Lee Alox for Snider round ball?

[snidey577]

I have some .60 round balls cast in pure lead for my Snider Carbine, which slugged around .590

Have some Bertram brass, and 24 gauge shotshell hulls to use.

I read the Snider likes lubrication. I can apply, dry, then repeat-dose the round balls until they are quite brown with a deep layer of Lee's Liquid Alox lube. Will this be good enough lube for the RB in a Snider Carbine with a Black Powder charge? I am trying to to use the least amount of 'dry' lube to reduce the mess I spit on the floor of the indoor range so as not to annoy anyone. Too much.

[dodgyrog]

I would not have thought that Alox based lubes suit BP rounds - Lyman do a stick lube for BP - or just use some lard!
How about wads - though they don't suit hollow base bullets do they?

[AL8]

I use trex/beeswax and olive oil mixed together. You alter the hardness but altering the amount of beeswax. This is not as messy as using trex (lard etc) on its own

[dromia]

It is not wise to use petroleum based lubricants with BP as the fouling cakes hard.

Normally I have been using a 1/4" lube cookie of my homemade BP lube of beeswax, tallow and Lanacote or lanolin.

The latest lubing method around however is udder cream. I have been trying this with some success. I now just dip the nose of the boolit into some udder cream when chambering and this is working very well at keeping the fouling soft in my Sniders, Martinis, Rolling Blocks, Trapdoors and other sundry BP cartridge rifles that I shoot.

Udder cream is available in smaller quantities from chemists now as a skin cream, look for "Udderly Smooth", I kid you not, or if you know any friendly dairy farmers, which is my source trouble is you get it by the bucketful.

A slightly stiffer version of "Udderly Smooth" is also available from cycling shops for application 'tween saddle and arse.

[dromia]

I gave up using undersize hollow based Minies in the Snider a long time ago, even with clay plugs, I have a plug mould, sad isn't it.

Round balls are OK out to 50 yards or so. Plastic shotgun shells can work if they fit your chamber with a groove size boolit or RB. If a plastic shotgun cartridge with a .600" RB seated in it will chamber in you Snider then you have an interesting chamber. Breech seating could work but unless you want the firing point faff on it might not be worth it, I have never had any more success with plastic shotgun cases and undersize boolits than with brass cases.

During the Sniders service life there was continual experimentation with different boolit designs and they never really got it right.

I now use flat based boolits from moulds that are cut to drop boolits 2 thou over groove diameter.

The only issue with this approach is that to get a longer boolit for good long distance accuracy then they tend to be getting overly heavy Even with the collar button designs I am using, the beauty of the collar buttons are they have high lube capacity. I am hoping to try some hollow point designs I am working on this year to give some length with a little less weight.

Think of a .599" Ness boolit with a hint of ogive! Phwoarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!