Auto lube accessory for the RCBS luber/sizer?

[fatelvis]

I see Cabine Tree and Buffalo Arms doesnt carry the spring/screw mechanism that allows a "semi-auto" lubing while sizing on the RCBS Lam2 machine. Does anyone know where I can get on nowdays? Thanks guys!

[fatelvis]

Is there anything comparable out there?


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[gwpercle]

Although RCBS advertises it as Lube-A-Matic I think the automatic lube advancement part was a bust. It's not shown on their website . It now has manual finger tip control.
If I remember correctly it was hard to get adjusted to dispense the proper amount of lube/pressure needed. It would either put out too much or not enough.
I guess some things are still best done by hand. I can think of one , this is another .
Somebody might have one they don't use any longer and would sell it cheap. I haven't seen one in years.
Gary

[dragon813gt]

They never made one for the LAMII. It was only for the LAMI one because the rod went through the base. There is no way to attach one to a LAMII because of it's solid base.

I had the ALF for a LAMI and sold it off because it didn't work as advertised. You aren't missing anything. In fact you are saving yourself money. If you want a higher production rate buy a Star.

[fatelvis]

I'm not familiar with the Star. Is it a push through style? Does the lube feed with spring pressure or is it one of the pneumatic kind?


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[gnostic]

Save your self a lot of grief and put your Lube-A-Matic on ebay, that's what I'm doing with mine. I have an early model, that the screw doesn't go thru the base and I can't make it work. The Lee Push Thru, with a spring on the ram is far better and you don't have to buy a bunch of top punches. I've made my last purchase from RCBS...

[wv109323]

The Star is a push through. The activation of the lube cylinder is part of the stroke pushing the bullet through. You adjust the top punch so that at full stroke the holes in the sizing die is aligned with the boolit lube groove. There is a spring pressure ram that keeps lube to the lube cylinder. Some people remove the spring and use pneumatic pressure to keep lube in the lube cylinder. The sizer is $350 .

[Bent Ramrod]

I have a Lachmiller lubrisizer, the predecessor to the RCBS, which has the Auto-Lube feature. This is a dual pawl, activated by the sizing lever, that puts pressure on the ratchet wrench that pressurizes the lube cylinder. As I sized/lubed, every so often, I would hear the "click" as the ratchet dropped into the next notch. As far as that went, the device worked.

The problem was that the pawl system is set up for some kind of "average" boolit. I have a lot of moulds, with a lot of lube grooves and a corresponding lot of sizing dies, but this "average" boolit never showed itself. Like the "average" shotgun stock, the amount of lube provided fit nothing real very well.

The upshot was that after a certain number of boolits, I would either see incomplete fillout of the grooves, or the fully lubed boolit would launch itself out of the sizer die on a column of grease as soon as I started lifting the lever. This halted production until I could clean up the mess and get through my vocabulary of swear words. Eventually I gave up and left the ratchet wrench on the other side, out of the pawl, where I could pressurize by hand and by "feel."

The Star has a big spring in its main lube chamber, that keeps the pressure on the little auxiliary pump that feeds in the grease with each pull of the lever. This system works very nicely, and permits less attention to the lube cylinder, but even so, you can't just go on sizing without keeping the pressure up, or the grooves will start to be partially filled. I relieve pressure on the main chamber and leave a boolit in the sizing die when I'm done, but there is always a stalactite of grease coming out the bottom after a few days and a few blobs on the floor. The price one pays for that nice auto-pressure feature; no way I know of to relieve the pressure in the pump chamber, short of removing some parts.

Some other lubrisizers have the spring in the lube cylinder without any auxiliary lube pump; my SAECO is an example. I don't know if Redding (who bought them out) continued using the spring. It may allow another ten boolits between repressurization by hand, but that is all. Too much pressure on the wrench causes lube to get up past the piston, and into the spring, a fairly unhandy mess when it's time to add a new stick of lube. I don't see that in the Star very much, maybe because sizing/lubing goes fast enough to relieve any pressure quickly.

I find the best practice is constant attention to the cylinder pressure, via the feel of the wrench, as I pull the lever for sizing. I'm not convinced that the ratchet feature is any better than the old Ideal fixed wrench, as sometimes it's handy to pull for extra pressure with the boolit down in the die and then push back to relieve it before raising the lever.

[AbitNutz]

I did the ALF mod and still have it...I wish I didn't. As has been politely said, it doesn't work as advertised...leave the idea alone and go another direction.

[Pressman]

The auto lube function was a Lachmiller invention, RCBS got it along with the lubesizer when they bought Lachmiller in 1971. It stayed around till mid year 1976 when they redesigned the linkage to remove the auto advance.
While I have never tried lubing with one, I don't have an early Lube-A-Matic, I have a near new Lachmiller and playing with it I can see that it won't work well. Why it stayed around sort of amazes me.

Ken