Sizing and lubricating lead bullets

Lead bullets are usually associated with handguns and older calibre rifles, but they can also be used in many common rifle calibres and are a good, economical choice for practice instead of using far more expensive jacketed projectiles.
Whether you buy lead bullets or cast your own, you can resize them to suit your particular gun, and you can also lubricate them in different ways and experiment to see which option works best.

Why resize?
As-cast homemade bullets are not always perfectly sized or shaped, and generally need to be resized before use. The as-cast diameter will be stated on the mould, and it may not be the best match for your gun, so resizing will be necessary.
Factory-made bullets have usually already been sized to a specific diameter, but sometimes it can be advantageous to resize them. If you normally use a .308” diameter jacketed bullet and the only lead bullets available are .309”, then resizing them to match your jacketed bullets is worth trying. This will ensure that the neck tension achieved is more closely matched to that achieved with your usual jacketed projectiles.
Experimenting with bullet diameter is particularly easy with lead bullets, as they are more easily resized and are less likely to be damaged or deformed by the process than jacketed bullets. Squeezing the bullet diameter down by just 0.001” can have a noticeable effect on how your ammunition performs. You must, of course, not go too small, and be sure that the bullet diameter is compatible with your gun’s bore, so that it will fit, seal, and obturate correctly.

Home-cast bullets
Making your own lead bullets at home can be time-consuming, but it is a really good way of saving money. Using lead alloy recovered from the backstop on a range means that you have zero materials costs, and the savings you make will quickly pay for the cost of the melting pot and the moulds.
Commercial moulds all cast to a very tightly controlled bullet diameter, and the projectiles produced can be used ‘as-cast’, but most do need resizing.

Resizing methods
The basic principle of resizing lead bullets is that they are forced through a precisely machined opening in a die, which compresses the bullet down to the given diameter.
The diameter of the bullet is also regularised, and any small casting marks are usually removed from the bearing surface.
The Lee Precision Bullet Sizing Kit consists of a resizing die body, which can be fitted to any standard single-stage press, and a punch that clips into the shell holder to push each bullet nose-first through the die and into the collection box above. This is resizing in its simplest form, and the process is relatively quick. This method does not apply any lubricant; you can lubricate the bullets before sizing, after sizing, or both before and after.
The RCBS Lube-A-Matic-2 is a full-sized press that is solely for resizing bullets. It is a very heavily engineered piece of equipment, and it also has a system of delivering lubrication to the lube bands on the bullet at the same time as resizing them. The tool actually forces each bullet down into the resizing die base-first, so a bullet-specific top punch is required to ensure that the nose of the bullet is not damaged during the process.
A diameter-specific sizing die and a bullet-specific top punch are required for each bullet that you want to size, and they are purchased separately. This is a very quick and clean way of both sizing and lubricating bullets. Watch out for a full review of this tool coming soon.

Lubrication
There are a few different ways to lubricate bullets, and they all have their individual pros and cons. Lee Precision’s Liquid Alox, for example, is a ‘wet’ product that is applied by tumbling the bullets in a suitable container with a few drops of the lubricant. It coats the entire surface of the bullets and then dries like a varnish. The advantage of this particular product is that it coats all of the bullet, including the bearing surface, and it decreases the amount of leading in the barrel. Lee Precision also makes several bullet moulds that cast ‘micro-grooves’ into the shank of the bullet, specifically to catch and hold this type of lubricant to make it even more effective.
Another way to lubricate your bullets is to place them in a flat-bottomed tray and pour melted lubricant around the bullets up to a level that just covers the lube bands. Once the lubricant has set, you then cut the bullets out with a ‘cookie cutter’ made from a suitably adapted case, and then lift them out. This method fills the lube bands very neatly. You can then place another bullet into each hole left by the ones previously cut out, gently re-melt the lubricant, top it up to the desired level, and repeat the whole process again, which saves a lot of time.
Both of these methods of lubricating bullets require the resizing to be done as a separate operation. As previously mentioned, the RCBS Lube-A-Matic-2 can lubricate the bullets at the same time as resizing them, which does save a lot of time. Sticks of lubricant are fed into a chamber and pressurised by turning a crank. This pressure causes the lube to flow into the sizing die, where it is released into the lube bands on the bullet. Each time a bullet is inserted into the Lube-A-Matic-2, a single stroke of the handle sizes and lubricates the bullet, then lifts it back up out of the sizer, ready to reload. Although expensive, this method of resizing and lubricating is very quick, clean, and precise.

Conclusion
Resizing and lubricating bullets is another aspect of reloading where experimenting with different methods can significantly affect how your ammunition performs. Matching the bullet diameter to the bore of a gun is critical, and correct lubrication can affect chamber pressure and muzzle velocity. If you use lead bullets, it is well worth investing in some sizing and lubricating gear and giving it a go.  GM