Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting What lube now?

I'm sitting down right now to mix up some wax wad material: an old recipe formulated by A.O.Niedner over 100 years ago. 4 parts beeswax/4 parts Japan Wax/2 parts colloidal graphite. Melt in a small double boiler and pour onto the surface of a pan of cold water - the wax solidifies on the surface in relatively thin sheets which are then removed and stored in a box with wax paper separating them.

The stuff is used at the shooting range when breech seating ammunition in single shot target rifles. After breech seating the soft plain base bullet firmly/completely into the rifling, the cartridge case is de- and re-capped and charged with powder. Before the case is inserted into the chamber behind the bullet its mouth is pressed into the wax sheet like a cookie cutter leaving a wax wad in the mouth thereof. It serves three purposes: A) it keeps powder from spilling out in the journey from the bench to the rifle chamber, B) protects the base of the bullet from the sandblasting effect of as yet unburned powder granules, and C) provides a modicum of additional lube to the bore. Another benefit which doesn't apply to me is if you're doing this with black powder propellant it goes a long way toward eliminating and/or softening fouling buildup in the bore, thus allowing the shooter to fire longer strings of shots without having to swab the bore between shots (what the old timers called "shooting dirty").

Probably of little interest here, just wanted to show a little of how the other half lives. "Tools of the trade":

de- re-capper, Pope-style


Bullet breech seating tools


Bullet lube pump (lubes one bullet at a time, at the shooting bench)