Alox-Free Tumble Lubes?

[Bigslug]

This is perhaps more mental exercise than anything else, but Alox would seem to be something of a "strategic material" of limited sources.

While I have no intention of moving away from 45/45/10 or BLL, I'm curious if anybody's looked into a means of getting by on a tumble lube that does not include our beloved mule snot.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

So, the real cheap commercial cast bullets sold today, have a hard lube that is basically paraffin and color/die. The very old Lyman lube is lamp soot and Paraffin. Both work adequately for pistol ammo. I mention these things, as I suspect Paraffin (old candles from a garage sale) would work as a tumble lube...you could add beeswax to the paraffin and I'm sure that will improve things, but that's more likely to disappear before Alox does.

I know of others here using only JPW as a tumble lube, while no longer made, I mention it as it's basically just Paraffin and a wee bit of carnauba, thinned with a solvent.

Now, I'm not sure who first mixed some Alox and wax for a bullet lube, but we know that The NRA published the recipe and Lyman upgraded their lube to include it. The addition of Alox was an improvement, especially for faster loads.

These are all the things I thought of, when I read your question.

[Outpost75]

When I was in the commercial reloading business we used Johnson Glo-Coat floor wax purchased from W.W. Grainger Co. In 5-gallon pails. Loaded millions of rounds of .38 Special and .45 ACP with no complaints.

Also good was Johnson 700 wax draw.

[gloob]

Internet searches, I find several people using just a thin coating of JPL or the like, specifically for low velocity/pressure cartridges like 45ACP or 38 special. Lube requirements change depending on velocity. This seems to be a fact. I have found a lot of weird beliefs on why tumble lube works.

The way I see it, even hard lubes will melt into oil when/where gas manages to jet past the bullet. And this will create an oil film. In very small gaps, there's a phenomenon called capillary action that sucks fluid into a small gap. At a low enough speed, like the 850-950 fps or a 45 ACP bullet, a lower temp oil won't burn up as fast. And capillary action still has some ability to keep the lube between the bullet and the bore, rather than just shooting out the muzzle. So it takes less lube to work, and lower temp lubes will work.

At higher speeds, that lube is being pushed past the bullet faster and/or burned up, so you need more lube in the groove to keep replenishing the lost lube.

So as I see it, the reasons for using Alox are the hardness, so it stays in small tumble lube grooves and/or the bullet surface without just flaking off. And it has a relatively high combustion temperature.

[gloob]

At low enough velocities, I have heard it's possible to use no lube and still have no leading with good bore and seal. Pellet guns don't need lube, but of course temps of the gases are probably a bit different.

With lubesizing into a large volume deep groove, you don't need the hardness to keep the lube on/in the bullet. So we can add lubricants to the base (e.g. beeswax) which have higher combustion temp but are softer at room temperature, like lard or crisco or high temp oils.

[Outpost75]

You don't want the lube to stay on the bullet. You want it to flow under heat and pressure to coat the bore. The principle is boundary layer lubrication. Google it.

[gloob]

You don't want the lube to stay on the bullet. You want it to flow under heat and pressure to coat the bore. The principle is boundary layer lubrication. Google it.

LOL, yes of course.

It's desirable for tumble lube to be hard to stay on the bullet from the point you lube it until the point you fire it. It might sit on a shelf for awhile before being seated into a case. Then any coat on the nose might roll around in your pocket or in the dirt before loading it into your gun.

When you fire the bullet, I doubt it matters how hard or soft your wax based lube is. It melts into oil where/when gas slips by. It's for the time between that it matters.

Lubesizing puts the lube deep into a groove where it is relatively safe and secure. Tumble lubing does not. If you want TL to stay on the bullet through storage and handling, without smearing or flaking off, I don't know anything better than alox.

Hot gas erodes the throat/leade of your high velocity rifles. I'm pretty sure it melts alox just fine.

Additional bonus, rats don't eat alox.

[gloob]

Some people have no clue what alox is.

This is pure Lee Alox, once it's pretty much dried out. This is air dried with nothing but time, taken right out of the bottom of my first bottle.

https://i.imgur.com/SxNuXZC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/axU5eAD.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kB4B3Ra.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Dx2kbQ2.jpg

Pictured next to a chunk of beeswax. You can put a thumbnail mark in it, but it's harder (and less tacky) than beeswax. It melts at a similar temperature to beeswax. I think it's a bit higher and/or more heat to melt, but it's not much different.


You don't add JPL to alox to make it harder and less tacky. JPL most likely makes it softer. At least that's why I mix in some beeswax to my alox. Pure alox is too hard to even cut a chunk out with a knife.

The reason 45/45/10 dries fast is because the heavier solvents have been removed from the alox by heating it, and then that heavy solvent is replaced with a more volatile solvent, mineral spirits, which evaporates much quicker.

[gloob]

The way I fill only the lube grooves of a TL-groove bullet is to put only a single layer of bullets in the pan. The small TL grooves quickly fill up with lube as the bullets slide on the flat surface coated in lube. If you end up with some extra lube on the noses and sides of the bullet, you can give them a quick tumble in a clean pan, before the lube dries/cools and hardens. I use heat to melt the alox; no solvent. The bullets are dry as soon as they cool. Seconds after tumbling, I pour them right into a plastic bag. No laying them out on waxed paper to dry.

Recluse posted his method of doing a single layer, 14 years ago. It doesn't seem like many people do it this way, even though a lot of people use his recipe.

On many rifle bullets with TL grooves, one or more of the grooves aren't sealed by the case when the bullet is seated to the proper length. Some people fill only the rearmost groove(s) with lube and find they get better accuracy (but it would also be cleaner to handle these cartridges without losing lube or picking up foreign material). Some dip only the base of the bullet in Alox. Seen a guy paint the base of his bullets with a brush dipped in alox.

[GhostHawk]

I disagree about the alox melt temp. I use BLL, and I have used Alox on sprue plates for several years now. Once applied and dried it turns into something more resembling enamal based paint. Molten lead does not stick to it. I have used it on the angled ramp of my shot dripper. Beeswax in the same place would melt and run off. Thinned Alox once dried just stays there.

I think if you melted that lump of alox added mineral spirits or similar solvent until it was back to its original 4 oz weight, then added another 4 oz of spirits you would find it acts quite differently. A thin coat of that on a surface and allowed to dry does not act like beeswax. It acts like enamel paint. It sticks, does not melt, slip, slide or run.
Just my experience and 2 cents.

[centershot]

gloob,
If you haven't read "From Ingot to Target" by Glen Fryxell, you should take the time to do so. I wanted to post a link but the LASC site is down. I have posted his article "Lubricating Cast Bullets" below for you, give it a look.

https://www.leverguns.com/articles/fryxell/lube.htm

[gloob]

Interesting take on hard lubes in that article. But what is such a "hard lube." Does alox qualify as a hard lube? It's the hardest lube I know.

And I've never heard of anyone having a problem using pure alox on low velocity bullets. Tumble lube works especially good on low velocity bullets, like 45 ACP and 38 special. And I'd guess there's a lot of people who use or have used pure LLA to do this. In my own 45ACP, alox is 100% perfect. No fouling at all. Is there something lower velocity/pressure than 45ACP we need to worry about?

Even in his own article he says that imperfections in the rifling and bore will always open up small gaps through which hot gases will jet. (Thus there's no boundary layer to keep the lube from melting).

You always have a small gap between leade and bullet, and gases jetting around the bullet before the bullet plugs the bore. This is why you might get some tiny bit of extra smoke with lubed bullets even in a closed breech firearm. It's lube that has been stripped off the bullet before the bullet has even moved enough to plug the bore. And it's gotten so hot it's not only melted, it's partially combusted into sooty smoke.

Ghosthawk: maybe you're partially burning the alox, and there's some residue leftover? I find it curious. The hard petroleum wax nugget I have started out as normal LLA, just dried up with normal air. If you follow the directions on the bottle, this is what you'd get, no? Just a thinner coating? I assure you it easily and completely melts into brown liquid/oil.

Maybe the reason alox is making your sprue plate lubier is because of the oil it turns into when it melts is on the plate? But beeswax burns up or boils/evaporates off at that temperature or is not as slippery? Alox is supposed to withstand a higher temp, and that's one of the important characteristics of it. That the (liquid/melted) alox can withstand relatively high temperatures before it burns up.


I have only had problem in 40/10mm, to date, with using alox on bullets. This is also this the only bullet I tried that doesn't have TL grooves, which is why I think the bullet is running out of lube. Some people think getting alox in the groove doesn't matter, because it's a coating. To me that's a strange thing to believe. It's called tumble "lubing" because alox is lube. A thin coating over the side of the bullet might be enough lube for 45 ACP. (A thin coat of floor wax is enough for 45 ACP). But more lube can't hurt.

If alox was some kinda hard varnish coating, then you would be able to tumble lube, size, load, then shoot. For some reason, no one does it in this order. The "hard coating" somehow ends up in your sizing die. W/e doesn't get melted and dislocated by blowby in the leade and manages to stay on the bearing surfaces as the bullet enters the bore? That alox is going to be scraped off by the bore, same way the sizing die does it. Then your (empty) lube grooves will pick up some of that where it will eventually be melted into oil by the hot gases, shooting the oil forward through any gaps up until the bullet exits or the lube runs out or burns up.

Why not put the lube in the grooves, rather than globbing it all over the bearing surfaces, to begin with?

[Bigslug]

Not a thread about Alox guys. Specifically intended to NOT be a thread about Alox. :roll:

Looks like the various floor waxes are probably "The Way". I just found a can of the Johnson's One Step as called for in BLL being offered for $68 online. I wonder if this inflation is because of demand among bullet casters, or if there's some other obscure niche it fits into. I can't see anyone paying that much just to make their floor shiny. . .

[centershot]

Not a thread about Alox guys. Specifically intended to NOT be a thread about Alox. :roll:

Looks like the various floor waxes are probably "The Way". I just found a can of the Johnson's One Step as called for in BLL being offered for $68 online. I wonder if this inflation is because of demand among bullet casters, or if there's some other obscure niche it fits into. I can't see anyone paying that much just to make their floor shiny. . .

One likely cause for the inflated price is due to very limited availability, One-Step was discontinued a couple of years ago. There is a similar product from Lundmark that is still available and xan be substituted in the mix for BLL. Using Johnson's Paste Wax, One-Step or the Lundmark product without Alox along for the ride is totally fine. I've lubed thousands of 38's and 45's with nothing but JPW and shot them at 850-900 fps and they worked just fine.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Not a thread about Alox guys. Specifically intended to NOT be a thread about Alox. :roll:

Looks like the various floor waxes are probably "The Way". I just found a can of the Johnson's One Step as called for in BLL being offered for $68 online. I wonder if this inflation is because of demand among bullet casters, or if there's some other obscure niche it fits into. I can't see anyone paying that much just to make their floor shiny. . .
As you might know, Johnson's One Step has been discontinued. I've read interweb chatter that some of the wood floor people say it's the Cat's meow...driving up the price of what Johnson's One Step remains.

I have some vintage wood floors (fir) in my 100+ yr old house. Some are in tough shape, one of these days, I'm gonna give the Johnson's One Step a try on the floor.

[ShooterAZ]

Rooster Jacket in an Alox free bullet lube. I use it to tumble lube some 38 special and 45 ACP loads, and even some low velocity rifle boolits with good success. Once dry it's not tacky or sticky at all and dries clear. It also works well as a paper patch lube.

https://roosterlab.us/products/

[FergusonTO35]

Some people have no clue what alox is.

This is pure Lee Alox, once it's pretty much dried out. This is air dried with nothing but time, taken right out of the bottom of my first bottle.

https://i.imgur.com/SxNuXZC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/axU5eAD.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kB4B3Ra.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Dx2kbQ2.jpg

Pictured next to a chunk of beeswax. You can put a thumbnail mark in it, but it's harder (and less tacky) than beeswax. It melts at a similar temperature to beeswax. I think it's a bit higher and/or more heat to melt, but it's not much different.


You don't add JPL to alox to make it harder and less tacky. JPL most likely makes it softer. At least that's why I mix in some beeswax to my alox. Pure alox is too hard to even cut a chunk out with a knife.

The reason 45/45/10 dries fast is because the heavier solvents have been removed from the alox by heating it, and then that heavy solvent is replaced with a more volatile solvent, mineral spirits, which evaporates much quicker.

I bet the coppers would be VERY interested in that stuff if they noticed it in your car during a traffic stop!

[WRideout]

i found an abandoned can of Johnson klear floor polish in the basement a few years ago, and tried using it for a tumble lube with 38 WC. two coats, tumbled in a plastic bag; it took a looong time to dry, and i had leading in my revolver with target loads.

Wayne