Yuku free message boards

I don't see any problem with filling the base of a Minie Ball with a good soft lube like Crisco or Tallow. The pressure of the expanding gasses should work just fine at expanding the base using the lube as a hydraulic medium, in lieu of just the pneumatic force of the gas itself. I've often filled the base of my Minie's with Crisco, just to add extra softening to the fouling in the bore. Most of it does get forced out of the base it seems, before leaving the bore in any case, but recovered bullets do show if the hollow was well greased or not, upon recovery. I would be less inclined to fill the base with harder, wax like lubes, and when using those I just dip the Minie Ball into a melted pot of the stuff with the point up, so only a little gets up into the hollow base as the trapped air forms a bubble to keep the hollow base dry. Any uneven amount of residue inside the hollow base when the projectile leaves the muzzle, will result in an unbalanced projectile with an erratic flight path, and a poor group on the paper!

When I use a harder type lube (mostly beeswax) on my minie's, I just melt up some in a double boiler and dip the lower half of the minie into the melted lube. Then I set them base down on a flat surface and a sheet of wax paper to set up. I only use that method for bullets I plan to field carry. When I'm loading from a bench I generally use Crisco or Mutton Tallow, and just scoop a load up into the base of the bullet, while being sure to get a goodly amount slathered around the outside about the grooves. I do believe that the soft lube filling the hollow base is well and fairly completely distributed along the length of the bore, but a harder wax lube may not be. I don't like the "cookie cutter" lube method either, and have found it to be messy and inconsistent as well. That being said, I do have a few friends who swear by it, and show good accuracy using it, but it doesn't seem to work that good for me!

Now I really don't think your finger lubing is causing any significant unbalancing of the projectile, and I also doubt that you are missing enough of the sides to cause undue drag on one side or another, but a lump of unmelted waxy lube stuck to one side of the inside of the hollow base certainly will unbalance your bullet. Also, if you are going to pan lube using the "cookie cutter" method, you do need to use a very thin walled tube with an I.D. just a little above your bullet diameter, that has been sharpened a bit and keep the inside of it well sprayed with a teflon type lube (Breakfree or Tri-Flow work okay) so that your bullet lube doesn't start sticking to the inside of your "cookie cutter" tube, and get pulled out of the bullet grooves in the process!

Also, dragging the base of your Minie Ball through a fairly stiff lube may well distort the skirt of your hollow base, so unless your lube is really quite soft, that may not be a good technique to use.

Hope any of this is understandable ... and really hope it helps at all!?!?

You can add a little weight to your scale's sliding weight, or just out near the end of the beam you can add a fixed weight to allow your scale to weigh heavier bullets. You may not know for sure what the bullets actual weight is (though there are ways to determine this also), but you will know if any two or more bullets weigh about the same, and be able to cull out the ones that are obviously underweight!