Grease cookie theory and practice

S

stubbicatt

New member
As I start down the path once again of BPCR, the subject of grease cookies presents itself. Is it the purpose of the cookie to be engulfed in the inferno of burning black powder, or rather is it to be squeezed between two wads as they work their way down the bore behind the bullet? The answer to this question will lead either to a parchment or wax paper over-powder wad, or a fiber wad. Of course an under-bullet fiber or LDPE wad...

Thanks in advance.
 
Howdy

The purpose of bullet lube with ANY black powder cartridge, BPCR or otherwise, is to leave a coating of soft, gooey bullet lube in the bore, so that each succeeding bullet will wipe out most or the lube left behind by the bullet before it. You will know you have enough lube on your bullets when you get a good 'lube star' on your barrel. The lube star is a light deposit of lube left behind on the face of the muzzle in the shape of a star. The shape is generated as the bullet clears the rifling. If you don't have enough lube on your bullet, your bullet will 'run dry' of lube before it exits the bore and will leave a hard, difficult to remove, crusty deposit in your rifling which will degrade accuracy.

Frankly, as I said on your question over at the High Road, I gave up on lube cookies a long time ago. Specifically, what caliber are we talking about here? A bullet loaded with enough soft, BP compatible bullet lube will leave enough lube behind to keep the rifling well lubed.

Here are the components of my Black Powder 45 Colt loads. Notice the huge lube groove on the bullet. That is a Big Lube 45 PRS bullet, lubed with SPG.


completedroundandcomponents.jpg




This photo shows the components of my 44 Russian load. This is the Mav-Dutchman 44 caliber Big Lube bullet. Notice how huge the lube groove is. I use this same bullet with my 44-40 loads.

44RussianComponents.jpg



These are the bullets I use for 45-70.

http://www.buffaloarms.com/Detail.aspx?PROD=157349&CAT=4135
 
I shoot a grease "cookie" (actually a 1/4" 45-caliber wad of grease-soaked wool door insulation material) now only in my 45-3-1/4" Sharps. None of my other "Big 45s" use one/not needed/not useful.

That said, take a look at this slo-mo video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otpFNL3yem4
and realize that all that escaping gas ahead of the bullet is carrying vaporized grease with it--even in a cast bullet situation -- effectively lubing the barrel ahead of the bullet as well as behind.
 
As already stated - and regardless of a cartridge or muzzle-loader - with BP the lube is to eep fouling soft.

You don't state what cartridge so that may make a difference.

All I can speak about is 38 caliber - i.e. 38 Colt Short, Long, 38 Special and 357.

I do not use a grease cookie. All I do is finger lube the lube grooves of the lead bullet I've cast to use in the above cartridges. On the 38 Colt Short & Long, I cast from an Ideal 358-242 121 gr. mold. For the 38 Special/357, I cast from a Lyman 358-11 mold. All soft lead for my BP cartridges. Both those molds drop a Round Nose slug.

I finger lube and seat those bullets directly on top of BP - no wad or card between. When the bullet is seated - it compresses the BP. While these bullets do not have what would be termed "large/deep" lube grooves, what lube is in them provides plenty of lube to keep the fouling soft for many rounds. I'm usually shooting the out of a 5 1/2" 357 Ruger New Vaquero or a Uberti 357 4 3/4" Bisley. No muss, no fuss. I lube the cylinder pin with the BP lube I use (home-made - crisco and soft beeswax) and have no problems with cylinder bind due to fouling.

What may change that is if the same cartridges are used in a rifle. I'm playing with a 357 Handi-Rifle but so far, all is fine. But . I run a wet patch down the bore between shots.

A larger pistol caliber? 44-40, 45 Colt/Schofield, 44 Special/Russian - I can't speak to as I don't have them. The same for rifle cartridges - there are those more qualified due to their experiences. But . . I would imagine that it would depend on the individual rifle as well. Some patch between shots . . some use "blow tubes" to keep fouling soft, etc.

I will add - with my 38s and the way I'm loading them, I get no contamination from the grease in the grooves filtering down into the powder charges. Like any shooting conditions that come up - at the range, etc. - you cartridges could "warm up" due to the temperature, exposure to sunlight, etc. BP lubes can "melt" pretty easy at times. Using a grease cookie under the bullet could contribute to this - especially if the wad or card below it is made from something that will "soak" the lube up. Those are things that a person has to consider along the way.

Good luck with your cartridges . . . lot's of fun and a whole other aspect to the "hobby"! :)
 
Added note - take a look at that nice bullet that Driftwood shows. That grease groove provides for a lot of lube and would eliminate the need for a "cookie".

On my 38s - the bullet designs I'm using seem to provide enough lube for the pistol barrels. I recently picked up an older Ideal mold that is for a bullet much like I'm using currently, but the grease groove is much wider and deeper. I figure as I move forward on my Handi Rifle loads I'll need it for the barrel length. We'll see! :)
 
Thanks fellas. My 357 black loads were "ok" but I do not anticipate doing that again.

The cartridge is 45-70. The bullet is a 510 grain government bullet cast from Hoch mould. I have only shot it with smokeless so far. I did not notice any lube star on the muzzle. When I cleaned it I got slivers of lead, a few specks on the patches. Nothing welded onto the bore, so no fouling per se. I suspect that the lube may be marginally adequate for smokeless, but with black?

So I reckon I'll re ask the question: should the grease cookie vaporize in the firestorm of burning powder in order to keep the fouling softer, or remain relatively intact between two card wads and be squeegied out by pressure as the grease cookie follows the bullet down the bore?

I will of course try a non grease cookie load, but I anticipate that I will need to use a cookie. I may be pleasantly surprised that it is not necessary.

Thanks for your information.
 
If you are shooting a bullet with lube grooves all the lube you need is carried by the bullet in those grooves.

I'd only use a cookie for round ball, but I lube over the ball as required by N-SSA rules.

Steve
 
1. Use a SOFT bullet (30:1) if/when shooting at BP velocities (1,100 - 1,300 fps/rifle).
That, and proper SOFT BP lube, will effectively minimize/stop any lead-shaving tendencies.

2. Grease cookie (if used) should be sandwiched between two card wads to (a) protect
the powder, and (b) provide clean separation from the bullet on exit.

3. As to "vaporizing"... NOT. (I've got several chunks taken out of the upright supports
of my Oehler-35 chrono because that cookie was still going strong 15 feet out
from the muzzle.) :mad:

.
 
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OK, let's try this again.

First of all, what kind of lube are you using on your 45-70 bullets? You will only get a lube star with soft, Black Powder compatible bullet lube. You will not get one with modern hard lube that is supplied on most bullets.

I beg to differ about 'all the lube you need is carried by the bullet in those grooves.'

I did a fair amount of work years ago with various bullets, lubes, and Black Powder. I tried several different brands of bullets that were advertised as being made specifically for Black Powder. Some had one lube groove, some had two. The longer the barrel, the more lube you need. I could get away with two skimpy lube grooves, pan lubed with my Beeswax/Crisco mix in a revolver, but in a rifle, my 44-40 bullets ran out of lube about 6" from the muzzle. One or two skimpy lube grooves were fine for a revolver with a barrel up to 7 1/2" long, but the bullets simply ran out of lube in a rifle and I had to swab down my barrel every ten or twenty shots to renew the accuracy. Not a big deal, but I did have to swab the barrel.

What type of powder you use also has a bearing on how much lube you need. Some powders burn 'dirtier' than others, leaving more fouling in the barrel than others. If you want to invest in Swiss powder, you can get away with less lube. The better grade of charcoal that Swiss uses generates less fouling, so there is not as much build up of fouling in the bore. I find Goex to be decidedly dirtier than powders using a better grade of charcoal. Back in the 19th Century when Black Powder was the only type of propellant, there were different grades of powder. Some burned cleaner than others.

I have not bought any Goex in several years, but the cans used to say 'Black Rifle Powder' on them. The stuff Goex makes these days would not pass muster as a rifle powder 125 years ago. Musket powder, yes, rifle powder, no. I used to correspond with a guy who pooh-pooed the Big Lube bullets I like so much, saying that the old designs worked fine with Black Powder, why do you need so much lube? Well, he was burning Swiss, and I was burning Goex. He could get away with the old designs, with skimpy lube grooves, because his powder was burning cleaner. You pays your money, you takes your choice. Goex was cheaper than Swiss, so that is what I was using. These days I use Schuetzen, which uses better charcoal than Goex, and burns cleaner, but I still like the Big Lube bullets and all the lube they carry.

No, a lube cookie is not going to magically, hydraulically squeeze all of its lube out onto the barrel under the pressure of being fired. Somewhere I answered one of your posts describing how accuracy was ruined by lube cookies becoming glued to the rear of a bullet. When I recovered the bullets, most of the lube cookie was stuck to the back of the bullet. Very little had remained in the bore.

I have no idea what your 45-70 bullets look like. The ones I use have four rather thin, rather skimpy lube grooves. They work well enough in the 30" barrel of my Pedersoli Sharps, but I do use a blow tube between shots to help keep the fouling moist.
 
Which is why I use Big Lube bullets in my cartridges like Driftwood Johnson does. They work great. I mainly use Goex for my revolvers but use Swiss powder in my rifle. Never tried Schuetzen, may have to give it a try.
 
Schuetzen uses the same buckthorne alder charcoal that Swiss does, but it is much less expensive. About the same price as Goex, maybe a little bit more.
 
I appreciate the assistance. The lube I'm using is approximately 50% beeswax, 45% crisco, 5% olive oil, and a dash of Murphy's Oil Soap.

It is a 510 grain 4 groove bullet.

Card wad punched from a tablet backer. Powder is 1.5F Old Eynesford powder, compressed about .1 to .125" By weight it is about 53 grains.

So I'll take another run at it, and ask the question differently. Does the lube cookie work to keep fouling soft by being consumed by the burning powder, such as separated from the charge by a wax paper wad or a parchment wad, and a card under the bullet and over the charge, or squeegied out between two cards? Maybe a milk carton wad with the shiny waxed coating to keep from sticking to the bullet?

I believe that the lube in the bullet is adequate for smokeless, but I have my doubts about black powder. This because of the lead shavings I have cleaned from the bore when using AA5744.

Driftwood Johnson I appreciate the help, and near as I can tell I'll have to just figure this out myself. I do not understand how the lube can stick to the back of the bullet if it is separated from the bullet by a card or LDPE wad. Thanks all for your input. If I figure it out, I'll post on the forum one day. If I try the lube cookie, I think I'll start with a parchment wad between the lube and the powder charge, and LDPE under the bullet.
 
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Does the lube cookie work to keep fouling soft by being consumed by the burning powder, such as separated from the charge by a wax paper wad or a parchment wad, and a card under the bullet and over the charge, or squeegied out between two cards?
Click to expand...

Neither. My experience is that the bulk of the Lube Cookie follows the bullet out of the barrel. It certainly does not get vaporized by the burning powder charge.

And your idea about the lube cookie being squeegeed out from between two surrounding card wads does not happen. It would be nice if the pressure of the expanding gasses would cause the lube cookie to be evenly deposited in the bore, but it just does not happen.

What happens is as the bullet moves down the bore, lube from the grooves gets rubbed against the bore. In the same way, the outer diameter of the lube cookie rubs against the bore, leaving its outer diameter behind. But that's it. Just the outermost diameter of the cookie coats the bore. The majority of the cookie follows the bullet right out the bore. When I used to use lube cookies in 44-40 I would find lube cookies that had followed the bullet out the bore stuck on my targets and target frames. Clearly, they were not being completely consumed in the bore, either by vaporization or by a squeegee effect.


My first efforts only had a card wad between the lube cookie and the powder, nothing between the bullet and the lube cookie. I was amazed when my accuracy went to hell with this combination. It turned out the cookie was getting stuck to the rear of the bullet, causing it to fly like a lopsided dart, ruining accuracy. My next try was to add another card wad between the lube and the base of the bullet. Accuracy then improved. But bear in mind, all of this was done with regular hard cast bullets that had one skimpy lube groove. I melted the factory lube out of the lube groove, then pan lubed the bullet with my 50/50 Crisco/Beeswax mix. So because the lube groove of the bullet did not carry enough lube to keep a rifle bore coated with lube, the lube cookie added helped a bit in keeping soft lube for most of the length of the barrel. However, when you sit down to make a few hundred 44-40 rounds at a time, adding a wad, cookie, and wad in each round is way, way too much work. That is why I use the Big Lube bullets today. Less work. Dump in the powder, seat and crimp the bullet. Done.

Yes, a lube cookie will help add a bit of soft lube to the bore in addition to what is held in the lube grooves of the bullet, buy in my experience it is only a marginal improvement.

That is why most serious competitors in BPCR do not mess with lube cookies. They use a conventional bullet, probably like yours, lubed with a good BP compatible bullet lube like yours. That's all. But they also employ a blow tube. Breathing long, slow breaths down a blow tube introduces extra moisture from your lungs, which helps keep the fouling in the bore soft.
 
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50% beeswax, 45% crisco, 5% olive oil, and a dash of Murphy's Oil Soap.
Click to expand...
- Go with at least 2:1 Crisco/beeswax (3:1 even better) for BP.
- Go with a soft bullet. 30:1 is perfect for BP (and BP velocities)
- Forget the cookie.... as DJ notes it really doesn't add much to the equation.
- As far as not having enough lube in conventional grease-grooves/needing "special" designs....
the classic 535gr Postell's design holds more than enough.

1rck5e.jpg
 
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Thought I'd post a photo or two of the old girl I'm trying to sort things out for. Per the serial number on the tang, she was born in 1888. Looks like Ken Bresien must have refinished and rebarreled it with an original Winchester barrel, at least the roll mark is on it. I suspect he put the wood on it, which is really magnificent wood, to be sure. The checkering is flawless. RIP Mr. Bresien, and thanks for your excellent craftsmanship.

It really is a beautiful rifle, and my poor photography skills do not do it justice.
 
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These are a few of the bullets I casted for it. I may try a little oilier grease for them as you suggest Mehavey. As it is, I loaded up 5 BP rounds yesterday, I'll go shoot them this morning and see how they perform.

I used a blow tube for my old 40-65 Pedersoli Sharps years ago, and I gotta say, I didn't see much if any improvement in the fouling I was experiencing back then. But I was using Elephant powder, so it may have been more an issue with powder than it was with anything else. Today I'm using 1.5F Old Eynesford powder with about .1" compression. Could also be the arid climate hereabouts. It does bear consideration though. Or maybe the Sharps found my breath too foul to accept, and it breezed over the crustiness, rather than soaking into it! LOL! :D

I made this compression tool from 7/16th bolt and nuts. Works well enough, and is happily inexpensive.




I had thought to take my cleaning rod and jag and patches and moose milk for cleaning between shots, but I think what I'll do is shoot the 5 I loaded, wipe the bore and see how crusty the fouling is for a benchmark. Then shoot the 15 smokeless cartridges and call it a day. I still need to get the sights on for windage and what not.
 
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Stubbi... I'm running a blow-tube (4 long/complete breaths between each of the ten
continuous shots in a Rambash sequence (40 rounds overall). It wasn't so much that
the fouling was less, rather that the fouling was consistent.... even more consistent
than running a damp patch between shots. :D

2u557iv.jpg
 
Update

Well, the 5 shots with BP were beautiful. Stinky. But beautiful. They were shot at ambient temp of about 66 degrees fahrenheit. I'd guess humidity to be maybe 20%. So, cool and dry. They were shot a couple maybe a few minutes apart. No hurry. The report was a deep basso "boom" as opposed to a "crack." A look down the bore I could see loose fouling and barrel steel all the way down to the muzzle, as opposed to a fine sandpapery appearance as I have experienced before. The fouling was nice and loose. One wet patch of moose milk got all the fouling out, with no crusty places in the bore.

The second wet patch of moose milk got just a hint of color on it, and the dry patch was a faint grey.

I cannot say that it would go several rounds, of course, but the gooey texture of the fouling on the patch suggested to me that bullet lube was adequate for these conditions, and a grease cookie was unnecessary.

After some reflection, I have tentatively concluded that it is the Old Eynsford 1.5F powder that is responsible for the good all round performance. Last time I loaded BPCR it was 3F Elefant powder, in a 40-65, and fouling from that stuff was like sandpaper, even one shot. Before I get all excited and start dancing or something, I think I'll try to repeat this with 20 rounds and see what sort of performance I get.

I don't recall black smelling so bad. Folks at the range kept casting disgusted looks my way, as the smoke was retchid. My kitchen smelled like bad flatulence as I was soaking those 5 fired cases. They turned color almost immediately upon immersion in the warm soapy water. The empties look quite dark now. Soaked them for an hour and a half maybe, and swished them around in the soapy water, and rinsed them. They are discolored but clean, and I didn't even brush them as I used to have to do with 3F Elefant.

So far, I think I have a winner.

Mehavey, is there any obvious indication to you that you need to use the blow tube? I mean, any obvious change in appearance between the fouling before and after you blow down the barrel? Or is yours more a performance sort of experience, like if you don't use the blow tube you get bad accuracy or something?

DJ, it seems your admonition to ditch the grease cookie idea was well taken. I may yet try it out, but if the cartridges continue to perform as they did today, I think the need for grease cookies will not be proven.

Again thanks guys.

ETA short video of one shot. Maybe you will get a chuckle out of it. Perhaps I should edit it to remove the question to the spotter.

https://youtu.be/gLaITeO2HdY
 
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I believe that the lube in the bullet is adequate for smokeless, but I have my doubts about black powder. This because of the lead shavings I have cleaned from the bore when using AA5744.
Click to expand...

I have shot standard 3-groove Minie ball bullets using about 46 grains of 3F Goex powder with bullets lubed with the period ordnance manual recipe of 3 parts beeswax to 1 part sheep tallow and found that I could shoot pretty much indefinitely with no loading issues. I think I quit after 20 rounds or so. I was not shooting for accuracy but to see how the fouling impacted loading. I had no issues.

Steve
 
I cannot say much about shooting in .45-70's, but I have had to do some experimenting to go from "decent" results to "great" results in a 30" .44-40 Uberti 1873 when using blackpowder.

One little thing that seemed to make some difference was going from all crisco in my beeswax/crisco lube to using 40% crisco and 60% coconut oil. It seems to be more "wet" now, and stickier.

I too use a big-lube bullet, and would not recommend anything else in this caliber in combination with a barrel longer than 24" when using blackpowder.

I also agree that the type of powder used makes a great difference. Standard Goex seemed to have the "hardest" lube ring on the end of the barrel, but that doesn't mean it was "bad" or unacceptable- it could be wiped off with a couple of good rubs with a finger. Kik and Swiss seemed to have the softest- with just one good wipe on the muzzle and my finger was as greasy as the floor of a McDonald's!

I have not yet tried Old Eynesford by Goex, Goex Reinactor, Skirmish, or Wano (Graf's).
 
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