Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Lubing bullets

I use Lee's Liquid Alox for lubing bullets. It's the fastest, easiest way I know to lube a bunch of bullets. Lee says to put the bullets in a butter container and roll them around, but I use a zipper bag.

First, put all your cast bullets in a zipper bag and squirt in some liquid alox. If the weather is cold, run the lube through the microwave for 30 seconds.



Next, seal the zipper bag and knead it in your hands until the bullets are coated in that sticky alox.



Then, open the zipper bag and spread the bullets on waxed paper. That picture has about 170 bullets on that waxed paper and it took me longer to type this blog post than it did to lube the bullets. I'll let them sit on the waxed paper overnight and put them away when I come home tomorrow afternoon.



Some people say that Liquid Alox is messy, but I just lubed 170 bullets and didn't get a drop on me. True, it takes overnight for the lube to harden, but I'm going to be sleeping all night.

This method works for bullets with traditional lube grooves as well as it works with the tumble-lube bullets. When I'm lubing bullets for my .30-30, I lube them one night, run them through the sizer to seat gas checks the next, then give the sized bullets another coat of liquid alox.

For the record, those are Lee's TL430-240-SWC bullets. It's a 240 grain, 44 caliber bullet with the tumble-lube grooves. I cast them from raw lead into which I added a bit of linotype. It closely resembles Lyman #2 alloy. These bullets are destined for my Ruger Super Blackhawk.

2 comments:

Termite said...

D,

Would you be interested in a group buy on a custom 45-70 bullet mold from LEE?

http://theguncounter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=10201

Old NFO said...

Sigh... I WISH I could reload...