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Best lubricant for neck turning

Joe R said:
I use petroleum jelly. A 13 oz jar from Walmart for $1.96 will last you years. Here's a video of me using it to turn necks.

Not too tedious getting that stuff off your finished cases? The cutting oil I use comes off with the dish soap & water wash I put 'em thru, as much to get the oil off as to wash out any residual brass shavings.

That link is to a video showing you trimming brass not neck-turning BTW. For a real gut-laugh turn on the "cc" option - captions - at the bottom....
 
spclark said:
That link is to a video showing you trimming brass not neck-turning BTW. For a real gut-laugh turn on the "cc" option - captions - at the bottom....

Wow, I didn't even know about that feature. It is hilarious, I couldn't stop laughing. Thanks for the tip.

Not too tedious getting that stuff off your finished cases?

Once I cleaned the pj with my stainless pins and tumbler, but I thought that's unnecessary, so I just use a rag and a small phillips screw driver and wipe the petroleum jelly out. I don't like powder sticking to it. But you don't have to worry about pj contaminating the powder. Smokeless powder is 5% petroleum jelly. I shoot F-TR and it doesn't seem to have any detrimental effect on my ammo.
 
...........Smokeless powder is 10% petroleum jelly..........

Joe,

I've read that Cordite was/is 3-5% pj, didn't know about 10% in modern smokeless. Do you have any more info on that? I have to wonder how someone thought about using pj in the first place. I do know from fire starting that it sparks easily and burns well.

When you think about it and look at the components of smokeless powder, the guys that design this stuff really come up with some crazy recipes...........how they get it to do what they want is amazing.

To stay on topic, I'm using mink oil. Cleans up easily, easy to apply, etc. Also trying the lube from PMA, which is like thickened MMO. I usually tumble after and it seems to break it down well enough to not be a problem.

Rich
 
Richard Jones said:

Joe,

I've read that Cordite was/is 3-5% pj, didn't know about 10% in modern smokeless.

Sorry Richard,
looks like I mis-remembered, it is 5% not 10%. I'll correct my statement.

The majority of today's small arms smokeless powders are made of either a nitrocellulose base, referred to as single base powders, and typified by the IMR powders, or of a nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine mix (usually from 3 to 39 percent), called double base powders, which include powders like Bullseye, 2400, and Hi-Vel #2. An early form of smokeless powder was Cordite, which was a double based propellant made of 65% nitroglycerine, by weight, 30% guncotton and 5% petroleum jelly, and loaded as spaghetti-like strings of powder. There are also some special double base ball powders available in non-canister powders. Double base powders have a higher energy potential than single base powders. Some modern powders referred to as "triple base" now incorporate an additional ingredient like nitroguanidine, but these, like the double based ball powders are not in wide distribution except military powders and some commercial grade non-canister powders. They can yield a substantial increase in velocities while maintaining normal peak pressures as they give a longer, flatter pressure curve. In addition some manufactures are using "blended powders" for some of their high performance ammunition.

Here's the link for the whole article http://www.frfrogspad.com/intballi.htm

Kindest regards,

Joe
 
Joe,

Mis-remembering is one of the things at which I excel...........

I was just curious if the newer powder still has that same 5% or if some newer wonder stabilizer has been discovered......
 
++ On the 50-50 mix with STP like Jim uses. Don't use Mobil 1 but pretty close..Polaris synthetic gear lube(AGL). That and my PMA tools cut the necks like butter and they look like glass. Little bottle of each has lasted me over 10 years if my very poor senior memory is correct. Anyway, works good and I'm not changing :) Works good on the bolts too. Eric in DL
 
I have to agree that the captions were hilarious
ROTFLMAO.jpg
 
I used to work in the petroleum industry. Boyd mentions an oil that evaporates. Cannot be a true oil if it evaporates and you can paint on it. If it works that's great.

A basic concept in lubricating: Two metal parts that are rubbing against each other is that the higher the viscosity the thicker the oil film separating the two pieces. The only way your neck turner mandrel can heat up is with metal to metal contact (the oil film is not completely separating the two pieces). If the mandrel heats up you have a very tight fit and/or poor lube. Don’t understand cooling in ice water. I never had my turner heat up. If you calculate the expansion of a quarter inch steel rod with a 25F temp increase the expansion is in the order of a couple hundred thousandths of an inch. Even after pushing a K&M expander mandrel in my 6BR necks I think there is a taper to the inside neck diameter. I have not measured it but I believe the I.D. is bigger near the shoulder. This might allow some wobble on the neck turner mandrel?

I cannot think of any industrial application that uses wax as a lube. Could be used to stamp small sheet metal parts? I dealt mostly with engine oil, gear oils and transmission fluids. We did research on machining fluids. A lot of them are water based with a lot of chemicals in it.
 
Get the PMA carbide expanding and turning mandrels and the PMA lube and be done with it. One of those little bottles of PMA lube will turn a couple of thousand necks, and I apply it when I'm expanding and when I'm turning and probably heavier than I need to. My .02. Worth maybe 1/2 that.
 
This thread is a classic example of older, experienced shooters that would go to h$ll an ave gas underwear for another shooter in need of just about anything. A little humor tossed in for good measure and a whole bunch of good intel for all re-loaders both the young and thenthe rest of us. ;). What prompted me to write this post is when is the last time you heard a shooter use anything connected to this thread as an alibi as to why he shoot poorly? (Yeah that 12th shot for record would have been an "X" but I was trying out cow's poo and ATF that my buddy say works wonders).
Great thread Mr. Moderator, we need more like it.
Lloyd
 
Im that guy that uses anything i got on the shelf, which includes 3in 1 oil, even motor oil. Brass doesn't seem to mind.
 

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