Friday, January 23, 2009

Lubing Gluelits

I got a coupla hours this afternoon to mess around with the gluelits. The agenda was to develop a loading procedure to overcome the friction problem of shooting "dry" gluelits.
I started by shooting dry gluelits untill I had a problem. Didn't take long. After about 4 cylinder loads, I had one stick in the barrel. I tried gently pushing it out with a dowel, but no soap. A shot of WD-40 from both directions solved that and it came right out.
I cleaned my .45 Colt New Service revolver then ran a fairly long patch('bout 18") through the bore with a moderate application of high grade 30 weight air compressor oil. Nothing but the best for my Colt! I immediately noticed a significant increase in M/V and bullet energy. I blew a hole in a plastic patio chair! By the time I got to the end of the remaining 5 shots in that cylinder load, the M/V had dropped off significantly. AHA! We need lubrication on every shot.
I hopped in me trusty Chevy S-10 and down to Wally-World we went. A teflon lined cookie sheet, 3 boxes of Gulf brand canning wax, a bottle of mineral oil, a Pyrex measuring cup and a partridge in a pear tree.
I melted 3 bars of the wax in the measuring cup in the nuke box. By the way, wax doesn't heat in a nuke box, but the glass measuring cup does. 5 minutes and the glass measuring cup is hot enough to not only melt the wax, but also hot enough to give you a really GOOD 2nd degree burn! Use gloves! I got 300 milliliters of melted wax and added 300 milliliters of mineral oil. I stirred the mineral oil into the hot wax and poured the whole batch into the cookie sheet. 1/2 hour later, it was cool enough to use as bullet(oops!) gluelit lube.
I oiled the inside of a .45 colt case with a bit of oil on a .45 caliber bore mop. I pushed a glue stick in the case as far as it would go, marked it with a sharpie and pulled it back out. I cut a plug of the glue stick about 125K short of the mark and pushed it back in with a small nut driver. This left a vacancy in the mouth of the case for a lube "cookie". I then pushed the case into the lube mixture that had set up by then. The lube "cookie" didn't want to stay in the case on lifting it from the bottom of the pan, so I had to kinda rake it up the side. Mighta of put a bit too much mineral oil in the mix. I pressed the cookie in the mouth of the case with my finger to kinda spread it out, grabbed my Colt and headed for the south porch.
I kept both eyes open and was barely able to see the cookie disintegrating in the air. No visual of the gluelit. I hit a laurel tree and the gluelit bounced back so far that it hit the side of the house. By the way, the tree is abot 40 feet from the porch door. I fired 4 cylinders of gluelits using this lubing procedure and never experiened any M/V drop or any problems. And had a BEAUTIFUL lube star on the muzzle to boot!
NOTE:a taste of oil with a bore mop in the cartridge case made pushing the gluelit into the case a breeze. I tried that because a couple of them just froze up about 1/2 way in and refused to cooperate. Lubing the gluelit itself would require casting in a mold for the sake of lube grooves and lubing much like WW boolits. The large .44 caliber glue sticks are a PERFECT fit in a .45 cal. handgun and I was trying to simplify the procedure. Shooters with calibers other than .45 will pretty much have to cast to caliber and lube.
Well, there ya' have it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

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