With a revolver, a slightly oversized slug can sometimes be seated with a bit more thumb pressure. Not so with an autoloader. When it comes to lubing and sizing bullets, you have some options. At the high end of the cost curve are sophisticated lubing and sizing tools from companies like Lyman and Star.
They lube and size in one fast operation and are configurable for bullets of almost any size. The sizing portion of the kit is made up of a sizing die that swages the bullet down to the specified diameter, a ram to push the bullet through the sizing die, and a plastic case to catch the sized bullets.
This kit is cheap, simple, and it really works. These bullets have a series of small lube grooves rather than the one or two lube grooves on conventional bullets. These micro-bands hold the Alox better. But you can use the system with conventional bullets, and you can even use it with conventional lubes, rather than the liquid Alox. Using the kit is pretty straightforward. Pour a hundred or so bullets into a bowl and squirt in some liquid Alox.
A little goes a long way. Then just pour the bullets from one bowl to the other until they are all coated with a thin film of Alox. What does bullet lube do? Looking at things in this manner results in a fairly simplistic, almost static picture hard surface, soft surface, slippery stuff in between , and the firing of a revolver shot is a very dynamic process.
What else does bullet lube do? Or perhaps more accurately, what else is done to the bullet lube? There were a couple of excellent articles published a few years back in The Cast Bullet on lube pumping mechanisms.
In a nutshell, the conclusions were that bullet lube was pumped to the bore surface by 3 different mechanisms -- compression, linear acceleration and radial acceleration.
There is solid physical evidence supporting this mechanism especially in rifles. The linear acceleration mechanism is pretty straightforward -- the inertia of the lube at rest causes it to be forced towards the rear of the lube groove as the bullet is accelerated forward by the burning powder. When the lube encounters the beveled or radiused rear face of the lube groove, it is once again forced to the barrel surface.
In the third lube pumping mechanism, radial acceleration, as the bullet begins to spin faster and faster as it progresses down the barrel, at some point sufficient radial acceleration think "centrifugal force" is generated to overcome the viscosity of the lube and it gets flung off of the lube groove surface and outward onto the barrel. All three of these mechanisms come into play when any cast bullet is fired, although the magnitude of each will vary significantly with the application e.
Indeed, the magnitude of each will vary for any given shot, depending on where the bullet is in the barrel -- linear acceleration will be dominant early in the shot, compression will take over as pressure peaks and radial acceleration will become more significant as the velocity increases. Delineation of these mechanisms provides a significant level of understanding in terms of cast bullet shooting and design, as well as bullet lube formulation. However, these mechanisms still have the bullet serving as nothing more than a brute-force paintbrush, slapping on a fresh coat of grease of the bore for the next bullet in line.
But lead bullets can lose half of their mass on impact, leaving hundreds of tiny fragments both in the meat hunters take home and the entrails they leave behind, which are a food source for many wild creatures.
Lube is mandatory for cast bullets and all lead bullets. Not only does bullet lube help prevent barrel leading, the correct sizing of bullets is necessary to prevent barrel leading. Not required for 30 caliber bolt rifles but also works well with minimum equipment up front.
Tumble lube allows one to decide tonight that they want to load up a few hundred pistol bullets tomorrow and for 10 minute time investment the little lead pills are ready to load the next day. Tumble and shake and bake PC allow for wide range of calibers, wide range of velocities with very little up front expense. With PC picking up where TL falls short. One of these days I might look into some sort of lube press. But it is way down on the list, more of a "if I happen to find one cheap" than I am actively looking.
I may try pan or dip lubing with one of the stick lubes just because it don't cost much to play with and winter is coming so more time to dink around.
Je suis Charlie Scrap I PC exclusively. I like the cleanliness of it and the lack of leading. My faster and long range rifles still get a steady diet of jacketed. Daniel J. Boorstin The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein. Eastwoods basic gun is on sale for I've used mine for a year and a half with no problems. I am curious how I lube, but would be interested in coating if hyper velocity can be had.
I've been doing PC, tumble lube and lube-sizer. I use my lube-sizer on bullet's from molds with the lube groves, that's just the 38 and 32L.
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