Pan Lube Vs Tumble Lube

[Duckhunter]

Is the two terms for the same operation or is there a difference. I have read several threads that discuss tumble lube and home made lubes used as "tumble lubes". How does one "pan lube" boolits?

[Willbird]

When you pan lube, you stand the bullets in a pan, and pour melted lube as deep in the pan as your lube grooves, plus a little extra. Then you somehow remove the bullets, there is a tubular thing called a "kake cutter" that some people use(some cut the head off a cartridge case to make one)...or some others run warm water over the whole mess after removing it out of the pan and push the bullets out. You can then set the block with holes in it back in the pan, set a bullet in each hole, and remelt the lube.

[Shiloh]

LEE makes a line of boolit molds for tumble lubing. There is a series of shallow lube grooves on the boolit. The cast and sized (if necessary) boolits are put in a container and a small amount of liquid alox is poured over the boolit and swirl around to LIGHTLY coat the boolits with lube.

It is a great way to lube a pile of boolits in a hurry. I love 'em!! Checlk out the LEE link at the top of the page.

Shiloh

[Shiloh]

Works for non TL Boolits pretty well also!!

Shiloh

[Recluse]

Tumble-lubing is fast, easy and cheap--and more importantly, it doesn't jeopardize your soul.

Pain-lubing, on the other hand, is messy, time-consuming, frustrating and to make it work right consistently, you have to endanger your soul.

The reason for that is that you often need to sacrifice a chicken while dancing nekkid amongst lighted incense and candles as you mix and prepare the pain-lubing concoction. Should your chicken not be worthy enough for the voodoo gods of pain-lubing, your lube will be cursed and it will fall out of your boolits' lube grooves, thus rendering your boolit lube-less.

That doesn't happen with tumble-lubing.

When mixing up your pain-lubing concoctions, SWMBO will often shriek her own utterances and curses at you for fouling her nice clean kitchen with hard to remove beeswax and crayon stains, not to mention the leaky bottle of 30W oil you left on the kitchen island or the open container of STP your son knocked over into the oven's electric coil burners.

That stuff sure does stink, which is why you need all that incense lit up and smoking around you.

Your daughter will scream and call you vile names when she discovers that you stole her vaseline in order to make your pain-lubing concoction. Any grandchildren she bears you will be atheists who wear "I love Sarah Brady" t-shirts to all family reunions.

Tumble-lubing is easy and painless. SWMBO will never know you've been up to anything. You won't need your daughter's vaseline or any other of her skincare formulas, so she'll still love you and call you "Daddy" and bear you red-blooded American grandchildren. Nothing for your son to spill or knock over except maybe the LLA. Just make him wipe it up and I promise you, he'll never spill another drop in his life.

Best of all, you don't have to make a deal with the devil to get your soul back and your boolits shoot even better.

:coffee:

[chris in va]

That's priceless.

[Gelandangan]

The reason for that is that you often need to sacrifice a chicken while dancing nekkid amongst lighted incense and candles as you mix and prepare the pain-lubing concoction.

Around here, we use peacock and becuse old farts dancing nekkid is not allowed, we have to get young nubiles as substitute.

Oh lube!! yeah we use them too once the dancing stops.

[Duckhunter]

Reculse, I can't tell you how much I thank you for your help in keeping me on the straight and narrow. At different times in my life I have been addicted to duck hunting, deer hunting, varmit hunting, relaoding and now I have an unnatural urge to make my own bullets. Anything that will keep the better half happy (or at least unconcerned) about my use of the various cast iron cookware that I have removed from her kitchen is appreciated. She would not understand (read tolerate) my dancing nakid under any cirsumstances. (60 year olds just don't do that). I am ordering the LLA.

[lylejb]

I am ordering the LLA.

AND read the excellent how-to thread by Recluse

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=67654

[Marlin Hunter]

The more you pan lube the more you will endeavor to buy a lube sizer press.

I like the Lee tumble lube boolits and the idea of tumble lubing, but I feel that real lube in real lube grooves works better.

[bbs70]

Around here, we use peacock and becuse old farts dancing nekkid is not allowed, we have to get young nubiles as substitute.

Oh lube!! yeah we use them too once the dancing stops.

Pictures!!!!!:bigsmyl2:

[happyret65]

I used to tumble lube. Got tired of cleaning out the seating die with the excess lube.

Pan lubing is the way to go if you get the right information! What I learned was reading different forums on the correct way of pan lubing.

Here's what you need - Pyrex pie dish-flat bottom (don't ever get water near a hot pyrex dish-instant glass bomb). Double broiler pans. I use 1 lb of beeswax, 1 lb lard, 1 tablespoon of Johnson paste wax. Melt together in the double broiler, let cool down to solid. Get a little metal pitcher used at the restaurant creamer for the coffee. Cut off enough lube mixture to fill up the pitcher 3/4 full. Put water in the pan and set the pitcher with lube in it and melt to a fairly hot liquid. While waiting for the liquid stage warm up the pyrex pie dish a little on the stove and remove to a hot pad. Start putting your bullets into the dish about 3/8" apart. When full of bullets, here's the secret part of pan lubing, get the hair dryer out and turn it on hot and heat up the bullets. Without heating up the bullets, this is how it will turn out - hot on cold metal, instant cool down and lube will not adhere to the metal properly. The bullets only need to be warm to hot to the touch. When the lube is hot to pour, make sure pie plate is level, pour in just enough to cover the bottom lube groove or no more than two lube grooves. Don't move the pie plate until the lube has become solid again. Here's the next trick, let the lube setup on the bullet for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Once it has set up solid, with your fingers gently move the bullet back and forth, when released there should be a sucking sound when you remove the bullet from the lube. Start on the outside first, as it is usually set first. If it doesn't come off the bullet easily, then wait awhile longer and try again. If the bullet comes out with a little extra lube, use your other thumb nail to trim off the excess lube. Once the lube is right and the bullets remove eaily to standup on a cardboard tray to dry, you will see how easy this works.

Usually takes about an hour to an hour and half to complete the job. If for some reason you can't take that much time away from housework, then stick with the other system. Don't ever leave the bullets set for a long time in the lube or forget it. And remember the true secret is heating up the bullets for the lube to adhere properly.

Good Luck and test next week.

[XWrench3]

tumble lubing is THE way to go for normal pistol non-magnum loads, and even lower speed rifle shooting. but, once you start revving up the speed dial, you will need something more substantial than tumble lubeing your bullets. i was told that you can dip your boolits into lee liquid alox for good results at speed, but i have not tried it yet. i am going to, just have not gotten there yet. but trust me when i tell you, that if you are going to mess around pan lubing, painting molten lube on with a brush, finger applying or dunking the "good stuff" to bullets, you WANT, no, NEED a lube / sizer. been there, want that. just have to find room in the budget for it.

[Crash_Corrigan]

I have a SAECO lubrisizer which is loaded with Carnuba Red. Recently I have delved into the Holy Black and I needed to either remove the lube from the sizer or pan lube.

I went to wally world and bought a 8 x 8 inch baking pan with the slippery surface and a metal carafe. I put my 695 gr boolits into the pan. I then melted the lube in the metal carafe in a bigger pot of boiling water. It took about 15 mins and then I ran a hair dryer over the boolits to get them warm. When they were all hot to my touch I poured the melted lube into the pan in a corner and let it flow across the pan until the two groove lubes were covered.

I then left everything and poured a cool adult beverage and enjoyed a tv show or two. About two hours later I dump the pan onto a newspaper covered table and the whole magillah came out in one giant chunk. I inverted the chunk and started to push the boolit from the bottom out through the top.

Success. It took about 10 mins and I had about 75 lubed boolits. I then carefully put another 75 boolits back into the chunk {after it was place back in the pan} and fitted each boolit into a vacated hole. I then remelted some more lube and ran the hair dryer over the boolits to get them hot again. Then I carefully added more lube until all the holes were surrounded with new melted lube.

Another beverage and a tv show and repeat. By the third repetition I was forced to remove the chunk and remelt it as the level of lube getting too high in the pan.
But it is effective although messy. It was a lot easier than boiling out the lubrisizer and the boolits did not need resizing as the BACO mold did cast them perfectly at .511.

Now the .44 special boolits were different. I pan lubed them and then ran them through my .430 sizer die and added lube as needed. So these babies are lubed with black powder lube and carnuba red. Kinda colorful and I hope effective. I would have just lubrisized them in the SAECO but the sizer die was still in transit. So I pan lubed first and then sized a couple of days later.

I think I will stay with the pan lubing of the huge BPCR boolits as I do not want to change the lube in the lubricizer as I still shoot a lot of regular propellants.

[dangerranger]

I use both pan lube and tumble lube. to keep the TL from gumming up my seating die I thin the Allox with laquer thinner the boolits are tumbled as normal and then stood on their back ends to dry. most of the wax slides off the pointy end onto the lube grooves [ where I wanted it anyway]. the laquer thinner evaperates quickly.

my pan lube prosses goes like this, Ill set a pan of lube out in the sun for an hour then drop the boolits into it back end down [ by an hour its liquid]. then slide it into the shade to cool. make shure where ever you set it is level. that evening Ill take my cookie cutter and cut out the boolits from the lube. I made mine [for 45 colt ] out of a 4570 case. [ it also works for 45 auto.] timing is everything. too cool and you have to really press down to cut the lube, or too soft and it makes a mess. thats the point where you have to sacrafice a chicken. DR

[gwilliams2]

Works for non TL Boolits pretty well also!!

Shiloh

I've always thought about using tumble lube on non-tumble lube boolits... Anyone have a story good, bad or otherwise on this?

[1Papalote]

I tumble lube only, using TL on all bullet designs. I have not encounter leading since using TL. I do not like the lube inthe dies or solvent cleaning the exposed bullet but................it is inexpensive, and most of all it works.

Papalote

[fatelk]

I've had fairly good success with tumble lubing, except for one bullet design. I bought a Lee mold for Makarov bullets, and it just has one little groove. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I got bad leading when I tried shooting those tumble lubed slugs through my CZ82.

I was too cheap to buy a .363 lube sizer die, so I figured out the pan lube thing and it worked pretty well for me. No leading at all now.

[mdi]

I don't own a lubersizer and don't plan on getting one (but never say never!). I pan lube my magnum rounds and tumble lube my plinking/under 1K fps loads (I know I can go higher, I just don't). I pan lube using an oven and a "cookie cutter". I stand about 80 to 100 boolits in a pan and add chunked/shaved lube (Carnuba Red and/or my "Mike's Super Loob") around the boolits. I put in an oven at 175 degrees or so for about 20 minutes to get the boolit and the lube the same temp. to make the lube stick to the boolits better. Once the lube is melted I adjust the depth by adding more chunked lube. Let the pan full cool and cut out with a cutter I made from stainless steel tubing, reamed to about .005" larger than my boolits. I didn't have too much luck "punching out" the boolits from the lube, but many do. No fuss, no muss, just enjoyable time playin' wit my boooolits...

[blikseme300]

Just my 2 cents.

I do TL'ing, pan lubing and use Star lube sizers. Pan lubing is only suited to low volume reloading. I do this for my 444 & 45-70 BFR's as they are used very little (+-200/year). For my high volume (5000+/year) pistol boolits I use Star lube sizers.

The effort to run a Star is the same as for the Lee sizer and TL. I used to do TL with no sizing until I started trying to improve my accuracy. Then I started using Lee sizers. I was gifted a Star and now use them almost exclusively. TL works and has it's place.

Bliksem