What happens when you leave cast-lubed boolits too long?

[Bo Alley]

Funny, when I decided to see if I wanted to get back into casting, started looking through all of the old inventory right? Finding the stuff was no problem, memory not completely gone for an old guy. However was very susprised to see some 'cast bullets' made back in 2004, and stored pretty good (I thought) , to have lost all the lube??

To be honest, not sure what pan lube formula I used way back then, but 'Mr Time' definitely got to it. Know your suspose to cast, lube, load and then SHOOT! but loading and shooting got postponed...

Bo

[btroj]

What happens? Well, if the container isn't covered they get fuzzy with dust.

Ultimately what happens is that they get found, loaded, and shot.

[gray wolf]

If you have bullets to long it's Gods way of letting you know you don't shoot enough.

[runfiverun]

all of it?
I'd say something ate the lube, it don't just evaporate.

[lightman]

I've had older bullets where the lube dried out and fell off. I think it was that old Lyman/Ideal lube.

[Bent Ramrod]

Phoenix can't be any hotter than here, albeit it is probably more humid. I've left Alox/Beeswax lubed boolits in the garage for years, with summers between 100 and 113 degrees. All I see is that the porosity disappears and the lube "slumps" into the grooves. It doesn't come off, although the boolits tend to stick together slightly after a while.

I keep lubed boolits in Speer bullet boxes or those plastic boxes that .22s are sold in. As long as they're covered, they seem to shoot as well as ever despite the storage time.

[alamogunr]

I've got some .45, .44 and .41boolits that I purchased about 15-20 years ago that the lube appears to have shrunk. I have tumble lubed some of them and shot in reduced loads. No problems. I also have some .475 Cast Performance boolits that were included with a gun. Same condition. I'll probably tumble them in 45/45/10. I don't expect any problems since I don't load to over 1000fps in that gun.

I've got quite a few H&G 68 type boolits that I lubed w/NRA 50/50 but they are only a couple of years old. Lube looks good as new. All these are stored in plastic jars(peanut butter or similar).

[shoot-n-lead]

Send'em to me...I will lube'em again and shoot them. I really don't mind doing this for you.

[mrmoore2]

I inherited some boolits that my granddad cast in 1968 and I can tell you for a fact that Lyman supermoly lube turns into a rock after 46 years in storage. I'm gonna melt 'em back down and make new ones. I love this game.

Randy
Boz, America

[fast ronnie]

I bought some 158 gr.swc's a few months ago that had been sitting for years in a guy's warehouse. The box had been uncovered and they were pretty dirty. I washed them off with the garden hose and left them on the back steps to dry. About noon, I figured they should be dry as the temperature was a little over a hundred that day. There was no lube left on them. I ended up buying a used Star someone had for sale. Had to buy a different die, and then I had a new hobby. Bet nobody can guess what it is! Just cut a propane tank in half--------

[DLCTEX]

I would boil them in water to remove dust and old lube, then apply new lube. Tumble lube, pan lube, lubesize, or powder coat.

[Grump]

It's pretty much covered above. Note that a LOT of lube components really can evaporate or sublimate or whatever given a long enough exposure to ambient air, but also know that silverfish and roaches will eat almost anything and sometimes leave no tracks or scat (it's all in how long the linger to feed...)

So, what happens? You die without having shot them. Or you let your kids inherit some cool stuff that needs re-lubed. Which means that you really, really did have a lifetime supply. Good problem to have AFAIC.

[rintinglen]

The real problem as I see it is that unsupervised the cast boolits form asocial groups that hang out on street corners, get into fights with other calibers and generally lead dissolute and degenerate lives. The only cure is to swiftly wash and re-lube them and assign them to brass so they they can be productive members of society.

[blikseme300]

I bought some 158 gr.swc's a few months ago that had been sitting for years in a guy's warehouse. The box had been uncovered and they were pretty dirty. I washed them off with the garden hose and left them on the back steps to dry. About noon, I figured they should be dry as the temperature was a little over a hundred that day. There was no lube left on them. I ended up buying a used Star someone had for sale. Had to buy a different die, and then I had a new hobby. Bet nobody can guess what it is! Just cut a propane tank in half--------

The slippery slope has begun. :guntootsmiley:

[beltfed]

I have some cast bullets that were lubed with 50/50 Alox/BW back in '80s.
They still look like "newly" . And they shoot just fine- including pistol bullets
and some 30 cals that shot great in my 300 bo at higher velocities.
beltfed/arnie

[Hang Fire]

I have migrated to coconut butter and beeswax for both smokeless and BP. Some blocks of the coconut butter has withstood several summers of at least 140F when the garage is uncooled (which is most of the time). It has not so much as slumped, let alone melt or deteriorate.

[Lloyd Smale]

I remember the first batch of felix lube I made. I used a water based lanolin vs a anhydrous lanolin. I didn't know the difference and the water based stuff was cheaper and easier to find. I made a big batch and lubed thousands of bullets with it. It worked great in all my testing. About a year later all the stored bullets were without lube. I dried up shrunk and fell off.

[gloob]

I always thought Alox was a bit sticky. Until I had a bottle of it completely dry out on me. After the solvent evaporates off it is harder than beeswax and no more sticky. After cutting the bottle in half the Alox peeled away in one solid chunk, much smaller than it had started.

I used it like this by breaking off chips and placing them in with a tub of bullets, then melting with a heat gun. So my tumble lube is preshrunk. ;)

I have taken to adding some beeswax and just a little paraffin to reduce the melting point. But this makes it softer (and theretically a little smokier). But I still don't add any solvent. When you melt the lube on, it dries quick and is not much tacky. Dried out Alox is great lube.

[fecmech]

Last year I found about 200 Lyman 452389 WC's that I lubed and sized sometime back in the 70's. I loaded them up and shot them in my Lipsey's .45acp convertible with no problems whatever.

[s1120]

When I inherited my dads loading/casting stuff, I got a ton of cast bullets also. Not sure when they were cast, but he didn't shoot much past the 80's so Im guessing mid 70's at the latest. Some were pretty grungry, and had flaking lube, but most are nice, clean, and the lube still has a little "give" to it, so they are getting loaded and shot! the nasty ones Im going to clean, and relube some day, but I have a lot of good ones. I give them a quick wipe just to be sure there is noting too grungy on them....

[cajun shooter]

If the lube is of a good formula and the bullets are stored well, you can still shoot them after 30 years as I just did that to some that I casted way back. If the lube is not in great shape, put on a pizza pan in the oven with paper towels under the them and set the temp at about 250. The old lube will melt away and the bullets are ready to be lubed again. Later David

[Scharfschuetze]

This thread got me to thinking so I dug out some RCBS 35-200-SP boolits that I cast back in the early 80s. They've been stored in Speer plastic bullet boxes. The lube is the NRA 50/50 (probably RCBS) and it is still pliable today and while not sticky anymore, it still looks like lubricant. The lube has shrunk a little, so I'll just run 'em back through sizing die again and add some fresh 50/50 lube.

I've got a 35 Whelen project coming up soon so they'll go downrange sometime this spring, after over thirty years of storage and moves.

Here's a few of 'em for reference:

[alamogunr]

If the lube is of a good formula and the bullets are stored well, you can still shoot them after 30 years as I just did that to some that I casted way back. If the lube is not in great shape, put on a pizza pan in the oven with paper towels under the them and set the temp at about 250. The old lube will melt away and the bullets are ready to be lubed again. Later David

I think the key is, if the boolits were purchased, the lube is probably a hard formula that is intended to ship well regardless of shooting performance and it doesn't age well. If the boolits were cast and lubed by the shooter, then shipping durability is not an issue and the lube will age very well. At least, this has been my limited experience.

[paul edward]

Your ammo storage area might be infested by lube eating gremlins. Gremlins can evolve quickly to adapt to new sources of food. While there is not much information in the scientific journals, I did fing the following history of gremlins online:

Rumor has it that during WW2 gremlins were a joint development by MI5 and the OSS intended to disrupt German military and industrial operations. The contract for development was let to an automotive electrical products firm in the UK named Lucas where the project was assigned to their most experienced manager, an engineer named Murphy. Labs and breeding facilities were set up at an undisclosed location in the Midlands and production began with all possible wartime haste.

Gremlins were parachuted into Axis factories where they could create havoc among the machinery thereby slowing production of vital war supplies. One heroic group of gremlins got into the Tiger Panzer factory where they infiltrated the fuel injection machinery and were able to render unreliable these otherwise outstanding tanks. A special group of winter hardened gremlins were supplied under lend lease to the Soviets to hinder Wehrmacht operations on the eastern front. This elite unit had it's own fight song, based on the old Russian folk melody of "Oh Chechonia", which began: "I'm a gremlin...from the Kremlin..." etc.

Wartime secrecy laws allowed the cover-up of a disastrous accident in the spring of 1945 at the gremlin development lab. An unknown number of gremlins escaped into the English countryside where they took up residence in nearby automotive factories and began breeding. One mutant subspecies eventually emerged in an automobile factory near Birmingham where it fed on gaskets and wiring insulation . Despite strict quarantine laws, descendants of the original gremlins have been exported, usually in automobiles, to all parts of the world except North Korea and Albania. If you have ever owned an older English car, known for their oil leaks and wiring difficulties, you may already have seen what these gremlins can accomplish.

Due to the Official Secrets Act this article may not be published in the UK without Home Office approval. In the US the 50 year declassification rules apply.
Nihil Obstat.

[BAGTIC]

I have some lubed with JPW over 30 years ago. They have survived moves from California to Florida back to California and now to Missouri and temperatures from 0 F to 120 F and they shoot the same today as when they were loaded.