Thread: Home made Case lube.

I learned the hard way about what can happen with home-made and/or ‘substitute’ case lubes when I first started reloading, close on fifty years ago. I bought a Lyman Spartan press (a C frame job) and a set of Lyman 270 dies, and used lanolin for lube, as recommended by various books, and supposed experts.

My 270 has a fairly loose chamber, and full length sizing cases for it took a LOT of effort! In my ignorance, I thought this was normal. The annoying thing was that after sizing, anything up to half the cases were still a bit hard to chamber. The ‘expert’ advice I received was to screw the die in a bit further. I did this, and after a few reloads, some of the cases started showing incipient head separations. Not good. So I had to re-set the die back to its original position, always try chambering all the sized cases, put aside those that were still sticky, and run them through the die once or twice more, which usually cured them.

Eventually, I got fed up with all this rigmarole, and thinking that the main cause of my troubles was that the press lacked leverage, I bought an RCBS Rockchucker. It came with a bottle of RCBS case lube, and using this (and the old die in the Rockchucker press) F L sizing 270 cases was almost effortless. Later, out of curiosity, I tried using the same F L die in the Spartan press again, but using the RCBS lube. That turned out to WAY easier than with using lanolin for lube, and I got more consistent sizing, too.

Since then, I have only used either RCBS lube or Imperial Die Wax for F L sizing lube, and I have no intention of ever using home-made concoctions again, except as a desperation measure. (and that situation has never arisen) The lanolin was OK for neck sizing lube, though.