Shooting Cast Boolits without sizing, just tumble or pan lube them.

[terryt]

Hi :

I am wondering how many people have shot Cast Boolits without sizing, just tumble or pan lube them and what are the results?


Thanks,

Terryt

[RZ10]

I've had great luck with tumble-lube bullets in .357mag and .45ACP, especially the latter.

.40cal bullets for 10mm had to be sized from .404 as-cast down to .401 or they caused a constant string of feeding failures.

22cal bullets get sized down to .224 in order not to tear up Hornet case mouths.

[Keyston44]

The only time I size is when I'm pressing on gas checks. I tumble lube my handgun bullets and dip lube my rifle bullets.

Key

[Hickok]

I have good results with unsized boolits. On some boolits with my Lyman 450, I use a sizer .001" larger than the as-cast slug so I can apply loob without sizing. Of course, most as-cast boolits are not perfectly round, and may touch the sizer a little in various areas.

I also tumble lube slugs without sizing for some guns. A lot depends on the gun, and whether the loaded round will chamber easily with the unsized boolit.

I do prefer as little sizing, or no sizing at all if possible. The lands and grooves of the barrel do a fine job of sizing!

The gun will tell you what it likes.:Fire:

[gefiltephish]

The first time you have trouble extracting an unfired cartridge because of the occasional oversize bullet, you'll likely go back to sizing. Other than that, I was never successful with tumble lubing even though many others are. Go figure. I powder coat now.

[C. Latch]

If I try to load my .45 ACP bullets unsized they get sized anyway, but won't feed reliably. I have one 1911 that will feed them unsized, one that won't.

[EMC45]

I tumble lube my .40 cal. Lee 175gr bullets with traditional lube groove without sizing. I shoot these in my KelTec Sub2K. They tumbled and leaded horribly when I sized them to .401. Now they are accurate and don't tumble.

[44man]

I hardly ever size and use lapped out Lee dies to the sizes I want. I use them to remove excess lube and seat checks.
I never had any luck with TL and hate Alox. I use regular lubes even on TL boolits.

[Animal]

I currently only cast for 45acp. I size my Lee 452-228-1R, which is a very broad, but round-nosed boolit. If I don't size it to a concentric .452, some of them wont pass the plunk test at my preferred seating depth.

My Lyman 452374 which is a traditional round-nosed boolit with the ball-type profile doesn't need sizing. It passes the plunk test at any depth that will fit my magazine.

I tumble lube with Lee Liquid Alox and call it a day. I have also had good luck tumble lubing crappy commercial cast boolits for .357 mag and .44 mag.

[FergusonTO35]

I pan lube and size my .38 boolits to .357 or .358 so they will chamber easily with speedloaders. The Lee 356-120-TC gets pan lubed and 356-95-RF gets dip lubed in alox. I load both without sizing and they work great. My Lee 309-150-F gets pan lubed and sized to .310 in order to seat the gas check and avoid bulging the case neck.

[dtknowles]

I have used unsized, as cast bullets pan or finger lube in a number of cartridges. I works well sometimes.

Tim

['74 sharps]

In my revolvers unsized tumble lube works fine. Do not have any experience with auto loaders and cast bullets.

[ukrifleman]

98799I use un-sized bullets for my M'91 6.5 Carcano (Lee Cruise Missile) I load as cast at .2695, fix the gas checks with Lok-Tite and tumble lube with Lee Liquid Alox.

I have 2 moulds, one cut down to produce 150gn bullets, which seem to perform better.
ukrifleman.

[DLCTEX]

I had problems with initial tumble lubing with alox gumming up seating dies and chambers. Then along came Recluse lube, aka 45/45/10, and learning to use thiner, drier coats. This works worlds better, thanks Recluse! I mostly use grease lubed boolits though, in pistols and for rifles all are conventionally lubed with Ben's Red, including the RD boolits that are designed for TL.

[rsrocket1]

Guilty! ... and loving it.
I bought sizers with all my molds to start out with, but for my handgun molds 9/38/40/45, I now just cast, tumble lube and load. Even with tight throated auto caibers, I use the TC shaped bullets and seat to the edge of the cone so there is no fat vertical part to hang up in the throat.

I use a gallon Ziplock freezer bag to tumble lube about 250-300 at a time with 45/45/10 by just massaging the bullets around, then pouring them all into a low sided cardboard box lined with wax paper. Overnight and they are ready to load or box up. If I were in a rush, a fan blowing over them will dry the batch in about 1/2 hour.

[wch]

I do this quite often for my 25 and 32-20 rifles.

[terryt]

Hi:

Thanks for the information.

Terryt

[George Mabry]

I cast for a .45 acp Lee mold and shoot from a Remington R1 pistol. I tried not sizing and ran a test batch of about 50 bullets. All cycled just fine. I then made up a batch of about 200 or so unsized and out of this bunch I had about 5-6 fail to fully seat. I size all now and have had no further problems. Since some people claim that Lee dies are so precise that they need no sizing, my guess is that it will all boil down to the particular weapon. Some weapons will do fine without sizing and some, like mine, won't.

George

[miner_loads]

I load 45/70 unsized and tumble lubed. They shoot shamrock groups at 25 yards.

[Trinidad Bill]

I have been using as cast Lee 379-250s, pan lubed in my Marlin Cowboy 38-55. Eventually I will probably size them to .381.

[44man]

Something important. GC boolits need the check sized to the cast boolit diameter, so if you have a .430" boolit, use a .430" die. If the boolit casts at .432" use a .432" die.
The check must never be larger then the boolit diameter because it will open the brass when you seat larger then the boolit. If your boolit is .430" and you run through a .432" die, you lose accuracy. Take the check to .430".
PB does not matter.

[pls1911]

I size and lube thought large diameter dies, rarely doing much sizing at all.
I get good to great results

[rintinglen]

It all depends on the gun. I had a S&W M-10 that would take a cartridge three thousandths bigger than my Colt Python would. It would eat unsized boolits every day with no problems, save that the accuracy was mediocre.
I used a lee 38-158 swc tl, and did not size it, but I kept having cartridges that wouldn't fit in the Colt's chamber and accuracy wasn't too good either.
I got a Lee push through sizer and life got much better.

[dudel]

Started out with TL and Alox. Worked fine, AS LONG as the boolits were ROUND. Thought I might get some improvement with sizing. On most boolits, I didn't see enough consistent improvement with Lee push through sizers to continue.

I only size when applying checks or for specific guns. Otherwise cast, tumble lube, load and shoot. Repeat as needed.