Double Dipping With JPW

[Ricochet]

Here's my latest experiment. These are Aladdin's HPW boolits loaded in .300 Weatherby Magnum. I decided to try dip lubing them in molten Johnson's Paste Wax as I think Dutch suggested recently. I'd used it before as a tumble lube, having first seen that idea 2 1/2 years or so ago on the handloads.com cast bullets board. Works pretty well, but it's messy. Came up with a "new" idea, after loading the dipped and dried boolits I dipped the noses in molten JPW back to the case mouth and let them dry. Adds a bit more lube, which I expect will all flake off before the boolit reaches the muzzle. Similar to the all-over coating of tumble lubing, but looks a lot neater. Takes a little more work, but it's the fun kind. I won't get to try shooting them before next weekend, alas!

Actually this isn't a new idea. I was inspired by the Swiss. They dipped the bullets of their older service ammo, like the Vetterli cartridges, in wax all the way up to the base of the case neck. Their 7.5mm GP-11 cartridges that were standard from 1911 to 1990 or so had the wax dip reduced to just a ring that covered the side of the bullet just outside of the case mouth, and the case neck back to the crimp which is 1/8" or so behind the case mouth.

I've been curious about lubes and J-bullets lately. It used to be popular to grease them just before shooting till they had problems in, I think, 1928 at Camp Perry due to a batch of bullets that had tin plating that "soldered" itself to the case necks and required neck expansion to break it loose. Excessive grease around the neck prevented expansion and pressures went too high, wrecking several rifles. It doesn't seem to have been a problem without that abnormal "soldering" of the bullets in the case neck, and the Swiss kept externally lubing theirs up till they switched to the 5.6mm. The recent fad of moly coating J-bullets is a different approach to lubing, and in many cases Johnson's Paste Wax has been used as a binder or overcoating with moly.

Just another thing to experiment with.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/SlidePicker/300WbyDoubleDipped.jpg

[DLCTEX]

Go shoot'em and report back!:Fire:

[Ricochet]

Yeah, I will for sure. It's tough having to work, though, it gets in the way of so many IMPORTANT things!

[Ricochet]

Interesting thing, as the wax has dried over several days, the thick cloudy
coat seen above has turned into a thin, very hard, transparent yellow film.
With the bright silvery bullets shining through it, they look rather like
brass. Kinda reminds me of Remington's "Golden Bullet" .22s.

[Ricochet]

With 4.3cc of IMR 7383, struck level with a knife for about a 51 grain charge, these were running right at 2000 FPS on this chilly afternoon. There is no hint of leading. Hard to say much about accuracy as it was very windy, I was cold and my fingers were frozen. Best group was 1 1/2" high x 2 1/2" wide at 100 yards. Comparable to what I was shooting with my K-31 and better than I was doing with my 1893 Mauser. I'll try again later, hopefully under better weather conditions.

[felix]

It seems your ignition was up to par, though. ... felix

[Ricochet]

Yes, I haven't done the math, but the variations in velocity were about the same as with the Swiss GP-11 and Prvi Partizan commercial 7.5x55 Swiss I was shooting. I was using CCI 250 primers in the Weatherby brass. The charge fills the case about 2/3 full, no filler.

[Buckshot]

...............I may have missed a thread on this, or several posts, but 2000 FPS and the groups you mentioned seems to me to be about the best I've heard of anyone's efforts with this pointy slug to date?

I haven't seen my copy since the day it arrived and I pulled it out to look at it :-)

...............Buckshot

[Ricochet]

I believe you're right. And I believe that the factors making it work are the basics of appropriately hard alloy, straight seating, a tight fit in the throat, and a long steady push with moderate pressure from slow burning powder. I don't have pressure measuring equipment, but I'm sure the pressures of these loads of 7383 would be modest for a magnum pistol. It'd be higher in the 7.5 Swiss than the larger charge in the .300 Weatherby's making, but I doubt it's much over 30,000 psi in the Swiss. I think peak pressure's a lot more important for cast bullets than velocity is, as it's pressure that causes bullet deformation. Cartridges like the big Weatherby magnums seem to have been largely overlooked for cast bullet shooting, but those big cases can give a lot of acceleration with less pressure than smaller ones, because the lower expansion ratio sustains the push longer. It's inefficient in terms of powder used, but the outcome in terms of maximum achievable velocity can be greater.

I haven't figured out the physical factors that make bullets with one lubricant shoot more accurately than with another at the same velocity, with neither leading the bore. I did recently learn from spraying lead on my Mosin's bayonet with overdriven plain base bullets that a lube can entirely prevent bore leading when the bullet is actually being melted by gas cutting or friction! I think that speaks to the lube's function as an "anti-flux," keeping lead from sticking to the bore. Keeps the bore clean, which is useful, but in that particular load it wasn't protecting the bullet from damage. (That lube was White Lightning bicycle chain lube, which I've also used on gas checked 8mm bullets at 1800-2000 FPS and the HBC in the Weatherby at ~2000 FPS. Works OK with the gas checks and hard alloy. So I don't think it was just friction causing the melting in the Mosin, though it's a wartime rifle with a rougher bore than the others.)

[Ricochet]

I've got to amend what I just said about White Lightning. A long hilly walk in the frosty night air jogged my memory. That was my first experiment with WL as a bullet lube. The molten lead spray on the bayonet was with those oversped, soft plain based boolits lubed with Lee Liquid Alox. The bore appeared black with no obvious leading. I switched to the same load with the boolits tumble lubed with White Lightning, and the lumpy deposits that I later recognized as lead on the bayonet quit growing. The WL deposited a white powdery haze on the bayonet. It makes a good bit of white smoke on firing, and smells like candle wax as its main ingredient is paraffin.

I've quit applying LLA to new boolits for now as I think the WL works better as a tumble lube and is a lot neater to handle and looks better as well. I'm using the LLA I have as Lee mould block lube. When I fire loads tumble lubed with WL, some molten WL is present on the necks and shoulders of the cases after a while, and it's slicker than slug snot. LLA is sticky. Although the bore looks black and unleaded with LLA on my gas checked boolits at 1800-1900 FPS, when I've afterward fired jacketed milsurp rounds and recovered a bullet, the jacket will be well coated with gray lead on the bearing surfaces. 2 days ago I picked up a gas check in the impact area from a 1900 FPS 8mm 175 grain Lee cast out of 1/3 wheelweights and 2/3 soft scrap lead, water quenched, lubed with WL, fired after quite a few other WL lubed ones. No lead on the bearing surface. The base of the check was black as an iron stove from the sooty 7383, though!

Tumble lubing is definitely the easy way to quckly lube a big batch of boolits! Dipping with the JPW isn't too hard, though, and it does look cool. I haven't yet figured out which works better for these fairly fast rifle boolits. But I do think both WL and JPW are working better than LLA, which in fairness has given pretty good results on 1800 FPS gas checked boolits in my Mausers.

I've given some thought to blending some LLA in with molten JPW to see if it'd increase the wax's adhesion to the metal and make it less prone to flaking off. I think it would. I think White Lightning has a soap blended with the paraffin wax to make it adhere to the metal. (I haven't got a positive identification, but suspect that WL is a repackaged Lubrizol rust preventative coating, as LLA is. There are several Alox products identified as oil/solvent system compatible coatings that leave a waxy film. Alox 318FS sounds like it could be it.) LLA seems to be Alox 606, described as a hard, high melting point calcium soap. It sure does cling tightly to metal! It's dissolved in mineral spirits, just as JPW is softened with it. A small bottle of LLA blended in with a can of molten JPW might be just what the doctor ordered!

I also have some Boeshield T-9 that I intend to test on boolits. It's another waxy, solvent based corrosion preventative, originally sold for aircraft use. I'm wondering if it might be something like Alox 2213AS. Don't know, though, these are wild guesses. But if they aren't the same, those Alox products sound like they'd be promising, too.