Liquid lube that dries for dipping

[randyrat]

First of all, i know about lubes about as much as i know about brain surgury.

I needed a lube that is liquid also one that dries so i made some out of the main ingredients that i know work. Beeswax (of course), ALOX, JPW, Along with a thinning agent that evaporates and will mix with all the ingredients- Mineral spirits.

Using a heater i melted a small amount of beeswax(carefull to not burn it) 1- teaspoonfull, then added 2- ts of JPW heeping, then a Tablespoonfull of Alox.... Mixed/ heated all this up untill it was mixed and melted. Next i added some mineral spirits to thin it slightly (seemed a little too thick) These are not precise measurements.

I think this stuff will work good as a tumble lube or for dipping BIG boolits. It dries after about 2 days.

Any other ideas out there for this type of lube please chime in. I would like to add some BullPlate sprue plate lube to it someday and see what kind of Witches brew it turns out to be.

[leftiye]

I just got some Rooster jacket. Sounds like what you are seeking. Cain't say yet how well it works, sorry. Supposed to dry hard no sticky.

[wolfman]

I shoot the Lee 200g TL SWC in my .45 and tumble lube with JPW only. I add mineral spirits to thin it out enough to just give the boolit a little color, dries overnight.

[geargnasher]

Randy, I think you should try this first:

4 parts Liquid Alox or Xlox
4 parts JPW, straight out of the can, solvents included
Up to 1 part mineral spirits, start with less.

You don't need any beeswax, beeswax works with full lube grooves to make a high-viscosity gasket at the front edge of the lube groove and unless your grooves contain a significant fluid volume beeswax will only serve to make your boolits gummy.

Alox works (we think) by simply sealing at the actual driving band and leaving a waxy coating on the bore that gas-cut boolit metal doesn't tend to adhere to. That's how the liquid can be so thin and still serve its purpose.

The above recipe dries in a couple of hours (if used according to Lee's directions for straight Lee Liquid Alox, tumble, pour out and let dry, size in push-through, tumble lube again, let dry, load) instead of 1-3 days for the straight Alox, is thin and won't gum-up your seating die or get your fingers messy after it dries, lubes better than straight LLA, leaves your bore shiny, and extends the Alox.

Sorry to burst your bubble on the Beeswax, but if you want to use some of your own product I'll gladly send you a sample of Felix World Famous Lube made from your wax for you to try, you can rub it in the grooves without a Lubrisizer just to try.

Gear

[randyrat]

I'll have to try the 4-4-1 mix.. I like the JPW for it's drying hard and clear coating the boolits.
Most of the boolits i used my mix on were (320 gr .452 GC),(400 gr .475 PB),(310 gr .430GC) Big OL brusers. They are like lobbing a boulders @ 800-900 ft/sec....
All the other boolits are of a smaller cal and i just tumble lubed them.
I never trusted JPW for the heavier boolits and i was always warry of the stuff, but i'm comming around to useing it more and more in the mix.

BTW..... Gear, i would be in dept to you if you were to send me a sample of that lube. Thanks... i'll PM you

[runfiverun]

randy 3 parts jpw and one b-wax melted in the wave [you will see the solvents smoke from the jpw]
and used while still in the goopy stage makes a great swirl lube.
it dries hard but still lubes nicely, its like a hard red carnuba but brown.
after a bit it is super hard but re-melts and works great in exposed lube grooes.
i swirl mine around till the grooves are full and let sit or a couple of days.

[DanWalker]

It is my opinion that most boolits have WAAAAAY too much lube on them. I mine the berm at my local range, and most boolits I recover still have enough lube left on them to shoot again.
I had an RCBS lubrisizer, and got rid of it after tweaking the following proceedure for tumble lubing boolits.
All I do is mix LLA that's been thinned to 50 percent of it's original consistency with an equal amount of JPW. I lube my boolits in a quart jar. I preheat the boolits in the oven at 200 degrees for 15 minutes or so. Then I dump the lube on top of them, and swirl for 30 seconds or so.
I pour them out on a paper plate, and they're dry and ready to load in about 20 minutes.
I've pushed this lube to 2000fps in my 7mm08 and haven't had any issues with leading.
It really is that simple. Granted, it's probably not as sexy or exotic as some recipes. It works for me. Yes it smokes, yes the boolits will pick up dirt if you drop them on the ground. Other than that, my boolits go downrange just fine, my bores stay lead free, and I don't have to screw around with top punches, lube heaters, or melting stinky concoctions together.

[geargnasher]

Dan, that's a really good idea, although for me personally I don't need to heat boolits that much, although I'm sure it speeds the drying time. I just heat the Alox/jpw/mineral spirits a little (15 seconds in a LLA bottle in the 'wave with the spout OPEN) and squirt it on the boolits.

Recluse has this down to an art with a cool whip container and reusing the LLA bottle to store and apply the thinned concoction.

As to finding lube in boolits out of the berm, I agree with you on the part that it shouldn't still be on the boolit at the end, but I disagree in your assessement that most boolits are over-lubed. I think it would be more accurate to say that most boolits aren't pushed fast enough or hard enough for the lube they receive. If you ever use Felix lube or Lar's BAC you will find clean boolits downrange and a nice Lube Star on your muzzle. You may also find a very sticky chrony screen if you use one. , but odds are you will also find smaller groups and will not find any lead in the barrel, even at 2500 fps.

It is a common misconception that lube has to be rock-hard like commercial lube to work. Most commercial cast boolits are cast of alloy that is way to hard for most use, (or what they are usually used for, low/med velocity pistol) and are lubed with stuff that, like the hard alloy, is designed to withstand the beating it gets during shipping. Commercial lube is designed to be cheap, so it uses a lot of paraffin or microcrystalline wax (has virtually nil lube properties but does give a good seal at magnum pressures), hard (again, the cheap wax), has to withstand sitting in a 150* box truck in traffic in Dallas or somewhere for hours on end without melting and sticking all the boolits together in a glob, and has to be able to hold up to abuse by the average reloader. Not an ideal substance for actually doing its most important job, which is to seal the boolit against gas cutting and provide a little bit of slickum for the boolit to ride on unless you are well into the 30,000 psi range, which most pistol reloaders are not.

As for rifle stuff, the hard lubes often work ok, but they begin to enter into the velocity arena where the unmelted lube (especially in the forward driving bands on a properly sized and alloyed boolit) begins to fling off in chunks after exiting the muzzle, which does neat things to boolit balance, but not much for accuracy. I've yet to find an application where even a relatively soft batch of Felix or BAC didn't do the job better than anything else, and it is gone from the boolit by about 1/2" from the muzzle (sometimes it spatters the target paper with a grey mist as far as 15 yards away!). That may be too much lube, but I'm not going to wipe any of it out of the grooves.

Gear

[runfiverun]

lube viscosity is far more important than a bunch of slippery is.
it helps seal and lubricate,hard hard is not condusive to accuracy.
my h/v [over 2200 fps] lube is the consistency of play dough and usually only one lube groove is needed.
my main lube is carnuba but b-wax @ microcrystaline wax are the carriers,and lanolin is used as the softener.and a plasticizer is used.
no big mystery just viscosity.....

[pdawg_shooter]

I played with home made lubes for 30 years. Than I found BAC. Inexpensive and works on everything, in every firearm I have. Nor more messing around, smoke int the house, or failed lubes and leaded barrels!

[tackstrp]

i have a lee tumble lube 358 swc mold, and many tubes of alox lube for my Lyman lube/sizer. I ran a few TL bullets through the sizer and lubeing seems even to me.

So my question is . is it ok to run lee tumble lube bullet through my sizer raterh than messing with swirl and dry in a Lee rcommended fashion?