Waxing Smallbore Ammo

[rfwhatley]

I read here and elsewhere about the Eley wax being essential to their success. I also have read some about 10M AR guys spraying their pellets with various waxes for improved performance.

I've been fairly happy practicing with Federal 714 Target, but wanted to experiment. So I took a box of 50 and dipped the entire tray (covering the exposed lead only) into a shallow saucer of Lee "Alox Liquid Bullet Wax" that I found at my local gun store. It turned out to be so easy I went ahead and did about 5 boxes. I let it air dry for 2 days.

Tonight I did sort of an unofficial test and fired groups of standard 714 and then some groups of the dipped 714. The gun is a low mileage 1907 and the work was done from a supported bench in my basement at 50 ft. The groups seemed to be about 20% tighter with the wax.

Alox is a common lead bullet lube used by "Cowboy Action" shooters and costs about $4 for enough to do 500 or more .22's. This could really save some youth teams some serious money if it works like I think it does.

Could someone with better eyes please duplicate this experiment for me. Thanks.

[robf]

Hmm... if your shots in 10m aren't going through the same hole, something is wrong. Beyond that I think there's only serious point in going further with batch testing etc, when your just knocking in a handful of 9's.

If your hitting 7's something is wrong with you, gun, or ammo... sizing, weighing, lubing makes a difference at 50m in airguns, with less than ideal ammo sometimes... at 10m, forget it, it either works or doesn't,

[rfwhatley]

No sir, all this was done at a measured 50 ft (15.2M). I usually get around 1/4 inch or tighter groups. I'm 58, so we know the eyes aren't perfect anymore... that's why I asked for backup.

[Misny]

I think our neighbor from the UK was confusing your .22 LR ammo tests with pellet testing. If those groups continue to show improvement, you might be on to something. Don't discount the psychological factor. You may be shooting better groups, because you are expecting them, ala "new gun syndrome". I thought my 10 meter basement airgun range was something. I'm green with envy that you have a 50 foot indoor range.

[2016oly]

wow iv'e never seen anopen space 10m in length in any of the houses around here, let alone 50ft. wow i Jelous

[robf]

No sir, all this was done at a measured 50 ft (15.2M). I usually get around 1/4 inch or tighter groups. I'm 58, so we know the eyes aren't perfect anymore... that's why I asked for backup.

I had assumed you meant air rifle.

[big52]

I am not shure if everyone probably already knows this but the ammunition made here like Federal and Winchester standard velocity has a bullet lube that is not adequte. I had found this years ago while out shooting my Anschutz and had noticed that it was getting hard to chamber each cartridge, I was using Federal gold medal also because a Gibson store had been carrying it and it was only 1.59 per box of 50 at the time. What I had found was that it was leading just in front of the chamber in the gun, pushed a round in then extracted it and seen how the bullet was actually being scraped from the leading. I then realized that Eley and RWS had a much different lube and that it was the reason I was not having this trouble with it when I would go out and use it. So yes the bullet lube does make a big difference, with the dry type of lube the ammuntion has like Federal ounce the leading occurs accuracy does not exactly suffer but will unless you get that lead out of the bore before you try a different ammunition. Western Mark lll years and years ago had the correct bullet lube and probably produced results much like Eley and RWS. There is no reason why the US could not make a very high grade match ammunition again and why they don't is beyond me. I am interested in if what you did actually corrected the bullet lube problem as I really like Winchester T22, however I will not use it because of the leading problem it has. If you find that what you did with the bullet lube works I would like to try it as well.

[Misny]

It's all about the bottom line. Companies in the U.S. don't make much money selling quality match grade ammo. The average joe couldn't care less just how accurate his .22 ammo is and probably doesn't shoot well enough to tell the difference. He isn't concerned about duds, if that were the case the sales of Remington .22 ammo would have ceased many years ago. Most folks in the U.S. just want cheap .22 ammo that they can plink with at the range or shoot small game or pests. The companies are just responding to the consumer and their stockholders. If shooting were a more formal and structured activity in the U.S., like it appears to be in many other parts of the world, I'm sure that the quality of .22 ammo would reflect that.