Do some bullet designs lead worse than others?

[fatelk]

I have a new Lee mold, .45 230gr TL SWC(TC actually). I've messed with it quite a bit, finally everything working right to make some .453" boolits, though they weigh 240gr+ instead of 230.

The issue has been leading. I shoot them unsized, with two coats on alox/jpw lube. A moderate charge of unique pushes them at 700fps. I have two .45's, one slugs at .4505, and the other at .4525. I tried some harder alloy, and some softer alloy.

I finally got the leading to stop in the tighter barrel with a second coat of lube, but still get a little in the other gun. It just seems to me that with a good-fitting boolit (.453" in a .4525" barrel) and low velocity, it shouldn't be leading at all.

I never had any problems with my old Lee .45 RN TL boolits with alox tumble lube, and read a lot of comments about how great the Lee 200gr SWC boolit is, as well as a few comments about leading with this TC TL boolit.

Any experience regarding boolit design and leading, or ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

I know the whole tumble lubing thing seems to be a bit controversial too. I tested some .44 mag 250gr boolits the other day, regular WW alloy sized to .430 with some old black Lyman lube in old-fashioned lube grooves. They were moving along over the chronograph at 1500fps, and no leading in the barrel.

I've read some posts about successfully using one very light coat of alox/jpw tumble lube, but that has not worked well for me with these .45 slugs. Even two coats seem to be not enough, unless there's another issue at work here.

[NuJudge]

Is your Leading at the chamber or muzzle end? This well tell us something about whether you are just running out of lubricant. Is there any chance your barrel is bigger at one end?

What temperature are you shooting them at? For me, I don't shoot Tumble Lube in the winter, so I have not experienced this, but others tell me that Tumble Lube does not work as well in cold temperatures.

[243winxb]

The 240 gr weight might mean you have almost pure lead, to soft? Knowing where the leading is would help.
Cast bullet leading

A clue to what is causing the leading is where the leading first begins to appear. If it appears near the chamber, chances are that bullet diameter or hardness are the cause.

A diameter too small and/or too hard an alloy will allow high pressure gas to leak past the bullet, which erodes the bullet and leaves leading near the chamber.

If the leading first appears on the leading edge of the rifling (if you imagine the bullet being pushed through the barrel, you will note that one edge of the rifling does most of the work of imparting a spin to the bullet. This is the edge you see when you look through the barrel from the breech end) the bullet might be too soft, and/or the velocity too high.

If the leading appears in the second half of the barrel, the bullet is running out of lube. You should see a star shaped pattern of lube accumulate on the muzzle. This is an indication that there is a little excess lube. http://www.leeprecision.com/cgi/faq/index.cgi

[44man]

I get leading in every gun with any boolit when I try LLA.
I use Felix lube or Lar's lubes on TL boolits.
Some say LLA works good but many more do not like it. It seems to me it takes four times longer fooling with LLA and JPW before the boolit can be loaded too.

[randyrat]

I would check other possiblities such as;
Squeezing the bullet by crimping too much, Too much crimp.
Is your die sizing the bullet.
One way to figure or check this is- pull a few and measure them...because if your squeezing them down when sizing, it doesn't mater how fat you made them they will be too skinny and lead lilke a dikins.
I don't recall what the measurments should be after they are loaded..... I measure the brass neck area just after sizing and then the neck areas just after bullet sizing , you'll know if it's too much.
Remember different brass has different wall thickness also, so keep that in mind, another variable to watch for.
That Tumble lube,mule snot,Mc Goo,Alox or whatever is good stuff to several points and you have not reached one point yet in velocity or pressure. I use it in a 454 light to med loads with no leading issues.

[RobS]

The 240 gr weight might mean you have almost pure lead, to soft? Knowing where the leading is would help. http://www.leeprecision.com/cgi/faq/index.cgi

Lee TL-230-TC bullet weights at 240g with wheel weights. Their regular lube groove 230 truncated bullet also weighs around 240g as well. I've had both and since I wanted a touch lighter bullet I went with their 200 grain RF and guess what..........that's right a 210g bullet.

As for the leading where are you experiencing it in the barrel?

[fatelk]

The leading is in the first couple inches past the chamber. I tried straight WW alloy, then some stick on WW's (pretty soft).

The soft boolits worked fine in the tighter barrel, and the harder boolits seemed better in the bigger bore, leading only very slightly.


Lee TL-230-TC bullet weights at 240g with wheel weights.
This is good to know. I guess mine are normal then. My old two cavity Lee RN molds put out close to 230 IIRC, but they were from the early 90's.

I've always wondered why the Lee instructions say to mix 10:1 with tin to get the correct weight. This seems like a tremendous waste to me, and not at all realistic.

I haven't pulled a boolit to measure yet, but I'm very careful with only a slight crimp, really just enough to remove the bell. For these I've been using only RP brass.

It hasn't been very warm out for sure. Perhaps I'll try a third coat of lube on the next ones.

[Slow Elk 45/70]

I might add that a boolit .453 is Small for a .4525 BBL, it seems to work in your Smaller BBL, so you might want to bump up the size a bit, IMHO

[fatelk]

I was wondering about that too. I hoped that a half thousandth over would be good enough, but maybe not. It has been suggested that I should just get another barrel; they are plentiful and fairly inexpensive. It's just that this barrel shoots so good with my old rounds..

[MtGun44]

I will not say the Lee mule snot lube is worthless, but we sure seem to hear a lot
of problems with it.

My recommendation is to avoid TL designs and liquid alox if you want reliable success.
Works for some, not for others. Seems like a pretty marginal system.

I know the problem is that you either need to buy a lubrisizer or pan lube the raw
castings and either shoot as cast or lube with the inexpensive push thru lube dies.

Bill

[fatelk]

I'll lube 50 boolits up good with some old-fashioned lube tonight, and shoot them tomorrow. I'll report back on how that goes.

[runfiverun]

the tl design in the 45 is second only to the t/l design in 9mm as far as the help i'm leading questions i see spread across the net.

[randyrat]

The thread by 03Lover on leading is a good read. Goes over the whole gambit. Very interesting.

[DLCTEX]

The thread also points to size being the problem, not the lube.
The WW alloy may have a higher percentage of stick on weights and be softer. I'd pull a few boolits and see if they have been sized down by seating in hard or undersized brass.

[shootinxd]

MT44gun,I have not seen an inexpensive push thru lube die.Who make such a thing.I HATE to tumble lube!

[runfiverun]

the push throughs are lees and you either pan lube or tumble with them.
only other way around it is to buy a star.
you might just hate the alox tumble lube there are other recipes out there like the jpw/lla/mineral spirits mix.
or the offshoot i use of jpw and b-wax swirl lube with about 10% xlox.
or the 50-50/carnuba red, dip and size that works too.

[fatelk]

Well, 50 rounds through the tube, and no leading!

I took 50 of the tumble lubed boolits, got a glob of the old black Lyman lube out of my lyman 45, and painstakingly lubed them by hand. Pain in the neck, but for 50 slugs I figured it was easier than setting up for pan lubing. It did work, though. No leading in the bore at all, as far as I can tell.

My next step will be to try a third coat of tumble lube. Pan lubing is so slow for any quantity. Do they make a lube-sizer die in .453 for my lyman 45? I'm getting to where I'd just rather lube and size my boolits the old fashioned way.