excess bullet lube

[exile]

Just loaded 50 rounds of .44 special today. When I am done with the loaded round I usually wipe off any excess bullet lube with a clean cotton t-shirt. Today I am just doing load development, so it doesn't really matter, However when loading more rounds, this can be tedious. I have heard of people tumbling the loaded rounds in a tumbler to get rid of excess bullet lube, but the thought of this kind of scares me. How do you folks deal with this issue, if you do anything at all? Thanks, Exile

[Springfield]

I load BP mostly but I dn't do anything at all. With smokeless I don't have any excess lube anywhere.

[NuJudge]

I usually use NRA 50/50 lube, applied with Lyman or Star machines, and the only excess lube I have is sometimes on bullet bases, and an occasional glob other places. Sometimes I wipe with paper towel.

There are times when I use a Lyman lube die just a little larger than the bullet. There is some lube that ends up in the crimp groove, or the odd glob. It's not a problem.

With Lee Liquid Alox applied according to directions, I do have lube in places I don't want. It builds up in the Seating die, gradually increasing Seating depth. I don't find the tackyness of the LLA on the seated bullet to the problem. To avoid LLA build up, I dip bullets in thinned LLA only up to the driving bands, using big tweezers.

CDD

[Muddy Creek Sam]

I have been using Springfield's Snakebite BigLube 38's and have never wiped a single round.

Sam :-D

[runfiverun]

excess bullet lube on the nose will cause it to well suck in the accuracy dept.

[wiljen]

excess bullet lube on the nose will cause it to well suck in the accuracy dept.


That is not a universal truth. I've used LLA for many a round and don't clean the noses. I have even cleaned a few rounds to check and found no difference in POA or group size with or without cleaning the noses.

[crabo]

Take a small towel and pour some mineral spirits in the middle of the towel. Put your loaded rounds in the towel and alternate raising one end, then the other. Keep the towel slit on the top. It will clean the boolit noses of all lube.

[exile]

Thanks for the comments. One of my concerns was that excess bullet lube might cause excess chamber pressure and blow up a gun. Any thoughts on that?

[454PB]

No, excess lube will not raise chamber pressure.

I hand wipe each and every round I load. Yes, it's tedious, but it also gives you a second chance at inspection to find those small imperfections like neck splits or crimp problems.

[HeavyMetal]

+1 on what 454pb said! You can never inspect your ammo to much!

Remember you are your own QC Dept!

[exile]

Good to hear. Sometimes I feel that I am too meticulous when it comes to reloading, but it is nice to know how others feel about these things. I reload on a single-stage press and the process can sometimes seem too long, however I don't think I have the mechanical apptitude to use a progressive press. The things I hear about people doing on this website amaze me. If we had more people like that in the workforce maybe we wouldn't be buying everything from China. I use Lee products almost exclusively, they are inexpensive, they seem to work well, and they are made in the U.S. Then again, I do drive a ten year old foreign car. Exile.

[Lloyd Smale]

ive never notice where a little lube on the nose effected accuacy. Now i use only soft lubes and im sure some of it is melted when being fired. I would leave a big glob on a nose though. Im sure lla that is on the nose from normal lubing isnt going to hurt a thing.

[dale2242]

I use a RCBS sizer and Alox 50/50 lube. I wipe the bases on a clean cloth as I size and the noses when I seat bullets. I`m with 454pb. Can`t inspect to much.---dale

[Bass Ackward]

Sometimes I feel that I am too meticulous when it comes to reloading, but it is nice to know how others feel about these things. Exile.


Exile,

There is no such thing as being too meticulous in reloading.

There is such a thing as being too focused on the process that we ignore or lose sight of the big picture.

What .... REALLY .... makes good reloads?

My point here is that " we " need to define "good ammo". When we define it clearly, we will strive to take "critical" steps to make that happen. Many steps we thought were important previously, may fall by the way side. We will develop new. If you prepare and load meticulously and then spin one of your rounds and you have several .000 run out, how good was all that focus?

Take excess lube as an example. When I was a kid, I was always running around with 22LR shells in my pocket 24 hrs a day. Lint and what ever all over everything. Some of those shells went through the wash. Many found their way on the ground in those poor boxes not designed for a kid with a lack of patience in mind. This happened by the thousands. Yet in my soft steel (compared to center fire steel) barrels, my 22s are still just as accurate today. Maybe even more so. Could be scratches, but I'll bet most were put in there with the manufacturing process.

If all of that didn't hurt a soft steel barrel, how paranoid should I be about hard, center fire steel that will seldom see 1/10 the rounds or grit? What will stop the abrasive nature of metal to metal contact?

So I love excess lube myself. My problem is defining excess.

[runfiverun]

no it isn't a universal truth, however in what limited testing i did with both my 308 and 7mm
any extra lube on the nose did cause far,far more flyers.
having said that: a rub it on with your fingers, but can't see it ,coat of jpw did actually help accuracy.
at least for me it did in these two rifles with the rcbs silhouette boolit.

[Bret4207]

My only problem with excess lube has been Mule Snot (LLA) and especially with Hornady dies. The seater will actually get pulled out by the lube after a while. I live with it and clean the die often.

[StrawHat]

With some of my dies, an excess of lube can build up in the seater die and cause the bullet to be seated deeper in the case. I drilled bleeder holes to eliminate the problem.

[NHlever]

The base of the bullet is what steers it mostly, and I don't want powder contamination there, so I wipe all bases on a paper towel as I am loading the bullets into the cases. If there is obvious lube on the bullet end of the case from seating, or a gob on the nose I hit that with the paper towel before dropping the loaded round in the box. I don't usually do more than a couple hundred rounds at a time, so it isn't a real problem for me. The times I have used LLA, I just hit the bases, and haven't had any problems.

[exile]

Bass Ackward, your comments remind me of some guys I heard at a coffee shop during hunting season in Western Kansas. Two guys were sitting behind me, both farmers and both over 80 (like my father-in-law). They were discussing their disgust with MTV. One of them said,

"When I was a kid, the only entertainment I had was a rifle chambered in .22 short and a dog. I would spend all day with that rifle, and if I didn't shoot enough (some sort of game animal I forget what he said) I didn't have the money to buy the .22 shorts with. Kids these days wouldn't understand how much fun that was."

Makes me realize how much I missed in my childhood not being around guns, hunting and the outdoors. My grandfather bought me my first gun (a single-action RG .22, made in Germany I think) when I was thirteen. If anyone else had done it, my mom would have said no, but since her dad did, she was kinda between a rock and a hard place. Wish I still had it.

I appreciate all the thoughts about bullet lube. I wiped off those fifty rounds last night while watching the Phillies / Dodgers game. Kind of enjoyed it actually. I still don't like Manny Ramirez, but he sure does get a hit regularly. Thanks again for the ideas.

Exile

[unclebill]

Just loaded 50 rounds of .44 special today. When I am done with the loaded round I usually wipe off any excess bullet lube with a clean cotton t-shirt. Today I am just doing load development, so it doesn't really matter, However when loading more rounds, this can be tedious. I have heard of people tumbling the loaded rounds in a tumbler to get rid of excess bullet lube, but the thought of this kind of scares me. How do you folks deal with this issue, if you do anything at all? Thanks, Exile

for a handful of rifle rounds.
i wipe them off.
yesterday i had 400 .45l.c. rounds with some alox on the cases (just a little)
i threw em in the tumbler for 40 minutes with cob bedding.
it was gone.

[August]

One of my pards did the calculations and concluded that the rotational speed of a bullet was in excess of 18000 fps. The lube flies off immediately upon firing.

However, lube on the case can cause the recoil of the cartridge to thrust onto the bolt, recoil shield, or whatever surface contains the round to the rear. This thrust can cause damage and may bind the gun. Cases should be bone dry to form a proper union with the chamber walls upon firing. Since mineral spirits (a.k.a. paint thinner) is a petroleum distillate, it leave a layer of oil on the case. I use isopropyl alcohol on a rag to clean cases after assembling them. I have, on occasion, tumbled them in the vibratory tumbler with corn cob media, but don't really like this approach because the media gets loaded up pretty quickly with oil.

Sitting in front of the T.V. with a rag and some alcohol is a painless way to inspect and clean lube from cartridges. That's how I do it.

[utk]

However, lube on the case can cause the recoil of the cartridge to thrust onto the bolt, recoil shield, or whatever surface contains the round to the rear. This thrust can cause damage and may bind the gun. Cases should be bone dry to form a proper union with the chamber walls upon firing.

A question: Will there be such a big difference in bolt thrust if the case is "slippery" or not? Doesn't the brass expand anyway to push against the bolt even if the cases are perfectly clean?
Isn't the pressure way beyond the strength of the brass?

[Bret4207]

One of my pards did the calculations and concluded that the rotational speed of a bullet was in excess of 18000 fps. The lube flies off immediately upon firing.



Not to be disagreeable, but I think it would be more accurate to say, "Sometimes the lube flies off". I've found lube on everything from 500fps 32 short boolits to 2000fps 7x57 boolits I've recovered. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

[Heavy lead]

A question: Will there be such a big difference in bolt thrust if the case is "slippery" or not? Doesn't the brass expand anyway to push against the bolt even if the cases are perfectly clean?
Isn't the pressure way beyond the strength of the brass?

I'm with August on this one. Slippery cases are bad, especially in high intensity rounds. It's one of the reasons I don't like nickel plated cases. Having a slippery case increases case head thrust, it's been proven by a lot smarter and well equiped people than me.
IMO that a cartridge should never be tumbled after it is loaded. I don't have any proof of this, but I can't see how anything good can happen by shaking a loaded cartridge to death and packing powder, compressing it and potentionally building up static electriciy.
I just wipe mine with a rag.

[unclebill]

heavy lead,
my take on it is that all over the world ammo gets put in bouncing trucks after being thrown out of cargo planes after getting trucked, and rattled around in boxcars
and in some cases tumbled at the factory.
i dont think 40 minutes in my tumbler is going to do anything except remove the lube which can contribute to high pressures.
just my thoughts on it....

[exile]

I guess I don't have any proof one way or the other, but I agree with August about slippery cases and with Heavy Lead about tumbling. I used to have a pre-64 model 70 in .06 and a friend (who later bought the gun) warned me about oil on the case increasing chamber pressure. After hearing everone's opinion, I suppose I will continue to sit in front of the tube and wipe off each round individually as I have been doing. I know I asked earlier about lube on the bullet, but I was thinking of the case as a whole. Will alcohol or mineral spirits (or anything like them) degrade your case life after a while if you use them? I have just been using a plain cotton t-shirt with nothing on it. I don't mean to beat this discussion to death, but it seems like everyone does something different and has a good opinion. Once again, great information that I don't think I could find anywhere else. Thanks.

Exile

[unclebill]

I guess I don't have any proof one way or the other, but I agree with August about slippery cases and with Heavy Lead about tumbling. I used to have a pre-64 model 70 in .06 and a friend (who later bought the gun) warned me about oil on the case increasing chamber pressure. After hearing everone's opinion, I suppose I will continue to sit in front of the tube and wipe off each round individually as I have been doing. I know I asked earlier about lube on the bullet, but I was thinking of the case as a whole. Will alcohol or mineral spirits (or anything like them) degrade your case life after a while if you use them? I have just been using a plain cotton t-shirt with nothing on it. I don't mean to beat this discussion to death, but it seems like everyone does something different and has a good opinion. Once again, great information that I don't think I could find anywhere else. Thanks.

Exile

alcohol wont do a thing to the case.
mineral spirits wont either but it is my understanding that it has a trace of oil in it.

[Bob Krack]

Sitting in front of the T.V. with a rag and some alcohol is a painless way to inspect and clean lube from cartridges.
August,
In my younger years I spent lots of time sitting in front of the tv with a rag and some alcohol - maybe even lots of some alcohol!:-D

I do not know that alcohol will or will not cut most lubes but I'd bet it would cut most any other petro-based solvent residue.

Vic

[AZ-Stew]

IMO that a cartridge should never be tumbled after it is loaded. I don't have any proof of this, but I can't see how anything good can happen by shaking a loaded cartridge to death and packing powder, compressing it and potentionally building up static electriciy.
I just wipe mine with a rag.

Heavy lead,

I'll go along with "don't tumble loaded cartridges", but not for the reasons you list.

The biggest risk from tumbling (or vibratory case cleaning, which has become synonomous with tumbling these days) is that the deterrent coating on the powder can be removed, thereby increasing the burn rate of the powder. This is not a good thing in maximum loads. In addition, tumbling won't do any good to exposed cast boolits or exposed soft points on J-words.

Tumbling will not pack the powder. This could only occur if the cartridges were held in a single orientation and continuously vibrated. As long as they're free to move about during the tumbling process, the powder will continue to change position in the case, but will not compress into a single location. Nor will tumbling generate static electricity charges. The cases are brass, a very good conductor of electricity and will remain electrically neutral.

Wiping with a clean rag is the best way to clean loaded cartridges.

Regards,

Stew