oldcanadice
12-29-2015, 08:49 PM
This is especially for newbies to lead bullets like me -- even though I am pretty old.
BLL has saved me tons of trouble with a bunch of commercial lead bullets that I bought before I found this site. Some were hard-cast; some were Hornady swaged. ALL leaded so badly I gave up shooting several Ruger revolvers (357 & 44 mag) because the cleanup often took an hour each. I had decided that only j-words would be used in those guns henceforth and I definitely wasn't looking forward to re-melting the bullets and trying to turn them into something useful.
Then came this site, where I found out about BLL lube. (The main BLL thread is http://castboolits.gunloads.com/archive/index.php/t-259285-p-1.html) Pretty amazing. After a couple of hundred rounds I have pretty conclusively determined that 2 coats of BLL applied to the commercial stuff over the top of whatever junk they were lubed with will result in NO leading whatever with any of the three offending guns; and that while using medium power loads based on my very old hot-burning Unique powder.
I am totally back to enjoying the revolvers again. Cleanup consists of 4 passes with a brass brush in each chamber and the barrel to get the rather hard carbon residue out. Outer wipedown and that is it. Cleaning is actually easier and faster than when using jwords, which copper foul in these guns.
I'll also add a side note that it took experimenting and a query to Ben to find out aabout. There is a tendency to think that adding more floor wax to thickened alox will make a thinner and better drying lube. Not necessarily so. One needs to add more paint thinner to the alox to get the proper thinness and drying quality. I have been totally surprised that the paint thinner enhances the drying quality better than trying to do it with the wax.
Kudos to Ben for sharing a really great discovery. New kids on the block -- you really have to try this stuff.
BLL has saved me tons of trouble with a bunch of commercial lead bullets that I bought before I found this site. Some were hard-cast; some were Hornady swaged. ALL leaded so badly I gave up shooting several Ruger revolvers (357 & 44 mag) because the cleanup often took an hour each. I had decided that only j-words would be used in those guns henceforth and I definitely wasn't looking forward to re-melting the bullets and trying to turn them into something useful.
Then came this site, where I found out about BLL lube. (The main BLL thread is http://castboolits.gunloads.com/archive/index.php/t-259285-p-1.html) Pretty amazing. After a couple of hundred rounds I have pretty conclusively determined that 2 coats of BLL applied to the commercial stuff over the top of whatever junk they were lubed with will result in NO leading whatever with any of the three offending guns; and that while using medium power loads based on my very old hot-burning Unique powder.
I am totally back to enjoying the revolvers again. Cleanup consists of 4 passes with a brass brush in each chamber and the barrel to get the rather hard carbon residue out. Outer wipedown and that is it. Cleaning is actually easier and faster than when using jwords, which copper foul in these guns.
I'll also add a side note that it took experimenting and a query to Ben to find out aabout. There is a tendency to think that adding more floor wax to thickened alox will make a thinner and better drying lube. Not necessarily so. One needs to add more paint thinner to the alox to get the proper thinness and drying quality. I have been totally surprised that the paint thinner enhances the drying quality better than trying to do it with the wax.
Kudos to Ben for sharing a really great discovery. New kids on the block -- you really have to try this stuff.