lube grooves

[luober]

i just came back from the mountain molds site and had some questions about mold design. what difference does it make to have many lube grooves or only one groove when you are designing a bullet mold. i was playing with the mold creation program that they have and i kind of like having only one grease groove on the 400gr 45-70 bullet that i was designing. what are the plus and minuses of only grease groove. one grease groove seems to be plenty big for that bullet. any thoughts?

[Edubya]

I thought that maybe I could get in on the latest GB on lube grooves when I first saw this thread!:)
luober, how are you applying the lube? If you're pan lubing, it probably won't make that much difference. If you're using a luberisizer it will sure slow down operations, squeezing a large amount of lube through those small holes might have to wait for a while. I guess that you could just heat the lube up a little more and keep the pressure a little higher, but after a little while it'll start squirting out more holes than you want.
EW

[montana_charlie]

one grease groove seems to be plenty big for that bullet. any thoughts?
You didn't say which 400 grain bullet you are using for a starting point, so we have no frame of reference when you say 'one groove is big enough'.

Does the original have three kinda wide ones, or four pretty skinny ones?
Do you envision that your single groove will be the same width and depth as one of the grooves on the original design?

Guys shooting .45 bullets with four grooves talk about 'running out of lube' with 34-inch barrels. How long is the barrel you shoot?

Is your single groove gonna be a big one...how big?

Where will your single groove be positioned along the shank?
Will it cause the bullet to be nose heavy...butt heavy...do you even wonder?

CM