Rolling to lube

[earplug]

I use to tumble lube my boolits. Easy and fast but the lube build up on parts of the boolit that did not need lube was creating a mess in my seating dies and enough rubbed off on my brass to make loading/chambering a hassle at speed. I use moon clips.
Found a piece smooth angle aluminum and stacked up about thirty bullets then dripped some of my liquid lube on the bases and lube area. Roll the bullets back and forth to coat them and your done. No more lube on the noses.
It has made a difference in my dies and loading.

[MtGun44]

Can't stand TL for the reasons you state. Good luck with your new method, hope you have
good success with it. One day, you should try a lubrisizer. I do understand that they are
expensive, and I could not afford one for the first couple of years of my casting career,
so I can appreciate the alternate methods. Others may benefit from your method, and
keeping that nasty goop off the noses is definitely a good thing.

I assume you are shooting .45 ACP in Model 25s or 1917s, and this cartridge is a good one
for TL, low pressure and resonable velocities make it much more likely to work than in some
of the higher intensity cartridges, altho we have some reports of successes there,too.

Bill

[geargnasher]

Good tip.

If you made 45/45/10 and used that according to Recluse's sticky in the lube forum, you wouldn't have any of the issues associated with normal tumble-lubing with liquid Alox.

Gear

[XWrench3]

i still lube most of my pistol boolits with lla. i know it is a bit messy, but it is a lot faster & easier than hand applying grease to each boolit. as for the dies, i just throw them into an old powder bottle, that has about 3" of mineral spirits in it, let them soak overnight, shake it up a few times, pull them out,and let dry. pretty easy too. just be carefull with lee dies, i am not sure what the mineral spirits would do to the o-rings.

[williamwaco]

I tumble lube in a zip lock bag. I mix the LLA with about 25% naptha. A one quart bag will hold about 250 .357 or about 350 9 mm bullets.

It takes less than two minutes to tumble lube 250 .357s. I get zero lube on my hands or tools. This takes no more than a teaspoon of lube. Very efficent use of lube. They take about two hours to dry to the touch on an old cookie sheet. That is really fast and efficient. BUT it is not as quick as it seems because I lube them once very lightly, push them through the Lee sizer, then tumble them again a little heaver. It seems like less work while you are doing it but It saves very little time.

I do not notice them being stickey to touch but I don't like the light brown film on my pretty silver bullets. I do notice a buldup of lube in my seating die, BUT, I get that same build up with bullets sized on my Lyman 4500. I clean it out of the seating die by flushing the die with Berryman's B-12. It is just as effective as and cost about 1/3 the price of Birchwood Casey's Gun Scrubber.

The verdict is: I use both systems about equally. I always use tumble lube bullets on indoor ranges because there is considerably less smoke.

[edler7]

.... I clean it out of the seating die by flushing the die with Berryman's B-12. It is just as effective as and cost about 1/3 the price of Birchwood Casey's Gun Scrubber.

WOW- somebody else uses B-12 !!! I thought I was alone in the universe on that one. I have a can sitting on my bench at all times. GOOD stuff.

[earplug]

I'm using Rooster Bullet Jacket. Happy with it.
I have a perfectly fine Lyman sizer luber in a old box. I would rather roll lube my bullets then mess around with another machine operation.
Haven't had to clean out my seating die in close to 400 rounds with my new rolling method.

[chris in va]

I switched to JPW and no longer get nasty buildup in my dies.

[mpmarty]

45/45/10 best lube I've found and no stickies.