Lube superfluous?

[nemesisenforcer]

I shoot most of my castings in my homemade backstop so I'm able to recover them.

I recovered a couple of commercially cast boolits with hard lube still in the groove after shooting and going through several layers of board.

This indicates to me that the lube is not being used (at least in this particular profile and recipe) so what's the point?

I tumble lube mine and I can tell it is being used by all the smoke and the fact that none of my recovered slugs have any lube left on them.

[leadman]

Many of the commercial casters use the Magma brand lube. I tested many lubes and this was the worst lube of the bunch. The velocity of my 41 mag. was about 100 fps slower and no matter if slow or fast velocity or powder used it always leaded. It is not a beeswax based lube and if you try to flux with it it just seems to evaporate. Weird stuff.
I did find a use for it though. Living in Arizona it can get pretty warm at times and lubes get very sticky. I mix 1/3 by weight of the Magma lube to a hollow stick of White Label Carnuba Red and it holds up pretty well in the heat and not sticky at all.

Now that I have changed over to the Hi-Tek coating no more worries about wax based lubes.

[williamwaco]

Many of the commercial casters use the Magma brand lube. I tested many lubes and this was the worst lube of the bunch.




DITTO!

I have bought several batches of .38, 9mm, and .45ACP bullets with this lube.
I had to re-lube every one of them to make them useable.

http://reloadingtips.com/pages/lla_bullet_lube_2.htm

Quote from above page.




I then tried some of the 9mm bullets in the TC. The leading was phenomenal. Again there was no lube star.

[btroj]

Lube isn't really "used up". It may be blow off at exit from the bore or flung off during flight. It may even be blown down the bore ahead of the bullet or left as a deposit in the bore. Chances are it doesn't many of these these.

Saying it is used up implies it is like oil and is truly a lubricant. It does help keep the bare bullet from galling on its trip down the bore but that is hardly all it does. It also helps seal the bore so gases don't blow past the bullet. If this didn't happen then gas blow by would destroy accuracy and gas cutting would be a huge issue.

We call it a lube but that really doesn't accurately describe what it does, at least not entirely. The lube part is easy, it is all the other things that make lube so critical.

[fredj338]

It's not unusual to find lube still in the grooves. It's not supposed to burn up, but stay there to provide a barrier from flame cutting as the bullet rides the bore. Having a lot of smoke means the lube is likely burning, not good. Powders like TG show this, one reason I won't shoot TG. Do some studying, more to lube that wax on wax off.