vibrate for a couple of hours. I would not use anything else.

[Garyshome]

I'm gonna try the home made Dillon stuff on my 9mm cases. They are really tight when i try to resize. Don't want to mess up my press.

[3006guns]

Wow..........I hadn't seen this thread since I first started it back in 2009 with a simple question about removing lube! Many, many good ideas but one really caught my eye.....using a castor oil/alcohol mix. As mentioned, lanolin is sometimes hard to get in some areas (like mine) but castor oil is still a standard stocked item in our little drug store, so I'm going to try it. Since I have an extra tumbler, I'll use that for cleaning the cases afterwards and THANK YOU for that suggestion folks!

Something else I discovered.......Ace hardware has almost pure denatured (poisoned) alcohol in their paint section for about $18.00/gallon. Now a gallon would be several lifetime supplies for a dozen people, but it's also an excellent solvent for just about any degreasing/cleaning chore so it's handy to have around.

[pilgrim5]

I think I will try the lanoline/alcohol mix you can get 200 Proof alcohol and the liquid lanoline on ebay for not much money already have the spray bottles so here I go 1:12 mix so I can give my brass a light spray let it flash off and see how much it leaves behind I did see this on u tube where a guy made it and ran the same piece of brass into the die 6 times you sure cant do that with other lube! Using a lock and load progressive press w/brass and bullet feed installed

[mattw]

I have used pure anhydrous lanoline for years, just 1 finger in the goo and rub it into your hands and roll the cases around. After sizing about 10 minutes in old tumbler media with mineral spirits and you are done. Also leaves your skin feeling very soft! I learned this from a high volume reloader that took requests for special rifle calibers. I did many short runs of 1-300 on my rock chucker for him.