From ignorance comes enlightenment

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
iI did not think anyone was being a dick. I appreciate the candor and all the tips and comments. I'm not your internet whiney type with thin skin or an insecurity complex. Tell me I'm being dumb or an ill-informed and I'll take note and make a correction. I'm a firm believer in mistakes making us better.

I do admit I'm trying to short circuit the path to success by leverage what you folks have learned thru your years of effort. I've had excellent success with Paul's lube in BPCR. But I've shot with some very gifted shooters that use 50/50 beewax and Crisco and shoot the pants off most others on the range. I'm a true believer in the KISS principle. But everything is not simple. I also know that ignorance will lead one to conclusions that would not be reached if better informed. You don't know what you don't know, right?

I have tens of thousands of pistol rounds sent downrange in action type shooting events. .38 spl out of .357 wheelguns and .45ACP out of both wheelguns and autos. Later I put thousands of .45LC downrange in CAS shoots thru a Marlin Cowboy and 4 different SAA Colt's. I bought all my bullets and they came lubed and sized. I won my share of matches and always placed in the top tier of shooters. Commercially made lead bullets and brand X lube always worked for me. Actually, I think most used Alox lube. It was always blue. So, lube has never been anything I gave a second thought to until I started shooting BPCR matches. But the lube's purpose then was to keep the fouling soft and the rifle shooting consistently. Once I settled on Paul's lube, I moved on to getting better at putting the shot where I wanted it to go in spite of the conditions.

So now, with smokeless rounds using lead bullets at reduced velocities, I'm again in search of a lube that will go thru my Lubrisizer relatively easily and give me the consistency I desire from my rifle/cartridge. I hope a slight tweak to Paul's lube will do the trick. If it does, that's what I'll stick with and concentrate once again on making lighter bullets (than my 535 gr Paul Jones Postell) find their mark regardless of conditions that are working against me achieving that goal.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Heheh! Nobody was insinuating you were dumb or ill-informed, either, we're all here to learn and share openly what we've learned and help each other out if we can; it just so happens you landed in a nest of bona-fide bullet lube cranks who are trying to save you some pain and misery! You know that 3000+ post lube thread that's still a sticky over on boolits? Yeah, I'm Geargnasher.

A mix of beeswax and enough Vaseline to plasticize it to your liking will do a large percentage of anything anyone would ever need bullet lube to do.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
The vaseline is an interesting ingredient that I noticed in other threads about lube making. Interesting because petroleum based products are frowned on in BPCR circles. Veggie and animal based oils are the general rule. Could be because crude was unknown back in formative years of BPCR shooting. But I do remember experienced shooters talking about how petroleum based oils made fouling worse. My guess is coking concerns. But could be unsubstantiated legend.
 
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Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Vasoline is great for softening a lube a bit without changing it much otherwise.

Beeswax, microwax, and paraffin all have a place. I kinda like lubes with some of each.

We learned much thru trial and error. I still have a half dozen lubes I made that have never been tried.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I cleaned almost all of mine up [I say almost because I found some when I re-done the lube bench shelves this winter]
done a batch 1,2 and 3 then tried them all against each other and found a 2.5 was pretty goodnuff and just mixed them all together and bumped them with more micro-wax to get the viscosity I wanted.

I have heard of guys bucking the no petroleum thing with BP, but I doubt I would be one of the ones trying it.
there is enough things to try without going there.
just in natural waxes alone I can think of 4 in like 4-5 seconds, oils and sticky modifiers like lanolin or neets foot oil are easily available.
I don't know if Brad shoots much black powder anymore but if he did I bet he would whip up the same basic B-wax/Crisco/lanolin lube me and Ian both use.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Used beeswax/crisco for minis in the rifled musket all the time. Worked very well but was messy as hell after 30-40 shots. Man did I end up with black hands and pants from wiping my hands.
Khornet and I went thru 600 pounds of lead in a couple of year shooting lots of those minis. When you are throwing a 530 gr chunk of lead downrange and doing it 50-75 times per week it drains the lead supply quickly.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
Interesting observation made yesterday as I was loading for this morning match at Wilton. I had sized and lubed bullets the day before with Paul's lube. When I took the bullets out of the heated ammo cabinet, the lube was not as gooey as before. Dehumidifier is running in the basement now. It appears that the lube dried up a bit making less gooey when I loaded yesterday. It is also a new stick of lube. So, it may have been prepared slightly differently. I still remember the first time I made it. It uses Murphy's Oil Soap. I put it in the microwave and went back to my bench for a second. When I came back, it looked like a laundry scene from I Love Lucy. Never made that mistake again.

Today was what we call the Vermont Match in the pouring rain. 6, 9, and 12 inch plates shot at 100, 150 and 200 yds. Then a pig at 300 and 2 meerkat tie breakers at 400 yds shot offhand. Shot the entire match today offhand with iron sights. Shot a 13 and am happy. Another shooter, who is a superb offhand shooter shot a 26 offhand. I believe we had two shooters hit the meerkat once each. I missed it with my second shot by about 1 min low and 1 min right. But we all know how little close counts on the score sheet. We had a couple shooters put a round in the dirt just off, and I mean JUST OFF the nose. Had they been shooting a .45 instead of a .30 cal, they probably would have hit it.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
Dug out my boxed of lube sticks and ingredients yesterday. Decided it was time to restart the process. Took the Lubrisizer apart and melted all the old lube out with a hair dryer. After thinking a bit more about the change in constituency of the lube, I was thinking that perhaps the lube that had been residing in the sizer all these years had broken down, separated or similar. With the sizer apart, it was a mixed bag of colors in the annular grove around the die bore.

Looking thru my box, I found a bag of lube sticks I'd made many years ago. The recipe was Beeswax, Crisco and Jojoba oil. Finding the oil was tough, locally and it was priced dearly. I wrap my sticks in plastic wrap and they looked like new. Had a much firmer consistency than the lube I was using. I also found several sticks of the same lube I'd put into the sizer the other day when it ran out during a sizing operation. This is Paul Matthews recipe using Beeswax, Neatsfoot oil, and Murphy's Oil Soap. The consistency of those sticks was also firmer that what I had been using. So, the change I noticed could very well have been that new lube. Although the path to the die from the reservoir is a long one and not sure that new lube made it to any bullets. The Matthews lube also used a more crude form of beeswax. The beekeeper had refined wax, which is clean and yellow and unrefined which is a dark tan color and can have remnants of bee parts and the color is driven by the propolis in the wax. Propolis is a fancy name for bee glue, used to fix small gaps in the hive. As glue, it is sticky in nature.

I think I'm going to research recipes here and develop one using what I have on hand. Looking to keep it simple. Jojoba oil will probably not be part of any mix. I tend to think that any veggie oil or natural oil should do the trick. I'm now equipped with micro wax and paraffin thanks to a member here so one or both will be used in the new lube recipe.

Then, and I don't believe I'm going to do this, I'll probably lube up some bullets by hand to shoot identical load with the only variable being the lube and see how they compare. I'll probably pan lube and make a tubular shear to extract the bullets from the solidified lube to reduce variation in lube quantity and depth from bullet to bullet. I've never done this before so will be a learning experience.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
you can make an extractor for the lube cakes with/from an old cartridge case.
punch out the primer hole.
put a flat head nail through it, and a piece of wood on the end.
then push the case down over the bullet, and use the pusher to push it out.
if you want to get real fancy, solder or braze another case cross wise on the first.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
you can make an extractor for the lube cakes with/from an old cartridge case.
punch out the primer hole.
put a flat head nail through it, and a piece of wood on the end.
then push the case down over the bullet, and use the pusher to push it out.
if you want to get real fancy, solder or braze another case cross wise on the first.

The nail w/handle suggestion is appreciated. I use old cases to make various punches for gasket making, rubber washers, etc.. So using one here is yet another application.

My initial thought was a piece of plastic or brass water supply tube. The old case is much easier.

I find elegance in simplicity.
Thanks.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Pain lubing has only been worthwhile for me with the big, honking BPC bullets that hold like half an ounce each. Hand lubing and shoving through a push-through sizer has by far been faster and more convenient for me personally.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
the biggest negative to pain lubing is then your locked into a certain lube viscosity.
miss on the hard side,, and it falls off the bullets or the cake just cracks.
too soft and you got a mess that never quits.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
Doubt I'll err on the hard side. I want to use the lube in the sizer and not use a heater if possible. Before I lube anything I'll let the lube set up and see what the hardness/viscosity is first. If it is too hard, I'll modify it a bit and recheck.

Found an old article in my box of lube materials where the author recommends a small bit of Cream of Wheat. Says it does raise pressures a bit, but is okay in moderate loads, under 1900 fps. Says the CoW makes a plug that cleans the barrel with every shot. Says he's de-leaded barrels with just a couple of rounds down the bore. I'll stick with lube since I've yet to see a leading problem. But it is an interesting concept.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Pain lubing? Is that when you take the Lubrisizer and bullets to the opera with the wife? Or go visit the mother in law?
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
about the same feeling, only with a squeaky handle.

COW is not in my wheel house, it is umm a thing? I'd maybe try in a straight wall case with ammo I loaded like 2 days ago.

a trick I come up with some time back that works with some [many] softish lubes is to give them a spritz of rubbing alcohol after lubing the bullet.
this 'sets' a skin on the surface but still allows the lube to work as normal when subjected to normal lube rigors in the gun.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
"Pain lubing" is something that would fit into that contest that I think Harvard runs where you change or add one letter to a word to give it a new definition. My all time favorite is

"Reintarnation - When you die and then come back as a hillbilly'.

So, in keeping with the rules...

Pain Lubing - any bullet lubing process that does not involve a lubrisizer.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I prefer dip lubing to pain lubing, and finger lubing to that.
I prefer to just pump the handle and listen to bullets falling in the drawer, as the feeder goes schlick schlack, but that isn't always feasible.
 

Spindrift

Well-Known Member
I do a bit of pan lubing, as I have not invested in a lubrisizer, at least not yet. I find it works well, with converted cartridges for harvesting the bullets. It leaves neat holes, where you can just drop in the next batch of bullets. A top coat of tumble lube (X-lox with some dissolved hardwax in it) takes care of the stickiness, at least reasonably well.
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popper

Well-Known Member
A little dab will do ya. Try a couple drops of Mazzola oil in the lube groove AS you are seating your bullets. Never need to clean the barrel (dry patch only) and NO leading! Get any on the nose and you won't be able to hold the bullet to seat. Works in the snow or desert temps. Slippery but polar so it sticks to all metal like glue.