Lube for Sizing Prior to Patching

[grullaguy]

I have a little bit of LLA and it seems a waste to use it to size a bullet, just to wipe it off so that I can patch.
I am pretty sure I read an old post about using alternative lubes.

Cooking oil? Butter? Bear fat from a fresh squeezed bear?

I am still waiting for my .304 sizing die to come in the mail and have the idle time to ponder such things.

Cheers!

[docone31]

I use dish soap.
Smear it on, size it, rinse it off with hot water.
No issues yet.

[6.5 mike]

Imperial sizing wax for me, use it for everything else.

[303Guy]

Any chance of not sizing at all?

I use STP Smoke Stopper. Just a light roll on the case lube pad as in using STP as a case pad lube. I don't bother cleaning off the lube after sizing. I take the view that there is so little of it and the patch is going to absorb it. After all, I give the patched boolits a roll on the lube pade before seating and after loading. I can hardly feel the STP on the boolits, there is so little.

[grullaguy]

I tried shooting unsized and the bullets were .004 over bore when papered with the thinnest paper I could find. I got good groups at 50 M but accuracy fell off drastically at longer distances.

I like the dish soap idea. Very clever and frugal to.

I am just now, casting up some soft lead bullets with my C309-180R mold that came in the mail yesterday. Hmmm, I might try them unsized for giggles. The 165 grainers I had been experimenting with were commercially cast and very hard.

Maybe my soft bullets will be more forgiving for being over sized as they are more "squishy"

[MBTcustom]

I have used dish soap, and it works fine.
I ran out of brass sizing lube years ago and I was in too big a hurry to buy more, so I did an internet search on household substitutes. I found that mink oil (used for water proofing boots) was used sometimes. I tried it and it worked so well that I stuck with it and have since used it wherever I need a high film strength oil, including sizing boolits. It works very well.
I have also recently used 45/45/10 as a sizing lube. It dries so fast, and is such an effective lube that I have realy fallen in love with it.
Almost any lubricant will work. If you need to have clean, dry, boolits, without even a hint of oil, what I have done for years, is to lube and size them and then boil them with some dish soap. This removes every trace of oil from the surface of the boolits.
Another lube that works is Bag-Balm.

[barrabruce]

Good 'ol spit will do if you are only doing a few.
+1 on the washing liquid.
Just wash of the soap suds no oils or muck to worry about.
I some times size naked but get galling and its harder to push /bash through and deformation of the base.

I'll even give the die a squirt of lanolin or eds red after I'm finished.

Wipe out before next use and use a bore brush to clean up when necessary after alox / other lubes from plain cast.

[Lonerider]

What keeps the dish soap from leeching into the powder, after the patched boolits has been loaded into case?

Bag Balm? wonder about that...always keep a can around on the ranch.

Been thinking of using 'saddle butter'. Has both beeswax and carnauba wax; talo and neatsfoot oil.

Lonerider

[303Guy]

Whatever one uses should not glue the patch onto the boolit so it needs to be easily removeable and only needs to lube a lead boolit in a sizer die. The dishwash soap would meet the criteria as a simple rinse removes is. Some lubes don't glue the patch down so those would be good too. Mine simply absorbs away and is so little it shouldn'd glue the boolit anyway.

[geargnasher]

Whatever one uses should not glue the patch onto the boolit so it needs to be easily removeable and only needs to lube a lead boolit in a sizer die. The dishwash soap would meet the criteria as a simple rinse removes is. Some lubes don't glue the patch down so those would be good too. Mine simply absorbs away and is so little it shouldn'd glue the boolit anyway.

+1 on something that won't stick the patch. I started just lightly rolling the boolits on my RCBS case lube pad, the old one I have that's saturated with RCBS case lube II, the water-based carp I used before discovering this forum and switching to lanolin. Still have half a bottle of the RCBS lube, so I cleaned the pad, re-treated it, and now finally have a good use for the stuff. When I can I use push-through sizer dies like Lee makes, and I don't bother washing it off before wet-rolling.

Gear

[pdawg_shooter]

I dont lube. Size down .009/.011 in a push through die with no problems. No leading in the die I have ever found.

[djoiner]

Yep, dish soap and then just rinse it off. Wife lets me keep it in the kitchen.