Wax on a tumble lube boolits

[james6600]

I have been loading 32S&W (short) with BP and .310 round ball capped with melted bees wax, works good but slow. Can a Lee TL boolit be wax based lubed an function properly or are the lube reservoirs too small for Black Powder? By the way these are just target and plinking loads for the old break top 32's so they just need to group reasonably decent and hopefully not lead. If the TL boolits wont work does anyone know of a good boolit source as other casting needs wont allow me to spend $80+ on an iron mold at this time.

[yeahbub]

James,

Nothing like another great idea to try out, eh?

I've pan-lubed the micro-band designs to good effect, but it took a lube that was fairly sticky and I did size them before loading. Carnauba Red, I believe. The sizing helped to fill the bands and remove the excess, but the same effect could be had with enough case mouth bell.

Another trick I used in cap & ball revolvers and cartridge to prevent leading and progressive build-up was to follow Elmer Keith's method and used an over-powder wad, add a 1/8" lube cookie and seat the conical on top. A thicker lube cookie for round balls. This is a good strategy for shooting leaded up barrels clean with judiciously reduced loads when used with smokeless too.

I tried what you're doing in a .357, but I found it was better to use a round ball that was bigger than groove to provide greater bearing length when it swaged down and engraved. Mine was a WW .375 RB, card wad, lube cookie over 5 grains of Universal or similar, with the ball seated just deeply enough to stick, but still chamber without resistance. Possibly a .323-.325 RB in your case?

A quenched WW .445 RB/card wad/lube cookie over 8gr of Trail Boss was cutting cloverleafs at 40 yards from a freshly lapped .44 mag Marlin '94 microgroove. Cases were reprimed but not sized.

[Springfield]

77096
You could buy the mould and cast this .32 bullet designed for BP, available at www.biglube.com

Or buy them from www.whyteleatherworks.com