Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Lube

Gaschekt mentioned another topic in my other thread that I need to question.......bullet lube.


In my naivety I've always assumed bullet lube is just bullet lube. I'm guessing that's not the case.

So what do you fellers like with what alloy?

Not at all apposed to a home brew either, with the old school approach I'm taking with all this. I mean, after all I use rendered bear fat for patch lube in my flintlocks because I don't believe there's anything better made commercially.

For the casting I've done I've always just used the RCBS sticks that fit my Lyman sizer. That good? Or is there something more appropriate?

I have a fair supply of Beeswax if that's a goodly component to use in a home brew.

I need to finalize my recipe for my homemade bullet lube recipe, but it's something like 50% pure beeswax, 30% avocado oil, 20% hoglard. These are the three ingredients used, though I have added slightly more oil to this to get the softness that works well in my Lyman 450 luber sizer

Have the beeswax already, and I've a lot of rendered hog lard in the freezer I use for deer sausage, so that sounds easy enough.

Good thread, guess I missed it when I looked back through stuff.

There are hundreds of pages on lubes on Cast Boolits, each one better than the other. Unlike 98% of cast shooters, I run generously oversized bullets in dimensions that would cause most shooters to faint. As dropped from the mold, dimensions. And I slobber them with Lee Liquid Alox. No problems in 32" barrel and 28" barrels.Ringing steel at 600 in trapdoors, good enuff fer me. Lazy Flintlocke

Back during my first ventures into casting I tried some Lee Alox on a GC 270 bullet from an RCBS mold. I think it was a 130 grain that dropped an average of 127 ish grains. I still have that stuff tucked away somewhere but have long since parted with anything 270Win. I remember it shooting phenomenally well but the speeds with PB powder at the time made it just a plinker round and I moved on to other things. The Lee Alox seemed sticky for a long time IRCC.

Do you clean it off the exposed bullet nose or otherwise keep it off? Seems like it would pick up a lot of dirt/lint.

The liquid alox tumble lube stuff is ok for low vel work, as evidenced by flintlocke's success. I don't know anybody who would recommend it for higher velocity.

My staple is good old 50/50 alox/beeswax. In my case it's Javelina brand 50/50 lube, but the stuff isn't made anymore - I laid in a lifetime supply thank god. My suggestion: check out White Label lubes. They make a wide range of good products including, I think, 50/50 lube, and they're nice folks to deal with.

As for homebrews, they're all well and good if you like experimenting. For me, I have better ways to spend my time than trying to save a couple bucks on proven commercially available bullet lubes.

Like you, I swear by bear grease for my round ball patches. (But the demands of cast rifle bullets are quite different.)

Need a "like" feature on this site.

The basic requirements/criteria of an appropriate lube, are?

Stay with the bullet the whole trip out the barrel.
Help facilitate no leading.

What else?

Does a star pattern on the muzzle indicate things are working correctly?

That's pretty much it. I love seeing a grease star on my muzzles.

And a shiny barrel

In the interests of full disclosure, I do add a little mineral spirits to thin LLA, and it dries pretty good, eventually almost like .22 rimfire rounds, kinda varnishy but not sticky.
I carefully store cast bullets in places like my pockets, dashboard and glovebox of pickup, floorboards of the jeep...this adds a small amount of grit keeping my bores shiny and well lapped...and then there is the lint, if you think about that it's kinda like a micro paper patched bullet...every cloud has a silver lining.
Edit, I notice in the Fouling Shot magazine, Gnoahhh mentioned White Lube...it's dominant in the winners circle of the published match results.

Then there's the absence of the old standard Alox 2138 from the marketplace. It was the "Alox" in those old formulas that got everybody's attention a couple generations ago. Then they quit making it a while back, of course. I don't know how the current iterations of Alox products fare because I moved heaven and earth to acquire about 50 sticks of old formula Javelina Alox 50/50 lube (although I don't hear negative reports). Yeah, I'm a stick in the mud about some things but dammit the stuff has worked universally well for me for over 50 years now - and like I said I have more important ways to spend my time than re-inventing the wheel!

On the other hand there is the subject of wax wads for in the case mouths of schuetzen rifles being shot via breech seating. I noticed a distinct improvement in accuracy when shooting my Pope-barreled .32-40 when I tried using a wax wad. The wax I used was dental wax which comes in thin sheets, and the protocol is to press the charged case mouth into the sheet like a cookie cutter, which leaves a wad in the mouth. The downside was a sorta nasty waxy build up in the throat, but strangely it helped rather than hindered. The goal over the winter is to brew up some old wax formulas published by the old masters, guys like Niedner, Pope, Leopold, etc. and see if I can make my own wax sheets for this purpose. I would simply buy some but nobody is catering to a crowd that might buy a total of five pounds of it nationwide.....

There was a time back before the War when putting a wax wad under jacketed bullets was all the rage. Claims of screaming high velocities, better accuracy, and with little or no jacket fouling abounded. Then it was discovered that the bloody things were jacking pressures up at the same time for some reason and the use of wax wads for that application died a quiet death.

Beeswax and enough Lucas synthetic oil stabilizer to soften after blending works as well as LBT for me.

Still gunning 35 Whelens at 2500 with 250s loaded from 15 years ago..

I switched to White Label BAC lube last winter because I was down to two sticks of Gnoahh’s beloved Javelina. I have had good luck with it. Soft enough to run through my Star with no heat. Shiny barrels with minimal leading and good accuracy.

99 percent of my usage is handguns with velocity ranging from 750-1250 fps.

It’s cheap and the people that make it are nice to deal with.

What's the difference between "pistol lube" and "rifle lube" as far as what happens with it in the barrel? I'm assuming that "rifle lube" is a little harder and more durable for the longer trip.

I mean, to the extreme, my son is using crisco in his cap & ball and I'd never even want to try that in a rifle. I've always just used the same "rifle lube" in 45LC plinker loads and I don't think I've ever had a problem with it.

My goal here though is strictly rifle loads for hunting deer.

Probably the best resource is found here.

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm

Feral. All of your questions will be answered when you start molding bullets, making lube, and shooting. Your specific needs and therefore alloy performance requirements will be different than anyone else. First have a goal in mind and then study up on how to make it.

I wanted to make the well studied and proven Lyman #2 alloy. I bought tin and antimony from rotometals and made close to 100 lbs of ingots. I got my lube recipe from the website above and it works. Turns out any reasonable combination will work just fine.

During my actual molding process I found that I only need half of my alloyed ingots and half scrap lead to still make sufficiently hard bullets. I've loaded Lee 309-170 gas checked and lubed bullets to 2700fps in a 26" 308 win target barrel for excellent accuracy and no leading. Just a shiny barrel and hardly worse for the wear. Milder powder charges will do as lubed bullets go faster because of the reduced friction. They are more efficient. In the 308 win the load above is 38.0grs of IMR-4895. Go shooting and have fun.

Good advice

What I'm NOT seeing here is a rave review for the RCBS stick lube I've always used, as first, or any, choice by any of y'all. I'll take that under advisement and look into some of the other suggestions here. I don't have a heater on my lubrisizer so the RCBS stuff has always been a bit of a pain to get flowing when the shop is on the cool side. Never really cared if it missed a spot on pistol plinker rounds but these rifles I want to do right.

I've used the RCBS lube before in 44 mag, 357 mag, and 45-70. It worked for me.

Been using hard lubes for a number of years now. I have a product named “Red Roster” right now in the sizer but after that's gone I'm switching to “Lyman Range Magic”. As lone as the leading problem stays under control, I'm happy. A heater is needed for these lubes so keep that in mind.