grease wads

[lotech]

Is anyone using grease wads in bottleneck cases like the .308 or .30-06? My only experience with them has been in straight wall cases like .357 Magnum and .405 Winchester, maybe a couple of others. I haven't tried them in a long time. As I recall, my results were inconclusive, but I didn't experiment a great deal at the time.

[405grain]

40 years ago I tried grease wads in 44 magnums with 240 grain plain based SWC's. I was using HS-6 powder, and I placed a card wad over the powder before inserting a thin disc made of javalina lube. The bullet was also lubed with javalina. There was no improvement over just a standard lubed bullet, but I wanted to try it anyway to see how it worked. I did end up with a lot of lube all over the muzzle and cylinder gap, but besides that there was no difference between the grease wad loads and standard cast bullet loads. I wouldn't recommend using grease wads in a bottleneck cartridge. To keep the grease and the gunpowder separate you'll need some type of card or filler between the grease wad and the powder. Anything that can get stuck in the neck when the cartridge is fired will send pressures up to the moon! My experiments with grease wads were also short and inconclusive. They were a little bit messy, and they didn't offer any advantage.

Note: Once powder coating came out I stopped using lubed bullets all together. Less mess, no smoke, no lube to clean up on the gun or the seating die, no lint sticking to the bullets, and no lube melting in 100 + deg. weather. Lots of guys swear by lube, but for me powder coating just works better in every way than conventional lube.

[charlie b]

I use grease wads or lubed felt wads with black powder, but not smokeless. The extra lube is to keep the BP residue softer and I don't use BP in my bottle neck loads.

Smokeless is different. The lube on the bullet is all you need.

[jdgabbard]

I agree with 405. The I don't see a need for lube in most applications these days when using PC. BUT... when I do lube bullets there hasn't been an application where I needed to add a lube wad. I can see using one in BP to keep the carbon softer, but not needed in smokeless applications, as most bullet designs have enough lube volume when using the right type of lube to do the job.

My advice, if you're getting leading when loading smokeless, either get a better lube or start PCing bullets.

BTW, as 405 mentioned, PCing bullets is so much cleaner. No tacky bullets, no more fumbling with changing sizer dies, no more risk of contaminating powders or primers. Plus because you're sealing the bullet, there is less lead exposure when handling ammo and shooting. PCing really is a win/win situation, not to mention it's pretty cheap all things considered. Probably cheaper than lubing to be honest. I bought a pound of powder several years ago and I still haven't used half of it. And that is after having shot THOUSANDS of bullets. It's just a think layer....

[lotech]

I was casually giving thought to trying grease wads again but may not. I noticed my Cabine Tree grease wad extruder in my reloading room a few days ago gathering dust. It's seen little use since I bought it fifteen or more years ago.

As for powder coating, I've yet to see a need for my purposes. Conventional sizing/lubing continues to work fine.

[jdgabbard]

As for powder coating, I've yet to see a need for my purposes. Conventional sizing/lubing continues to work fine.

It did for me for the longest time too. You have to have a little more equipment, but I've just grown so accustomed to it now that I don't even get upset moving stuff around. I still keep my Lyman 4500 mounted on the bench though...

[405grain]

A little insight into grease wads: I discovered the process from reading Phil Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading back in the early 80's. This was back in pre-internet days where old timers would tell you that if you were getting barrel leading it meant that your alloy was too soft. (I guess they thought that the lead was just rubbing off the bullet). A lot of advise back then was the exact opposite of what you really needed to do.

I gathered that the grease wad concept was an attempt to prevent barrel leading with the 357 magnum. When the 357 was still a relatively newish cartridge, apparently factory plain based lead bullets would lead the bores badly. Could have been any number of factors: too soft of an alloy with too much pressure, a "one size fits all" bullet diameter that let gas leak by, Poor quality lubes, who knows? Anyway, grease wads were one of the suggestions as a method to check that barrel leading. Today we have better lubes, better machining tolerances, more access to things like gas checks and powder coating, and better understanding of how things work. It's just common knowledge today that barrel leading is caused by gas blow by vaporizing lead off the bullets surface, something that was practically unknown back when the 357 mag was developed. Because of these advances in technology grease wads in straight walled smokeless cartridges are redundant today.

As I said before, I tried them just to see how they worked. Besides making a bigger mess and adding an extra step or two to the reloading process, they didn't actually change the load in any preceptable way.

[lotech]

405grain- I tried commercial grease wads about twenty or so years ago when I was getting leading in a .357 revolver. Leading was eliminated and accuarcy improved, however I was using a bullet that was too hard. I eventually went with a softer bullet and all was fine. No longer were the grease wads needed. However, my use of the wads was not exactly an in-depth study. I tried them in a Winchester / Miroku reproduction 1885 in .405 Winchester, but I'd have to look up old notes. There may have been no improvement or I probably would have continued using them.

[charlie b]

FWIW, back a few decades ago we were working on .357 loads and plain based bullets that pushed the limit. Tried a lot of stuff. Tumbling in molly, coating with a lot of different things, etc. One month the bench rest mag (Precision Shooting?) had an article about polyurethane wads. They worked almost as well as gas checks in straight wall cartridges (or long necks). We still had to lube the bullets but the wads served their purpose and were easier than buying and using gas checks. Thickness wasn't very critical but we used 0.060 thick as it seemed to seat easier.

Now days you can buy the poly wads or the material from places like Buffalo Arms.

I turned to powder coat for all my pistol loads a while ago so don't need the wads anymore.