Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Best bullet lube for...

What Lube are you guys using on handguns? I use a lot of SPG on my rifles,but I'm looking to switch on the .44's I load.Thinking about trying the new Super Moly from Lyman.....

Are you shooting BP or smokeless? If you are shooting smokeless then you need to try the BAC lube sold by White Label lubes. You can contact him on the Cast Boolits site at the bottom of page. Click on Lar's Stuff. Or you can find him on fleabay. The BAC lube bis thye best that I've found for the price. The Lyman is messy and not as good. The white label lubes are hard to beat and he and his wife are honest people. Later David

Glen is one of the greatest guys around and has the best lubes for a fair price.
Try his Carnauba Red with the .44 too.

I like the LBT Blue soft.

Moly is limited as a cast bullet lubricant; so are most colloids.

Your SPG will work just fine. A better dual purpose lube is Sagebrush Alox, available from www.sageoutfitters.com

I'm sorry I should have said I'm loading the .44 Specials and Mag.I load cast for .450/400 and .303 and have been very happy with SPG,but always looking...thanks Guys!

SPG is a BP lube and is very sad for that. Lube is VERY important and if you make some Felix lube or buy some of Lar's lube you can cut groups by way better then half.
I don't know what you are happy with but my revolvers MUST shoot under 1" at 50 yards and most will do that at 100 yards.

There's enough folks that have shot their way into national championships, and the #1 spot in various other shoots from Sillouette, to Creedmore, that might take a bit of exception to that statement.
I've shot a good bit of SPG in black and smokeless loads , and have found no adverse affects to accuracy with the stuff, but I have found other lubes that I like better, mostly due to fouling residue.

personally I like Lyman Black Moly lube, works well for me, and I also like speed green, but several of the other lubes mentioned I've heard good things about but I've no experience with them.

You dispute me, then answer the question! Fouling residue. When the last 10" of my BPCR is packed with hard, dry fouling and a patch will not push through without it being soaked with solvent, how can you say the lube works?
Why do you contradict yourself?
I made the mistake of spending the terrible price for SPG. I took the balance of the lube to several Shippensburg shoots and tried to sell it. I was stuck with it and mixed other things with it all to no avail. I can spit on a chunk of beeswax and it will work better.

Not disputing you, just offering a different point of view.
Hard dry fouling in a 10" barrel?????? in your east coast humidity? I didn't get hard dry fouling from a 32 inch barrel in our dry climate.
The fouling I was speaking of was a heavier goopy type of fouling, not dry. The only time hard dry fouling has been a real issue is when shooting bp loads in 115 degree heat with extremely low humidity.

The fouling was in the LAST 10" of my barrel and it didn't matter if it was raining outside. Never had a grease ring at the muzzle, just dry fouling.
Used a blow tube and seen the stuff in the muzzle change color as it took on moisture but before the next shot is taken it dries out. It will not hold moisture to soften fouling.
I switched to a rod with a damp patch to push stuff out and darn near broke the rod every time.
No thanks, a LOT of money for nothing. Every single home made lube has worked 150% better.
The story I heard and I am not sure how true it is, is that Steve ran out of lube at a shoot. The only thing he had was a Chapstick so he used it and found it worked somewhat. He copied the ingredients as close as he could and came up with SPG.
Now if you research Chapstick, it contains an ingredient that DRIES your lips when it evaporates forcing you to keep using more and more on your lips. Buy more Chapstick!
Now the stuff might actually work in a handgun with smokeless but I will never give up my Felix lube to find out.
Not being able to even give the stuff away at a shoot told me I am not alone. I shoot with the top shooter in the country that blasted everyone at Ratone in all categories. He just gave me a sly grin over the SPG.

What bullet, powder, etc, and what rifle were you shooting this mess in?

I shoot a Browning BPCR in 45-70. Boolits from .460" to .464" and weights from 500 to 560 gr. Powder from Goex cartridge, FFG, FFFG, Swiss from FFG to FFFG and every charge that can be put in the case. Even Pyrocrap at one point. Years and years of shooting and testing with every load and every lube made or bought.
Guess what, SPG fails and every single other lube works.
OOPS, Lee Shaver lube might just be worse, paraffin, moly and a little oil does not make good lube.
A super lube is beeswax, safflower oil and lanolin. Beeswax, Ballistol and lanolin. Beeswax Lubeguard and lanolin. Hundreds of others put SPG in the garbage. As long as fouling is kept soft and holds enough moisture to be shot out with the next shot or wiped out first, lube is no longer important. From then on the boolit is what counts.

OOOH OOK, I understand now. Thanks for the critical load data when you had the "10 inches" of hard fouling in your barrel.
If a person couldn't look at the equipment lists from the winners at shoots at Shippensburg, Ridgeway, Raton, Ben Avery, and others. Not to mention personal experience. One might think you knew something. Problem is at all the shoots listed a majority of the top finishers use SPG lube. If SPG was the crud you think it is, it wouldn't show up on the equipment lists, and it wouldn't be as highly spoke of as it is,even by folks that use other lubes.
The giveaway that made the bullspit flag get dropped on you was the nonsense about SPG and chapstic. The only thing they have in common is they are both for sale to the public. Anybody that has used SPG knows better. Anybody that knows bpcr, knows a bit of the history of SPG lube, and chapstic ain't involved.

I happen to belong to Shippensburg. Brian Chilson happens to be one of the top Master shooters in the country. Next time you see him, ask if he is using SPG.

Chilson lists his lube as Matthews. So yes I suppose he did look at you funny, IF you asked him if he wanted your SPG. Problem is these guys that do shoot so well are pretty picky about their loads, lubes etc. And for some goof to just haul off and ask them if they wanted his SPG, probably would bring some strange reactions. Especially if the same said goof was whining about "10" inches of hard fouling.

There's a plenty of other folks there that list SPG as their lube.Also top shooters at Ridgeway, River Bend, Raton, Ben Avery.......
So why don't you tell us what load was causing you the supposed fouling trouble?

Well, this seemed to have run off track and hope you guys get along OK. Didn't mean to start a scrap.....
I've used SPG in my rifles with smokeless for years and not had a problem. I'll be using Lyman Orange for my revolvers,.44 Sp&Mag

No, I did not say anything about the fouling at any of the shoots. But I could not get rid of the SPG. It did not matter what load I used, I could not push a patch through without soaking it, not good on the line because it then needs a dry patch.
My spotter and friend uses a Pedersoli Sharps and he had the same problem as did another friend with a Sharps 45-100. We also were peeling out lead at the bench.
No, I am not telling a tale, it just did not work for us. Our mistake was buying three orders. I have no axe to grind and I only can say what trouble we had.
I say the same thing about Lee liquid Alox, I can not use it without a loss of accuracy and a lot of leading in my revolvers. Others love the stuff. I have sent many bottles free to guys on the sites just to get rid of it. It came with the sizers and I refuse to use it.
If you or anyone else posted about something you tried and it gave you trouble, I would not make an issue out of it even if it works for me.
I feel all of us should post experiences, good or bad about any product or procedure and nobody should get hostile over it.
I love Ruger's and there are more posts about bad ones coming out of the factory but I do not jump on anyone about it. But you should see the trouble I got into when I said something bad about Freedom guns. Same with Marlin and the stupid twist on the .44 of 1 in 38". Many defended it but it is strange there are a million posts about not getting the gun to shoot.
So why does this go on? I am not trying to change your mind so why can't you accept that the lube did not work for us?

Well its more about your presentation than anything.
First you tell us SPG is a poor lube. Well some might not like it, but poor or bad lube its not.
Then you say nobody uses it. Well that's blatantly false,and its a very easy thing to look at equipment lists to see how false your statement is.
Then I ask you about details of your load that supposedly caused the "last 10 inches " of the barrel to be fouled so badly.
Your reply is a lot of drivel with no specifics. A person has to wonder,.
Now you're trying to assume the part of the victim here?

The type of fouling you're speaking of is most likely a powder/bullet size problem.
The flaking in the Pedersoli barrel, is most likely a function of the over sized chambers the Italians put in their rifle, and or a function of bad alloy, or poorly cast bullets, or bullets getting shaved during seating, or being crimped to death. Probably has little to do with the lube used.

Well, if we can talk sensible, we can discuss loads. If my presentation bothers you, remember I am an old fart!
We can start with boolits. I use 20 to 1. My bore has 8 lands and grooves, 1 in 18". Groove to groove is .4593" if I remember, can't find my dimensions right now. Bore is .450".
I bought a bunch of used molds at the start, Lyman, Lee, RCBS, etc. All too small from .457" to .458". Lucky to hit at 50 yards. I tested my friends Postell with no luck. I have the NEI 540 Creedmore and it shoots just fair. I then bought a mold from Dave Farmer, 530 gr at .460" and the 500 gr Gov't boolit from Rapine at .460". Both shoot pretty good.
Then I started to make my own molds, trying different weights, bore rides and sizes. My latest boolit is 510 gr at .464" to fit the chamber and a bore ride of .451". I made expanders for all boolits so it is easy to seat them. I do not crimp and I leave a little bell to the case to center the front or just straighten it out. This boolit is doing very well and holds a lot of lube. I have not shot a shoot with them yet, I have not settled on a load or powder.
I have zero leading and almost no fouling with any of the boolits that fit. Only SPG does not work. I have about 20 lubes I played with and find no great difference.
Matthews lubes all work too.I have made all of them. By the way, stuffing the front of a cylinder over a round ball in the Ruger Old Army with Matthews lube will do wonders. I popped a lot of deer with the gun.
So I have gone from .457" up the ladder to .464", 405 gr to 540 gr. All powder and loads from cartridge to Swiss FFFG. I like Swiss. Loads from 67 to 74 gr. Every wad and combination of wad. Every compression amount
I find a wad cut from a manila envelope just to compress with is as good or better then anything else. My friend didn't even use a wad and had good results.
Now don't skim read, read it all and see what you can find that makes SPG not work for me.

Odd that that Badger barrel would be that large in the grooves. Even at that diameter going past 462 is liable to be super counter productive especially at distance beyond 100 yds as the finning will do all sort of nasty things to the flight of that bullet, not to mention how it'll probably cause most of the lube to be dumped in the throat.
Still interested to know what the exact load was from your claimed 10 inches of hard fouling.The only time I've ever got that sort of thing was with the now defunct Elephant powder, and some of the Speer Idaho territory cowboy bullets shot as is.
Yes sometimes no wad works,most others it doesn't.
You can put a lid on the oldguy crap, I'm guessing I'm as old or older than you. Either way its no excuse for the vaqenous and generalities you've dealt so far.

Well, I am going on 72, if that isn't an old fart I don't know what is!
Anyway, 500 meter testing with the large boolit is very promising. There has not been any problems so far. I just have not had time to keep testing or to make a shoot. Much work yet to be done.