Conventional lube succes in .357 mag

[Cosmic_Charlie]

After having leading with tumble lubed boolits in my revolvers I started powder coating. This worked well but it irked me that I needed to take that extra step. Enter the RCBS LAM II, a bit softer alloy and a batch of fiveriverfive's simple lube. Also sizing to the throats instead of one or two thousandths over groove diameter.

My load was an Accurate Molds 36-160H boolit over 7.5 gr. of HS 6. These are going over 1,100 fps so it's a solid medium load. Accurate and a nice satisfying thump in my 686+, 3" Model 60 and 5" 27. Some smoke but it was dead calm. Quite a joy to have reached this benchmark with cast boolits. I size to .357" for the 686 and 27 and .358 for the 60.

[Sam Sackett]

Yep. I know what you mean. I started out with Lee liquid lube, tried BLL and liked it better, but it just didn’t feel right. I had the bullet sized to the throats, so wasn’t having an issue with leading except for the 9mm. 38/357 was working OK.
Enter the LAM 2 and made up some Ben’s Red. Wow! I kept it quite soft, so it’s a little sticky to handle the bullets during loading, but they shoot great. Progress.

Sam Sackett

[porthos]

sticky to handle is better that powder coating

[Finster101]

sticky to handle is better that powder coating

It would not be to me but if the OP is happy I'm happy. I'll stay with powder coating.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

It would not be to me but if the OP is happy I'm happy. I'll stay with powder coating.

I'm still powder coating 9mm. I use a Lee 358 -124R. Don't shoot too many of those though. And I tumble lube my gas checked 30-30 and .308 boolits. Got nothing against PC, just wanted to go the old timer route with the wheel guns.

[charlie b]

I am another who likes Ben's formula. And I keep it around for those 'just in case' days. And, especially in bore ride bullet designs, the Ben's Red combined with BLL makes a great combination. If I had a lubesizer I'd probably use it a lot more.

But, since I don't, I powder coat.

[Dusty Bannister]

Earlier in the game before powder coating became a "thing", cast bullets and 9 MM were most often followed by leaded barrels. Unless the bullet was seriously undersized by excessive crimp, undersized castings, or TL style bullets, the use of a conventionally lubricated bullet seemed to resolve the leading issue.

I am sure that many are perfectly happy with their present methods, and I am happy with mine. There does not seem to be anything wrong with lubricated bullets except perhaps smoke. That could be a result of excessive lube. Accuracy and reliability are higher on the list of factors for me.