Help --- How many grooves need lube?

[Snobal]

Hello,
I haven't yet read all the responses so, bare with me a little if someone else wrote what I'm about to.

For me, if the bullet design has one groove, it gets one groove filled with lube. If it has three, three. In other words, I love lubing! Lol! And, I absolutely love the smell of burning lube in the morning; the evening, any time. We all know what the #1 complaint is about cast bullets. Why risk it? Lube ain't expensive. Shoot, I even pump the Hades out of my Saeco Luber/SIzer; twisting the bullet doing so, attempting to put all the lube I can into those lube grooves!


This joker ain't a joking either!
GRB

Thanks GoldenRoyBoy,

I have cast up anothe 300 or so RCBS 148 Grain wadcutter bullets. These come in at 141.5 Grains --- a little softer than the last batch....

I too don't care about the smoke --- I just want those suckers to go into one hole.

Thanks to this forum, I have found a place to buy more "ol time bullet lube.

[Limey]

If you are going to cut down the number of lube grooves to fill on a bullet to my way of thinking the groove near the nose of the bulllet is the most important one to fill, not the one nearest the base of the bullet.

If you only fill the bottom groove near the base of the bullet there is the length of the unlubed bullet going up the barrel before some lube arrives.

If you fill the groove nearest the nose of the bullet the bore is lubed the quickest and then there is lube being deposited for the rest of the length of the unlubed bullet to run on up the barrel.

.....well, it seems to makes sense to me.......but personaly I fill all the groves up.

Only time I do not is bullets for my Sharps...I seat the bullet out so they just touch the rifling.....this leaves one whole groove unfilled so with these I paint on LLA on all the bullet bearing surfaces exposed to compensate for the unfilled lube groove.......it seems to work well for me.

Safe shooting,

Limey

[Snobal]

Thanks GoldenRoyBoy,

I have cast up another 300 or so RCBS 148 Grain wadcutter bullets. These come in at 141.5 Grains --- a little softer than the last batch....

I too don't care about the smoke --- I just want those suckers to go into one hole.

Thanks to this forum, I have found a place to buy more "ol time bullet lube.

OOPS...

Make that 142.2 Grains (+ or - .3) versus 139.5 grains.....

Much softer.....

I'll try them on Friday or Saturday.

Shot a pile of the 139.5 grain bullets today and had only very slight leading in the barrel forcing cone, none in the cylinder, none on the front of the cylinder, and a heavy lube "star" at the muzzle.

Looks like lubing two of the three grooves may be the answer for this gun with this lube and load.

[Snobal]

Hey waksupi...

Thanks again for the reminder that using softer bullets sometimes reduces leading.

Shot 70 of the softer bullets yesterday (142.2 +/- .3 Gr.) and it really worked to reduce the leading.

Got no leading in the bore of the 4" GP-100 and only very slight throat leading which came out with a couple of passes with a dry brass brush.

Until I tried the softer alloy, I needed my Lewis Lead Remover to clean the throat area.

However, I was disappointed in the groups with this load. The wind was howling and I tried again and again and could not get a nice tight 25-yard group....

But after I gave up, I got to looking at the first target (the one on the bottom of the stack that caught all 29 rounds that I fired from a sandbag rest) and realized that 27 of 29 shots went into 2", c-t-c, and the total group size for the 29 shots was 2.8"

I'd have to use a longer barrel than 4" to shoot much better than that with stock iron sights.

The lube star was very heavy so I'll try a batch with only two of the three groves lubed and see if they group any better.

[waksupi]

No problem, we are here to enable, er, serve!

[Snobal]

Hey waksupi...

Thanks again for the reminder that using softer bullets sometimes reduces leading.

Shot 70 of the softer bullets yesterday (142.2 +/- .3 Gr.) and it really worked to reduce the leading.

Got no leading in the bore of the 4" GP-100 and only very slight throat leading which came out with a couple of passes with a dry brass brush.

Until I tried the softer alloy, I needed my Lewis Lead Remover to clean the throat area.

However, I was disappointed in the groups with this load. The wind was howling and I tried again and again and could not get a nice tight 25-yard group....

But after I gave up, I got to looking at the first target (the one on the bottom of the stack that caught all 29 rounds that I fired from a sandbag rest) and realized that 27 of 29 shots went into 2", c-t-c, and the total group size for the 29 shots was 2.8"

I'd have to use a longer barrel than 4" to shoot much better than that with stock iron sights.

The lube star was very heavy so I'll try a batch with only two of the three groves lubed and see if they group any better.

Finally got around to trying the BBWC bullets with only two grooves lubed. Accuracy appeared to be the same as when all three grooves are lubed. The soot seemed to be exactly the same as with three grooves lubed. I did see some leading in the throat that did not come out with a quick dry brushing.

I plan to go back to lubing all three grooves because I can detect no difference in accuracy from lubing one, two, or all three grooves ---- and although the gun is really covered in "soot" after 100 rounds or so, it is easier to clean when all three grooves are lubed.

Thanks again for the help and suggestions.