Commercial 22 Rim Fire Bullet Lube ...

[John Boy]

What is the composition that commercial 22 rim fire manufacturers use to lube the bullets?

I've read & read reference sources to no avail. Even called CCI and they refused to disclose what the composition of the lube they use to coat their rim fires. It's obviously graphite in a carrier concoction that sticks and then dries on the bullets

[caseyboy]

Every company has their special formulas. I used to get Lapua bulk in a sealed can. The things were dripping in oil with some oil left in the bottom of the can. I lightly wiped each round to get the excess oil of. This stuff shot great. What was the oil???

[Maven]

Johnboy, Look at this: http://www.roosterlabs.com/products.html especially Rooster Jacket.

[John Boy]

Maven - thank's for reminding me, I have a jar of Rooster Jacket that I didn't think about using. Still trying to determine what the commercial rim fires are lubed with

[35remington]

I don't know about the "obviously graphite in a carrier concoction" part. Near as I can tell, there's no graphite or mica whatsoever. If these additives were present, there would be a color change and suspended particles, as neither dissolves in in a wax carrier.

It's just a clear wax.

[stubshaft]

Eley used to list it as Beeswax.

[btroj]

I am just shocked that someone thought a manufacturer would tell you what they use.

[crabo]

What are you trying to do? I have used a little Pam on cheaper .22 rimfire bullets to improve groups. You just need a tiny little bit sprayed on a handful of .22 rimfire bullets. Shake them up and it will usually tighten the groups up.

I attached a target from my 39A at 50 yards. I was trying to get the Automatch to shoot like SK Standard Plus. It would not shoot as good, but it did tighten up the group.

[mdi]

Check out Rimfire Central http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/index.php. I remember some of the high accuracy bench rest type .22 guys using some sort of lube to improve accuracy...

[870TC]

Always wanted to know myself. The "sticky beeswax" type on the higher end ammo does seem to contribute to accuracy. I read several posts on Rimfire central about shooting high end match ammo with the sticky lube, then switching to the cheapo stuff (without cleaning the bore) you maintain better groups with the cheap ammo for awhile maybe 25-40 shots. So I tried this and it does seem to work, especially if you have sorted the cheap ammo by weight.

[AggieEE]

Some ( a lot) of years back Precission Shooting Mag. had a series of articles by Merrill Martin ( I think) anyway he wanted to get 22rf powder to burn clean and with little or no fouling in the bore. He thought "let's start out with the worst possible lube" he used lump rosin disolved in alcohol dipping the bullets and letting them dry. He found that he had a good clean burn and a clean bore. I think he wrote the articles in the early 90's. Always wanted to try it but never had the time etc. If you can find the articles it makes for an interesting read. Something to think about.
AggieEE

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I have no clue.
But I have some 20 year old Federal Lightning ammo that the lube has dried.
Last summer was the first time in years that I used some from this stash.
I got misfeeds/FTF/poor ejection.
On this trip to the range, I happened to have some WD40 in the jeep,
I laid out a towel and emptied out a box of ammo,
then gave a quick spray of WD40.
let sit 30 seconds or so,
then rolled them around on the cloth to "even out" the rejuvenated lube.
and remove any excess.
It made the ammo function flawlessly in my Ruger MKII.
I wasn't setup to check accuracy.
since then I've been looking around for a better answer.
I have several thousand rds of the Fed Lightning.

So I am also looking for a 22lr Lube recipe
Jon

[John Boy]

What are you trying to do?
crabo, I'm casting the old UMC 22 rimfire bullets from a custom mold - pan lubing them now and then reloaded with black powder.

What I'd to do is emulate the lube used on 22's that looks to be the same for all the rimfires going back to the turn of the century. Based on the millions of 22's shot annually, the manufacturers have to be dipping the bullets to maintain this volume being made. I'd like to dip my bullets with the same lube

[bruce381]

comercial rust inhibitors are a high amount of solvent with 5-10% of micro wax and or some high molecular weight sodium or barium sulfonate could also have some rosin or other organic resins. Many home made tumble lubes on this site and cut with mineral spirts or lacour thinner would work same. The major Mfgs tumble and air or force dry the coatings on the boolits.

[stubshaft]

Rimfire Bullet Lubricant
I was bench shooting some very accurate Eley ammo at 50 yards many years ago and it was performing flawlessly. The group couldn’t have been more than a quarter inch. I then decided to switch over to another brand that was less expensive and less accurate. (Got to save the good stuff you know.) Now usually when I switch ammo, I’ll clean the barrel before I start shooting again. However a friend came over to chat and I got distracted and forgot to clean the bore. Well the first shot was dead center. The second shot was right on the first one. In fact, it was hard to tell whether there was one shot on the target or two. I immediately began to wonder what was going on as this ammo never seemed to shoot so well before. Then, shots 3, 4, and 5 opened things up predicting a group of around 3/4” which was normal with this ammo. I stopped and kind of thought about what just happened.

Kind of on a whim, I repeated the situation. I cleaned the barrel, fired a couple of fouling shots with the Eley and shot a group. Again it produced a very nice quarter inch group. I then switched over to the other stuff without cleaning out the bore and again the first two shots stacked on top of each other and the next three opened things up again. So what was going on here?

Photo's failed to print.


The group on the left was produced with bullets coated with Lithium grease while the group on the right was coated with Shooters Choice gun grease


The left group was shot with bullets shot with Graphite grease and the right group was shot with ammo right out of the box
I came to the conclusion that the residual bullet lube in the bore from the premium ammo was improving the accuracy of the less expensive ammo. But after two shots, the lube from the good ammo was then worn away and the cheaper ammo reverted to its normal accuracy level. Then I thought how nice it would be if somehow one could buy some of that premium lube. You could then put it on middle priced ammo and get premium performance. Well I didn’t think that Eley would sell me a barrel of Ten X lube so I wondered if I could find a substitute. That kicked me off on a multi month experiment where I tried at least a zillion different lubes which ranged from super heavy duty industrial greases to hair care products and everything else in between. They only made things worse. Nothing worked and so I gave up.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the same thing happened again, and again, it got me thinking about rimfire lubes again. This time my experiment would be more limited. Like most people, I’ve noticed that expensive brands of rimfire ammo always seem to have white lubricant, while the less expensive brands have black lube. Just what is that white stuff? I wondered if it could be white lithium, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I also had some general purpose graphite grease in the garage, so that got added to the list. Lastly, as I was casting my eyes around my work bench looking for something slippery to try, I saw a tube of Shooters Choice gun grease. Perfect.

I chose Wolf Match Target ammo for the experiment as it shoots fairly decently in a lot of guns and the price is right. The first step in the experiment was to remove the factory lube. This was easily accomplished by wetting a paper towel with acetone and spinning the bullet in the same. I then applied the respective lubricants on seven bullets each. Two bullets would be for fouling shots, and five would be shot for group. I should note here that my lube coatings were very thin and were applied by putting the smallest of dabs on my fingers and twirling the bullet around. I was very careful to insure that there was no lumping of the greases on the bullets and that the coating was even and uniform.

Lithium Grease .536”
Shooters Choice .178”
Graphite Grease .328”
Original Lube .140
All shooting was done at 50 yards. Again I used my wind flags to insure that all shots were taken under as identical wind conditions as possible. Here are the results:

It was easy to see that both the lithium and graphite greases really degraded the accuracy of the ammo. It also confirms the fact that lubricant is a significant factor in rimfire accuracy. The Shooters Choice gun grease however was a nice surprise in that it produced a very pretty, very tight group. However, in spite of its excellent performance, it still didn’t match the effectiveness of Wolf’s original lube. Of course when you’re getting down to groups that are measuring in the 1’s, the differences between groups is very small and can be caused by almost anything, including random chance.

[scrapcan]

What about cable pulling lube? I have some cable pulling lube that will dry out after a short period of time, yet retains lubricity even when dry.