Lubricated .22 ammo Quality

[acman]

I have a Remington 597 and will be getting a Ruger 22/45. I was wondering if

lubricated .22 lr ammo is fine to use in semi auto and function well. I was

looking at Eley Practice. Thanks.

 

[back40]

i've never had a problem with it.

if you start to have issues, clean the gun.

 

[ColtPythonElite]

Nearly all .22 ammo is lubed.

 

[JohnBT]

I'm not familiar with Eley Practice lube these days. At one time the lower cost Eley rimfire ammo used a paraffin-type lube and the upper end stuff was lubed with tallow/beeswax and was a bit messier especially in an autoloader.

 

[bhk]

I have a Remington 597 and will be getting a Ruger 22/45. I was wondering if

lubricated .22 lr ammo is fine to use in semi auto and function well. I was

looking at Eley Practice. Thanks.

Pretty much all .22 long rifle ammo is lubed. Some copper-washed ammo has a very dry, thin lube over the copper that is hard for some folks to detect, but it is there. Non copper-washed ammo, especially the higher quality target stuff, tends to have much messier lubes. Either type should work well.

 

[bannockburn]

The most accurate .22 ammo I have found for my guns is Wolf Match Target. It has what I can only describe as a very thin, almost water-like lubricant being used on the bullets. And as strange as it may sound, especially when you consider how dirty most rimfire ammo is, when I'm using Wolf Match Target, I actually believe my guns are cleaner after I'm done shooting them than before I began. I don't know what they use but it sure works great in my guns.

 

[Slamfire]

I have a Remington 597 and will be getting a Ruger 22/45. I was wondering if

lubricated .22 lr ammo is fine to use in semi auto and function well. I was

looking at Eley Practice. Thanks

Absolutely. The 22LR is probably the oldest cartridge still in use and for it to work in blowback mechanisms the cases need to be lubricated. The lubrication, be it oil or wax, break the friction between the case and chamber. A problem I found shooting in cold weather was wax condensing after unlock and coating everything aft of the chamber with a combination of wax and powder residue. Given enough residue my semi auto rimfires would stop cycling. Putting drops of oil on the rimfire cases helped the mechanisms run a little longer.

The American shooting community has total self induced amnesia on this, but prior to WW2 there were a lot of high power delayed blowback mechanisms that required active lubrication to function. The cases were either greased ahead of time, the mechanisms had oilers, and wax coatings were used. Pedersen tried ceresin wax for the cases of the 276 Pedersen round, and I believe the coating on rimfires is a combination of ceresin wax and special herbs and spices. Just like the recipe of a a famous Chicken coating, I am certain the lube is a company secret.

The following pre WW2 articles are of interest, for they show the necessity of cartridge lubrication for blowback, or retarded blowback mechanisms.

Army Ordnance Oct 1936 What Price Automatic?,
Melvin M. Johnson, Jr.

Several methods have been devised to retard the unlocking of the block or bolt mechanically. The most appealing point in such a system is consolidation of the “automatic” parts in the breech. However, there is one serious difficulty. The conventional cartridge case does not lend itself to such a system unless adequate lubrication is provided, such as grease or wax or oil on the cases or in the chamber. Thus, the Schwarzlose machine gun has an automatic oil pump: the caliber 30 Thompson rifle (not the caliber 45 T.S.-M.G.) had oil pad in the magazine, and special “wax” was needed on the cases designed to be used in the Pedersen rifle.

Army Ordnance Magazine, March-April 1933

Automatic Firearms, Mechanical Principles used in the various types,

by J. S. Hatcher. Chief Smalls Arms Division Washington DC.

Retarded Blow-back Mechanism………………………..

There is one queer thing, however, that is common to almost all blow-back and retarded blow-back guns, and that is that there is a tendency to rupture the cartridges unless they are lubricated. This is because the moment the explosion occurs the thin front end of the cartridge case swells up from the internal pressure and tightly grips the walls of the chamber. Cartridge cases are made with a strong solid brass head a thick wall near the rear end, but the wall tapers in thickness until the front end is quiet thin so that it will expand under pressure of the explosion and seal the chamber against the escape of gas to the rear. When the gun is fired the thin front section expands as intended and tightly grips the walls of the chamber, while the thick rear portion does not expand enough to produce serious friction. The same pressure that operates to expand the walls of the case laterally, also pushes back with the force of fifty thousand pounds to the square inch on the head of the cartridge, and the whole cartridge being made of elastic brass stretches to the rear and , in effect, give the breech block a sharp blow with starts it backward. The front end of the cartridge being tightly held by the friction against the walls of the chamber, and the rear end being free to move back in this manner under the internal pressure, either one of two things will happen. In the first case, the breech block and the head of the cartridge may continue to move back, tearing the cartridge in two and leaving the front end tightly stuck in the chamber; or, if the breech block is sufficiently retarded so that it does not allow a very violent backward motion, the result may simply be that the breech block moves back a short distance and the jerk of the extractor on the cartridge case stops it, and the gun will not operate.

However this difficultly can be overcome entirely by lubricating the cartridges in some way. In the Schwarzlose machine gun there is a little pump installed in the mechanism which squirts a single drop of oil into the chamber each time the breech block goes back. In the Thompson Auto-rifle there are oil-soaked pads in the magazine which contains the cartridges. In the Pedersen semiautomatic rifle the lubrication is taken care of by coating the cartridges with a light film of wax.

Blish Principle….There is no doubt that this mechanism can be made to operate as described, provided the cartridge are lubricated, …. That this type of mechanism actually opens while there is still considerable pressure in the cartridge case is evident from the fact that the gun does not operate satisfactorily unless the cartridges are lubricated.

Thompson Sub-Machine Gun: … Owing to the low pressure involved in the pistol cartridge, it is not necessary to lubricate the case.

 

[rcmodel]

That's all I well & good, I guess.
But it does not apply to any .22 RF ammo sold commercially.

Because .22 RF cases Are Not Lubricated.
At least I have never seen a lubricated .22 case in my entire life.

Only the bullets are lubricated, as they must be, to prevent severe bore leading.

They may be lubricated by wax, synthetic dry lube, heavy thick grease, or thin copper wash plating.

But it's there to lubricate the bullet in the bore, not to aid or permit case extraction.
That simply has nothing too do with anything.

Brass case contraction after pressure drops is all that allows extraction.

rc

 

[Slamfire]

Because .22 RF cases Are Not Lubricated.
At least I have never seen a lubricated .22 case in my entire life.

Go buy some Eley Tennex, you will feel the grease all the way down the case. For other brands, as Hatcher said about the ceresin wax coating on the 276 Pedersen cases, you don't even know it is there.

Eley Edge, I think they are using teflon on the case and bullet. The coating has a dry feeling, and the round is completed coated, from bullet tip to rim.

 

[JohnBT]

www.eley.co.uk/en/ammunition/edge/

The black color of Eley Edge is the result of a surface treatment/oxidation process.

The lube? "Lubricant: Beeswax /Tallow"

 

[Cee Zee]

The main thing about .22 ammo lube is that when you switch from one brand of ammo to another you can get some strange problems with accuracy and with feeding. It's like certain types of lube combine to form crud in barrels and actions. The upshot of this for most all semi-autos is that you will end up cleaning them more often. I find it's best to find what works well with a rifle and stick with it as much as possible. I don't put Tenex in my Marlin 60 or anything but I do stick with CCI SV for my 60SS for example. It has a good amount of lube and stays accurate but it will cause me to have to clean that Marlin more often than some other ammo will. But I would just as soon have the better accuracy and clean more often. I don't lose accuracy with CCI SV too much but the action sure gets gunked up after a while. My older 60 can shoot any ammo all day without needing to be cleaned but my newer 60SS is more accurate and more finnicky about ammo. Tighter tolerances would likely tell the story why on that. I just know I have to clean my 60SS pretty often and I went 11 years once without cleaning my older 60.

 

[Slamfire]

Eley Edge, I think they are using teflon on the case and bullet. The coating has a dry feeling, and the round is completed coated, from bullet tip to rim.

I was wrong about the dry feeling. I shot Eley Edge this weekend in a small bore prone match and the case is just a little less greasy than Eley black box. However, the round is greasy from bullet tip to case rim.

Lubricating the case may in fact increase accuracy and that is probably why match ammunition is greasy all over. Dry cases will impart an inconsistent bolt thrust from shot to shot as the friction between dry case and dry chamber varies greatly. As the chamber fouls the frictional force will vary from shot to shot. There could be strange effects on bolt loading and the action response as the case binds, one section adhering to the chamber, another section gripping. However, totally breaking the friction between case and chamber ensures that the bolt is loaded exactly the same each shot, and thus the dynamic response of the action and barrel will be more consistent. There will be variations due to pressure differences between rounds, but the elimination of case binding will eliminate one variable.

 

[tuj]

wolf carries the dreaded 'wolf snot' lubricant which will migrate EVERYWHERE. But the stuff is good mid-range ammo. Like others have said, any good 22lr ammo will be lubricated with something.

 

[DBR]

A bore Snake to clean the chamber and a stiff tooth brush (spring for a new one) to clean the bolt face and the extractor is what I use about every fifty rounds on semi-autos. Closed bolt guns can usually go quite a bit longer. Cold weather requires cleaning more often than warm.

Cleaning the gunk out of semi-auto actions needs to be done every now and then. How often depends more on how dirty the powder is than on the lube. Again, closed bolt guns I have owned can go hundreds of rounds before the action needs cleaning/oiling. However, grease/soft wax lubes need to be cleaned more often than plated/hard wax lubes IME.