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Hi all. Few questions for ya. I might have a good supply of beeswax and its got me wondering the best options for lubing bullets. I heard pan lubing is popular with beeswax but can tumble lubing be done with beeswax? I'm casting micro groove bullets and I have a lee bullet sizer kit on its way just so you know.
Also has anyone ever tried spray painting bullets instead of powder coating? If so what paint did you use and was baking needed?
Cheers
Years ago my brother used to wrap his cast 45/70 projectiles with a couple of layers of Teflon thread tape and spray them with clear coat. Drove them at warp speed in a Ruger No1 with no gas check.
He hit a pig through the front shoulder quartered on. On-side rear leg was all that was eatable. The rest was jelly and full of lead shrapnel. Never seen cast projectiles disintegrate like that before. I think he stopped using it for meat recovery after that, but was still using it for rabbits and possums.
50 50 with happy grease pan lube and shoot shit .
Seen a guy on youtube mixing epoxy eith a big of acetone as a thinner, tumbling boolits in this, claimed it worked fine. Probably the cheapest way to go. Alcohol would do too, main warning was not to dilute too much as thinner affects toughness of the epoxy coat. The thinner amount was a fraction of the epoxy amount.
Go wax it's the original and still the best, needs minimal equipment and little faffing around.
@hotbarrels. I've tried the teflon tape trick, didn't do anything for performance and made a mess in the bore.
I've heard of people tumble lubing with beeswax but can't find any info on it. youtuber Fortunecookie45 said in one video he's done it and showed how to do it in another video but couldn't find it in any of his vids.
As a trial, you could heat some bees wax in a pot immersed in some hot water (don't heat the pot over direct flame as you will burn the wax), put your projectiles into a sieve, and dip them into the hot wax. Pull the sieve out and shake it to get the excess wax off the projectiles, and provided you 'dip and shake' quickly, the wax will freeze off pretty quick on the projectiles due to their thermal heat sink. It would be a bit like deep frying chips.
I would imagine a shorter dip time (less time for the projectiles to warm up) would give you a thicker coating due to faster wax freeze. Longer dip time (higher projectile temp when you pull them out) would give you a thinner coating, if you are giving them a shake while the wax is still liquid. A cold water plunge when you have got the coating you want would freeze things off quick.
Doing 1/2 dozen projectiles at once would help as it gives you something to tumble against to remove excess wax while it is still liquid.
Stand a whole bunch of projectiles upright in a flat pan melt your lube and pour it into the pan till it's level with the top grease groove and leave it to cool. Cut the bullets out with a "cookie cutter" a case with the base cut off and the mouth slightly flared, the job is done in no time, excess lube is removed and they are ready to load.
After doing a lot of online research. I saw people using a beeswax and johnson paste wax mixture, did some research and finding out Johnson paste wax is a furniture and floor polish it got me thinking about this stuff https://www.bunnings.com.au/glitz-20...olish_p4460472 and whether it would be a got substitute for a bullet lube. I have a barely used tin lying around.
Using a tumble lube consisting of bees wax and Johnson liquid floor polish on tumble lube bullets is only marginally successful on rifle projectiles but does give some lube on pistol projectiles .I have tried this formula with mixed results. A better mix for tumble lube bullets is a 60/40 mix of Alox and Johnson liquid wax. This dries to a hard finish and lubes 303 / 308 etc up to 1800fps. (bullet fit has to be 1 or 2 thou oversize) This is called Bens Red and was developed in 2014 by a guy called Ben in the states. This has 1 major draw back however as Johnson liquid wax is not available in NZ and an email from them about 2015 stated that it isnt worth it to make or import it due to the small market. I had some sent to me from the states and found it was reasonably good as a lube and even better if you dipped your previously lubed bullets in the stuff and let it dry. Accuracy is good until you reach the RPM threshold for that bullet and twist rate. It is a lot of mucking around and I found it much easier to just powder coat using the shake and bake method. Its so much easier ,cleaner and with 303 much more accurate.