onondaga
posted this
03 December 2018
max503,
All I use is tumble lube for everything, both LLA and White's Deluxe 45:45:10. Beware of something that gets mentioned by some users that is horrible advice. Do not use dish detergent as a lube for size/check and then tumble lube those bullets. Doing so seriously diminishes the best feature of tumble lube. Both LLA and 45:45:10 adhere tenaciously to cast bullets, but if they were coated with dish detergent the adhesion of the tumble lube is seriously degraded.
The prominent factors that lead to the best successful use of tumble lube are simple: Less is better!!!! use as little as possible to just slightly coat bullets and warming the lube and bullets greatly reduces time for drying. Tumble lube is a surface lube. there is no need or benefit getting it into lube grooves. It WON"T flow out of lube grooves, it is a surface lube. Again, less is better and it only needs to be on the surface that contacts the bore, not wasted in the grooves.
Example: I warm bullets by placing them in bulk, in a brownie pan. Don't preheat the oven just turn it onto WARM when you put the pan with bullets in the oven for 5 minutes. During that 5 minutes I microwave warm the lube 20 seconds at a time in an open squeeze bottle till it is warm to touch. Don't use a round container for tumbling. A square container will tumble well and not roll the bullets. Place the warm bullets, up to 500 for me in a square container about 1 gallon size. Tip 45 degrees and add lube about 1 teaspoon for 500 bullets. now rotate the tilted container tumbling the bullets for 1 full minute. They should be visibly dry at 1 minute unless you used too much lube. Dump bullets onto wax paper and in one hour for LLA or 5 minutes for 45:45:10 they are completely dry and ready to load if they were warmed and tumble lubed correctly. I do this once before size/check, then once after size/check for low velocity stuff but twice after size/check if they are rifle bullets at rifle load levels.
I do prefer the 45:45:10 because it is colorless and tack free.
Walmart sells "Country Rich" ice cream in square 1 gallon plastic containers that are terrific for the tumble lube method with up to 500 big bore rifle bullets.
NOTE: this is neat clean stuff to work with using this simple method. If you are making a mess, you are really doing it WRONG.
Gary