Silicone As A Case Lube

[blkbrd]

Dont get me started on WD-40, the only thing its good for is coating fishing lures.

Case lube causing excess breach face impact and pressure? "Old wives tale" That little bit of brass does not contain the pressure in the chamber. All the case does is form a flexable gas seal in the chamber. If it held tight on the chamber walls from the moment of primer strike can you imagine the growth, pressure rings and case head seperations you would get in your brass as it expanded back to take up the slack in your guns action? The case head is pushing hard against the breach face by the time the primer is just starting to ignite the powder and the case is starting to loose its grip on the bullet.

One Shot as case lube, followed by a shot of silicone on a towel with a quick tumble to clean and slick them up works great for me. I pour about 200 rounds at a time on a towl shoot them directly with silicone spray, "not a penetrating lube" and tumble them by shaking back and fourth in the towl, you would be suprised how much crud you will clean off your loaded rounds even using real clean brass and it makes them slick feeding.

[Gun Geek]

Yeah, my understanding of the case to chamber seal was a gas seal only, no mechanical grip. This is part of the reason head space is so impotant - the cartidge doesn't slide back and forth and slap the breach face, and the cartridge is held in the right position in the chamber (i.e. the neck is not in a loose part of the chamber where it could bulge)

Lubes should not make any diff for that.

Gas blowing back (especially in a rifle) is not a good thing for the shooter, and it dirties the action PDQ.

Eric, I have a loading session in my near future, I will try the silicone approach and see what happens.

WD 40 is good to loosen rusty stuff and coating things like dies & case gages, calipers etc to protect from rust. I don't use it as a lube for anything. Actually it seems to behave more like a solvent than a lube - it is also good for cleaning dirty grease off of stuff.

From the WD 40 website (http://www.wd40.com/AboutUs/our_history.html):

"In 1953, a fledgling company called Rocket Chemical Company and its staff of three set out to create a line of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for use in the aerospace industry, in a small lab in San Diego, California.

It took them 40 attempts to get the water displacing formula worked out. But they must have been really good, because the original secret formula for WD-40—which stands for Water Displacement perfected on the 40th try—is still in use today."

[EricW]

I loaded 100 - 9mm's and have left them sitting since I posted to see if the powder will get contaminated. I'll sneak into the gravel pit today and see how they held up.

[Dalmas]

I'm relatively new to reloading and use Dilllon case lube. My tray does get gummy after a while so does the rounds, I'm also to lazy and usually don't have time to tumble the rounds so I've dropped a Silocone cloth into a canvas shopping bag. Just drop the rounds into the bag and massage, handle, swing then trown into the trunk, cases are usually nice and ready by the time I hit the range, it's ok for practice rounds.

I'm currently loading my WorldShoot round and those are rubbed individually... takes time but damn if laziness is going to cost a me a malfunction in Ecuador..

[GardenWeasel]

I pre-sized thousands of Win .40 cases and cleaned them. Despite already being sized, while loading, they take a little effort through the sizing die. Spraying a quick shot of silicone into the casefeeder helped a lot. Also, just spraying the empty casefeeder plate, prior to dumping in cases, helped a lot.

And just to drift the thread, I pre-processed all those cases with standard lanolin/alcohol case lube. Like buttah! The lack of effort was almost like there was no case in station one to be sized. But it gummed up the casefeeder plate, tube, adapter, bushing, and shell feed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I thought this would be my solution to avoiding having to:

A.wipe off the lube by hand

or

B1. Tumble loaded JHPs

and then

B2. Shake all of the media out of the hollow points

The pre-sized cases worked fine during the loading process, but man, I had a lot of jams in the case feeder tray and upside-down cases in the tube.

I was loading .40 using the large case feed adaptor plate, and sized the cases

with the Lee U-Die.

[slowsure]

B1. Tumble loaded JHPs

and then

B2. Shake all of the media out of the hollow points

I did that once...and only once!!!

[EricW]

If you enjoy labor for labor's sake, by all means keep post-cleaning your ammo. I'm going to keep going with the silicone spray and do nothing.

BTW, silicone works great for straight-wall cases. For rifle cases, nothing beside the Dillon lube is 100% stuck-case-free for me.

[ima45dv8]

I was using the Lyman version of the One-Shot aerosol lube and never post-cleaned my rounds. No buildup issues.

All that changed recently when I used up the can and couldn't find any more locally. Couldn't even find any in the vendor's section at the Georgia State match so I bought a bottle of Dillon's pump spray from Henry Swartout's table. I didn't think it could work as well as the One-Shot/Lyman stuff but I'm happy to report that it does.

I still don't clean the cases when I'm done and no gunk in my mags so far.

Chris: You're right about the extra leverage the 1050 provides, but try some lube with it just for kicks. I did and everything was so easy I thought the case feeder had broken and I wasn't resizing anything!

...Mark

[boo radley]

Dragging up an old thread, but...any long-term problems with silicone?

I ran out of One-Shot this past week, and tried 100% silicone spray. Very cheap.

Worked great, if not better than One-Shot. Any reason to avoid?

[Derek45]

I'm interested too.

..always wondered about silicone spray.

[Azone41]

I use homemade case lube. I buy 4 ounce bottles of liquid Lanolin for 4.95 a bottle and mix 1 and a half bottles of rubbing alcohol into a sprayer form the dollar store with 2 ounces of the lanolin. One sprayer full including the cost of the sprayer $ 4.75 and one bottle lasts about a year and a half. To clean the lube off of the cases I sometimes tumble them but most of the time I lay them on a towel and LIGHTLY spray them with carb cleaner and roll them in the towel, the carb cleaner evaporates very quckly and gets the cases very clean.

[Brad1231]

I've just got back into reloading and might try the dry lube with teflon. The one shot I used to resize some pistol brass last night got real sticky overnight.  The dry teflon leaves a white film but so thin I don't see it as a problem.  I know the brass will feed easier..I hope.  

Brad