longdayjake
Member
Okay, I'm sure most of you guys know that I own a bullet company. I've chosen reloading as my profession and many of you know that I answer most of the customer service questions myself. I spend every day of my life and many of my nights obsessed with reloading. At this point I consider myself a reloading professional. One thing that I have found over the years is that lubing pistol cases can solve SO MANY problems in reloading. At this point I am conviced that the habit of not lubing straight wall pistol cases came more from marketing campaigns than from logic or prudence. I can find no benefit in reloading to not lubing the cases other than you won't have to deal with the lube. That is the only benefit that I can find for not lubing them. Here are some of the negative issues I've seen from not lubing cases.
1. No lube is more likely to damage brass if dust or some other material harder than the brass gets in the die or on the brass.
2. No lube requires more force (energy) to resize. (Which is tiring for both your arm and your press).
3. No lube leaves brass dry and makes seating the bullets less consistent. (More variance in OAL or canted seating. Smoother seating allows bullets to better straighten as they are seated and you don't get the stutter that can cause OAL to be inconsistent).
4. No lube can sometimes result in insufficent sizing to get the case down small enough to case gauge. (Lube helps get rid of glock bulge).
Now, as a bullet maker that uses 100% carbide dies to form a copper alloy from strip into a cup I can tell you how important lubrication is when forming copper based metals. Sometimes our lube application on our presses gets plugged with particulate or oxidation and it completely ruins the ability of the machine to make a consistent bullet. It will still make bullets. It won't explode. But we lose all consistency. When we first started making bullets and we started experiencing this problem we spent thousands of dollars on tooling for punches, dies, and ejectors trying to find out which carbide part was causing the issues. We pulled our hair out until we finally decided to replace the $2 piece of wool felt that was in the lube pot. The felt was plugged with grime and had stopped applying lube to the bottom of the strip so we couldn't see that it was mostly dry. That was when I learned that sometimes you can save a thousand headaches and tons of money by just adding lube. Brass is even harder than our copper alloy and benefits even more from proper lubrication. We have made brass jacketed bullets in the past as well and it's more likely to split or crack when not lubed. Recently, we've been involved in making our own headstamp cases and I can say that proper lubrication is even more critical when forming cases.
General rules in forming metal. Metal against metal is bad! ALWAYS! Lubrication is good. ALWAYS! It's so important that we use the proper lube that I have resigned myself to purchasing 55 gallon drums of our copper lube at $47/gallon. Trust me, if carbide dies made lubrication unnecessary I would save myself a crap ton of money on lube. Carbide is slicker and it lasts much longer, but it still needs lube to get the most out of it.
I am not a huge fan of One Shot except for pistol cases. When loading I will put a bunch of cases in a ziploc bag and spray a bunch of One Shot in there and shake them around so that lube gets all over all of the cases. Then I open the bag and apply more if needed or I just let them dry out. (You have to let One Shot dry out). It's by far the fasted and easiest way to lube pistol cases and it's not terribly messy. If you are someone who has never lubed your pistol cases then trying this for the first time will complely change your world. It has solved countless customer service issues I've been presented with over the years. Especially now that there are so many people wet polishing and stripping the brass of any lubrication at all. So, take it from the professional instead of the marketer. Lube your cases.
1. No lube is more likely to damage brass if dust or some other material harder than the brass gets in the die or on the brass.
2. No lube requires more force (energy) to resize. (Which is tiring for both your arm and your press).
3. No lube leaves brass dry and makes seating the bullets less consistent. (More variance in OAL or canted seating. Smoother seating allows bullets to better straighten as they are seated and you don't get the stutter that can cause OAL to be inconsistent).
4. No lube can sometimes result in insufficent sizing to get the case down small enough to case gauge. (Lube helps get rid of glock bulge).
Now, as a bullet maker that uses 100% carbide dies to form a copper alloy from strip into a cup I can tell you how important lubrication is when forming copper based metals. Sometimes our lube application on our presses gets plugged with particulate or oxidation and it completely ruins the ability of the machine to make a consistent bullet. It will still make bullets. It won't explode. But we lose all consistency. When we first started making bullets and we started experiencing this problem we spent thousands of dollars on tooling for punches, dies, and ejectors trying to find out which carbide part was causing the issues. We pulled our hair out until we finally decided to replace the $2 piece of wool felt that was in the lube pot. The felt was plugged with grime and had stopped applying lube to the bottom of the strip so we couldn't see that it was mostly dry. That was when I learned that sometimes you can save a thousand headaches and tons of money by just adding lube. Brass is even harder than our copper alloy and benefits even more from proper lubrication. We have made brass jacketed bullets in the past as well and it's more likely to split or crack when not lubed. Recently, we've been involved in making our own headstamp cases and I can say that proper lubrication is even more critical when forming cases.
General rules in forming metal. Metal against metal is bad! ALWAYS! Lubrication is good. ALWAYS! It's so important that we use the proper lube that I have resigned myself to purchasing 55 gallon drums of our copper lube at $47/gallon. Trust me, if carbide dies made lubrication unnecessary I would save myself a crap ton of money on lube. Carbide is slicker and it lasts much longer, but it still needs lube to get the most out of it.
I am not a huge fan of One Shot except for pistol cases. When loading I will put a bunch of cases in a ziploc bag and spray a bunch of One Shot in there and shake them around so that lube gets all over all of the cases. Then I open the bag and apply more if needed or I just let them dry out. (You have to let One Shot dry out). It's by far the fasted and easiest way to lube pistol cases and it's not terribly messy. If you are someone who has never lubed your pistol cases then trying this for the first time will complely change your world. It has solved countless customer service issues I've been presented with over the years. Especially now that there are so many people wet polishing and stripping the brass of any lubrication at all. So, take it from the professional instead of the marketer. Lube your cases.
