I have a source of very good quality lead bullets for my target shooting. The only complaint is that they lead the bore of my pistols. I believe this is because of poor lubrication.
I thought I'd try tumbling the bullets in Lee Liquid Alox to see if my hypothesis about the lubrication is correct.
Last night I received a bottle of the lube. I made a tumbling vessel out of a gallon milk jug by cutting one of the sides off. I put about 175 bullets into the jug and dribbled just enough of the lube on the bullets to wet them all. To tumble them I used a very necessary vinyl glove on my hand, then mixed the lube and bullets like mixing a caesar salad.
Then I set the bullets on wax paper to dry. The whole process, including making the vessel and admiring my work took about 10 minutes. In the future I think I could do 500 bullets in about 10 to 15 minutes from tumbling to setting them on the wax paper. I consider this a reasonable amount of time if it means I no longer have to deal with leading.
Clean-up was just wiping the inside of the vessel with a paper towel and disposing of the very icky disposable glove.
The lube temporarily softens the wax that is already on the bullets. The lube doesn't take very long to dry, but I waited until morning before staging them for loading. Once the lube is dry it leaves a waxy film that is reminiscent of old shellac that needs to be replaced on a piece of furniture. The film is very thin and, because of the tumbling process, coats the entire bullet. This means that the bullets will be usable for target shooting, but not for field use because they will tend to collect grit and dust if they are used in the field. Dropping a round in the sand would also require careful wiping. This isn't a problem for the kind of target shooting I do. The film is very similar to the waxy film we find on .22 LR ammo.
As a matter of production, I think the best approach would be to do a couple of thousand at a time, then let them dry. Then put the dried bullets into a clean place where they won't pick up dust.
Will this work? Will my leading problem go away? It'll take a couple of weeks to test it properly. As they used to say during the brief long-ago television fad, "stay tuned".
