Lubricating the cartridges?

[Merc]

I'm looking for info based on your own experience.

Does anyone lubricate their cartridges before loading and shooting? If yes, what kind of lubricant do you use? Wet, as in petroleum-based, or dry as in wax or silicon-based? What are the advantages and/or disadvantages? Do you lubricate the case and bullet or just the case? Does it help preserve the case or the receiver, or both? Is it necessary or unnecessary?

Merc

[joem]

I don't lube any of my loaded rounds. I've read that it can cause so very bad problems and I'm not going to find out. A few old MG's needed lubed cartridges.

[dave]

You should never lube cartridges unless, as mentioned, gun was designed for them! Cartridges expand when fired and stick to the chamber walls, when pressure drops they contract so they can be extracted. If lubed they will not stick to chamber and will slam back against the bolt, which will cause undue pressure on the action. Not a safe practice!

It is not only unnecessary but dangerous!

[bruce]

Have never lubricated ammunition prior to firing. Everything I've read is that the chamber and ammunition is to be clean and dry. Granted old archaic weapons required lubricated ammunition, but these firearms are now just museum pieces. Once upon a time I handloaded some nice .30-06 ammunition for use in my hunting rifle. I wanted the rounds to look as good as new factory rounds, so I polished them to a bright shine using Simichrome polish. When finished they had a slick feeling. I used some of the ammo to check the zero in the rifle before the season started. I remember noticing that the head/primer of the case appeared different, the primer was flatter. I fired the exact same load in LC brass that was only cleaned but not polished with Semichrome. Fired cases looked normal so I decided not to Semichrome any more ammo prior to firing. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

[Merc]

Thanks for the replies. I had never heard of lubricating cartridges until I read an illustrated post on this forum under SMLE entitled "Reloading .303 cases." It's not something I wanted to try before getting a "best practices" opinion from other forum members.

Merc

[joem]

Perhaps they mean to lubricate the cases before sizing.

[Merc]

Read the post on this forum under the SMLE Enfield thread entitled "Reloading .303 Cases." The illustration refers to head-case separation that occurs without lubrication.

[dave]

I was going to mention reloading procedures but thought it was unnecessary to do so. You have to sure the lub is removed after reloading! 303 cases are not good for a lot of reloads, they are head spaced on the rim and unless they have a real tight chamber (unusual on a military rifle) the brass flows forward upon firing and they become thiner at the head. Resizing does not compensate for that.
If you have more then one 303 rifle keep cases with same rifle to minimize this.

[PhillipM]

The warnings above about lubrication interfering with the friction fit of the case to the chamber are valid for rimless rounds.

Since the 303 headspace on rim, I don't think it would matter from a safety standpoint. Google bolt thrust for discussions on why it's bad to lube rimless cases.

[dave]

The original post did not mention any caliber, only cartridges in general!

[Merc]

Dave,

There's a way to check for thinning brass at the head. An internal groove starts to develop around the head that can be felt with a pointed L shaped wire. It's time to recycle the brass when the groove is felt.

Merc

[PhillipM]

Dave,

There's a way to check for thinning brass at the head. An internal groove starts to develop around the head that can be felt with a pointed L shaped wire. It's time to recycle the brass when the groove is felt.

Merc

I straightened out a king sized safety pin then bent it 1/4" from the end for that purpose. The clasp makes a nice handle and the sharp point is very sensitive.

[slamfire]

I regularly lubricate my cartridges as I want the maximum case life out of my brass.


The Benchrest National Champ, Mike Ratigan, explains in his book, "Extreme Rifle Accuracy" his procedure and rationale for fire forming lubricated cases. Mike explains it is important to lubricate the case the first time it is fired so that the case is not stretched or under stress. Lubricating the case ensures that the case slides back firmly against the bolt face preventing sidewall stretch, and particularly preventing stresses in the in the critical web area.

The last year, and this year, I have been firing 2700 Bullseye. I want the maximum reliability and accuracy out of my 1911. I also want to shoot the least recoiling ammunition I can load. I have been oiling my loads to break the friction between case and chamber. This breaks the friction between case and chamber which ensures a more reliable extraction and feed with my low velocity loads. if you talk to old Bullseye shooters this is an old practice. It is messy as heck, I usually remove the grips after the match and wipe the oil accumulation. If you ever shoot Bullseye, you lube the heck out of your pistol anyway. I am placing oil drops after every ten rounds on my barrel, sometimes in the match I am lubing the rails and barrel hood. There is an old saying in Bullseye: “Your elbow is the drip point”, and true it is.

Something I have noticed is the absolute lack of leading after firing 180 rounds of oiled rounds. After the match I will push a patch down the barrel and it is perfectly clean! No leading anywhere. During the match I can see that the barrel is being oiled, and I am of the opinion this oil coating is preventing leading, maybe reducing wear. I have recently tested this in a 45 LC, oiling the rounds. Very messy again, but no noticeable leading in the barrel. Eventually I am going to try this with a 357 Magnum and see what happens.


The concept that grease or oil on the cartridge creates a dangerous condition is an interesting case of the fallacy of “argument from authority”. After reviewing all the information I can find , I am of the opinion that this was originally created by the US Army Ordnance Department to hide and misdirect failures from the population of 1 million “low number” M1903’s.

These rifles were made at Army Arsenals and as the designer and manufacturer, any inherent problems with rifle, in the hands of civilians or Navy and Marine personnel, were the responsibility of the US Army. The Army also wanted competitors to stop greasing their bullets. Bullets of the period fouled something awful. Until you shoot those cupro nickel bullets you have no idea of how bad the fouling. I have, I shot 303 Iraqi and that stuff left huge lumps of fouling in the barrel, and it took weeks to remove the lumps using Sweets. However, dipping bullets in axle grease positively prevented all bullet fouling. I was very surprised at the effectiveness of greased bullets. At the time the Army was loaning out rifles to Gun Clubs and to competitors at the National Matches. I am certain that shooters got dirt on their greased bullets, scratching the chambers/barrels of these loaner rifles. It makes sense the Army did not like this. So, prior to the 1921 National Matches, a Council of Colonels ordered Major Townsend Whelen to “prove the evils of grease”. This is after Major Whelen told the world he had cured cupro nickel fouling by coating the bullet with a thick layer of tin.

Incidentally, Major Whelen’s cure for bullet fouling, was far worse than the disease. It turns out that tin from the bullet, migrated into the brass neck of the cartridge case. The phenomena is called “cold welding”. If you study this, as I have, Major Townsend Whelen noticed extremely heavy bullet pull from day one, and ignored the implications, but the migration of tin into the case neck only increased with time, so the longer this ammunition was around, the more solid the weld between bullet and case. The weld was so strong that case necks were torn off the cases and traveled down the barrel with the bullet. Instead of being the greatest invention in the history of the world, as it was ballyhooed at that time, this cure for bullet fouling created a bore obstruction and blew up rifles.

All of this was played down, and out right denied in print in the Arms and the Man. Neither Major Whelen, Hatcher, nor the Army admitted that the primary cause of rifle blowups at the 1921 National Matches were due to bad Army ammunition fired in structurally deficient Army rifles. Instead, the Army blamed greased bullets. A side story, no one outside of a few in the Ordnance Department knew about their structurally defective rifles, even though, three years previous, the Army had conducted a massive investigation, shutting the production lines of their Arsenals down in the middle of a shooting war, as their problem of overheated steel components was being investigated and corrected. Not a peep of this appears in the literature of the times, and it does not appear until the publication of Hatcher’s Notebook in 1947, forty years after the fact.

Quite literally, the Army did not want to know or have anyone else know, about problems or deficiencies about their weapons. This is was expressed in the August 1922 Infantry Journal:

Infantry Journal 1922
Notes from the Chief of Infantry August 1922 page 196
Courtesy Google Books

News Articles pertaining to Equipment – Arrangements have been made whereby the Infantry Board will review certain classes of (written) articles (for publication) that pertain to Infantry equipment, prior to their publication in the infantry Journal. This applies only to those articles that have a tendency to bring into the Infantryman’s mind a suspicion that the equipment he is supplied with, is not the very best that can be had for him. It can readily be see that the Army that does not believe its equipment, weapons especially, is equal to, or superior to that of a possible enemy, will suffer to some degree in morale. Inventors and promoters sometimes make statements regarding the superiority of their invention or article that are not always borne out by the tests that they are subjected to and the Infantry Board is in a position to determine the justice of the claims and advise the Editor of the Infantry Journal regarding them.

I will sum up the statement: Army weapons are perfect, they cannot be improved on, anyone expressing different is subversive and disloyal. In my opinion, this was, and still is, the informal and formal policy of the United States Army.

The idea that greased bullets or greased cases creates a dangerous condition would have died decades ago if it had not been in the 1947 book “ Hatcher’s Notebook” . Hatcher’s Notebook is the Event Horizon for all the concerns expressed in the American shooting community about greased bullets, oiled bullets, lubricated bullets, lubricated cases, oiled cases. Townsend Whelen is the man actually responsible for creating the data set that the Army and Hatcher used to claim dangerous pressure increases. These men are revered by the American shooting community. Given the statue of Hatcher and Townsend Whelen (recently called “Mr Rifleman” or “the Dean of Riflemen”) within the shooting community, and the decades spanning their unchallenged claims that grease (and/or oil) dangerously raised pressures, it is no wonder that the shooting community is thoroughly indoctrinated with this belief. It is however, fallacious.

The only real problem I have, since the participants are all dead, particularly General Hatcher, is the extent to which they themselves believed that grease caused over pressure conditions in spite of all the evidence they had to have seen which contradicted what they were telling the American public. General Hatcher is a most peculiar case and the strong reverence for General Hatcher is such that by claiming he is not infallible, in fact, is quite fallible, will result in strong and vicious push back from his fan base.

When authority is considered so highly that no one dares or cares to challenge them, when these same Authorities are wrong, they can cause amazing damage and delay progress within society. It is very human to appeal to authorities, and since no one can know everything about everything, at some point we all rely on experts. But time has shown again and again, experts are not infallible or inerrant, they have their bias, their knowledge gaps. No matter how high a pedestal they are put on, eventually they are shown to be imperfect humans.

I think it is totally amazing that Hatcher writes what he does and yet he was the Head of Ordnance during WW2. He had access to the interiority of the Ordnance military industrial complex. He had authority over all the test labs, test facilities, even equipment manufacturers, which is why of course, why his authority is so high among the shooting community. We don’t know all of what Hatcher knew. He is a primary source on single heat treat 03’s, the blow up lists, the development of the Garand, his Textbook of Firearms Identification and Evidence was a primary forensic source for law enforcement. In so many instances Hatcher is the sole and primary source. And yet, knowing what he actually did know, knowing what his associates knew, knowing what he therefore should have known, I find his section on greased bullets and the tin can ammunition extraordinary. How could he not have known that what he was writing was bunk? Based on readings on human psychology, I am discovering that the human capacity for self deception is infinite. People shape their views to that of their peers. To belong to a human hierarchal organization, you have to agree with the belief’s that of organization, or you will be ostracized. The American public has already forgotten the build up to the Iraqi invasion, but I remember the propaganda of the era, that is Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was going to attack America. Anyone expressing opinions different was denounced as disloyal. Anyone remember the boycotts against the Dixie Chicks? http://www.thenation.com/article/ten...ampaign-began/ What I believe for General Hatcher, is that he genuinely believed that greased bullets and greased and oiled cartridges dangerously raised pressures even as he accepted the fact that greased and oiled cartridges were necessary for the safe and reliable function of various Army weapons and of a multitude of military weapons throughout the world. Humans are not rational nor consistent, and as such, human will accept as true, contradictory concepts which are mutually exclusive.

This is going to torque the sensitivities of those who put Hatcher on a pedestal, and live with a romantic view of Springfield Armory and the Army, but I am going to call Hatcherism the belief that

Cartridges should never be greased or oiled, and the bullets should never be greased. Grease on the cartridge or in the chamber creates excessive and hazardous pressure. It operates to reduce the size of the chamber and thus increases the density of loading and the pressure.

These are Townsend Whelen’s words; General Hatcher did not come up with this belief system , it is in fact based on a data set created by then Major Townsend Whelen, but Hatcher is the “St Paul” of this religion. Without him this would have faded away and at best, would have been a historical curiosity. Hatcher is the source from whom all Hatcherites go, quoting chapter and verses from his 1947 book, Hatcher’s Notebook, on greased bullets, greased cartridges, lubricated cartridges and pressures.

So, what does the historical record say about Hatcherism?:

Well, how could Hatcherism be true, and yet Hatcher be wrong? Here is an excerpt that Hatcher wrote in 1933:

Army Ordnance Magazine, March-April 1933
Automatic Firearms, Mechanical Principles used in the various types, by J. S. Hatcher. Chief Smalls Arms Division Washington DC.

Retarded Blow-back Mechanism………………………..

There is one queer thing, however, that is common to almost all blow-back and retarded blow-back guns, and that is that there is a tendency to rupture the cartridges unless they are lubricated. This is because the moment the explosion occurs the thin front end of the cartridge case swells up from the internal pressure and tightly grips the walls of the chamber. Cartridge cases are made with a strong solid brass head a thick wall near the rear end, but the wall tapers in thickness until the front end is quiet thin so that it will expand under pressure of the explosion and seal the chamber against the escape of gas to the rear. When the gun is fired the thin front section expands as intended and tightly grips the walls of the chamber, while the thick rear portion does not expand enough to produce serious friction. The same pressure that operates to expand the walls of the case laterally, also pushes back with the force of fifty thousand pounds to the square inch on the head of the cartridge, and the whole cartridge being made of elastic brass stretches to the rear and , in effect, give the breech block a sharp blow with starts it backward. The front end of the cartridge being tightly held by the friction against the walls of the chamber, and the rear end being free to move back in this manner under the internal pressure, either one of two things will happen. In the first case, the breech block and the head of the cartridge may continue to move back, tearing the cartridge in two and leaving the front end tightly stuck in the chamber; or, if the breech block is sufficiently retarded so that it does not allow a very violent backward motion, the result may simply be that the breech block moves back a short distance and the jerk of the extractor on the cartridge case stops it, and the gun will not operate.

However this difficultly can be overcome entirely by lubricating the cartridges in some way. In the Schwarzlose machine gun there is a little pump installed in the mechanism which squirts a single drop of oil into the chamber each time the breech block goes back. In the Thompson Auto-rifle there are oil-soaked pads in the magazine which contains the cartridges. In the Pedersen semiautomatic rifle the lubrication is taken care of by coating the cartridges with a light film of wax.

Blish Principle….There is no doubt that this mechanism can be made to operate as described, provided the cartridge are lubricated, …. That this type of mechanism actually opens while there is still considerable pressure in the cartridge case is evident from the fact that the gun does not operate satisfactorily unless the cartridges are lubricated.

Thompson Sub-Machine Gun: … Owing to the low pressure involved in the pistol cartridge, it is not necessary to lubricate the case.

If lubricated cases dangerously increase bolt thrust, as Hatcher says in his Notebook why are lubricated cases being used in blowback or delayed blowback mechanisms? Maybe the laws of physics are different for these firearms than other type of firearms? Maybe one mechanism operates using one set of physical laws and another mechanism has its own unique laws of physics. Maybe certain mechanisms operate outside the known laws of the universe? Someone without a background in science and physics could agree that all of these ideas were true, that the physical laws of the universe are just a difference of opinion between people.


What about Melvin Johnson and his comments?:

Army Ordnance Oct 1936 What Price Automatic?, by Melvin M. Johnson, Jr.

Several methods have been devised to retard the unlocking of the block or bolt mechanically. The most appealing point in such a system is consolidation of the “automatic” parts in the breech. However, there is one serious difficulty. The conventional cartridge case does not lend itself to such a system unless adequate lubrication is provided, such as grease or wax or oil on the cases or in the chamber. Thus, the Schwarzlose machine gun has an automatic oil pump: the caliber 30 Thompson rifle (not the caliber 45 T.S.-M.G.) had oil pad in the magazine, and special “wax” was needed on the cases designed to be used in the Pedersen rifle.


As to the historical use of oilers in fielded weapon systems, I recommend that all read The Machine Gun History, Evolution, and Development of Manual, Automatic, and Airborne Repeating Weapons by George M. Chinn Lieutenant Colonel, USMC VOLUME I OF FIVE VOLUMES http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/MG/


Hatcherism works because so many American’s have to rely on arguments from authority. It is unfortunate that the vast number of Americans barely have reading and math skills at a American High School level. American schools graduate students who are not competitive at an international level, so having an American High School diploma is not an assurance of critical thinking, rational thinking, or much of an education at all. College statistics are somewhat easier to find, from STEM statistics on the web, around 9 percent of students enrolled in engineering and engineering technologies, and about 2-3 percent in mathematics and physical sciences. What the web publications don’t note, is the vast number of foreign students enrolled in Engineering and Science courses in US Universities. I was at Georgia Tech not so long ago, and it was surprising how often, as a passenger in the Tech Trolley, that I was the only white man, or white person in the vehicle. In a nearby restaurant, tables of students were speaking Hindi, not English. Colleges may have 9 percent of the students in engineering, but most of those students are foreign and after graduation they don’t stay in the US. So my point is, there are not a lot of American’s who have either the education or background to challenge Army coverups, particularly when the topic relates to mechanical engineering. Also combine this with the general ignorance of historical firearms. The primary source of information for Americans on Life, the Universe, and Everything, is movies, TV shows, and to a much smaller extent, in print magazines. Books are rarely read, but of the books read by shooters, Hatcher’s Notebook is one of the most widely read. This book is relatively cheap and gone through multiple editions and printings. I don’t know if it has been out of print since 1947. Current price is $32.00. When I purchased my new copy, at the time the price was $12.95. My copy is a bit shabby as it has been well read over the decades. Unfortunately, no one reads or has read Chinn’s Volumes on the Machine Gun even though these books have been in print since the early 1950’s. This series of books contradicts Hatcherism, in theory and in the physical examples of mechanisms that used oilers and greased cartridges. Not to say that any Hatcherite would acknowledge that the firearms and designs principles in these volumes contradict Hatcherism. It is more likely that a Hatcherite would ignore the contradictions, as Hatcher did, accepting mutually exclusive concepts as both true. General Hatcher was given copies of the series to review and he is on the acknowledgments. Another issue was, the high cost of owning Chinn’s books ensured that distribution was very limited. I picked up my copies at Gun Shows, and I paid over $100.00 for Volume I and Volume IV each. That was at a time when you could buy a copy of Hatcher’s Notebook for $20.00 or less. And even though Chinn’s series is free, on the web, http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/MG/ no one reads books anyway. Vol IV is an outstanding source for firearm theory and operation, and Vol 1 has an extensive number of fielded military machine guns that used oilers and greased ammunition.

More than anything else, Hatcherism shows the truth behind a saying attributed to one of the most reprehensible men in history: If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.

[pickax]

A recycled diatribe: http://www.jouster.com/forums/showth...ted+cartridges
Your "rage against the machine" should admit a greased cartridge in an unsupported rimless chamber is damned dangerous, (1903), especially a low number receiver.
I am not a "go along" person, but you fail to make a case concerning the above.

[fguffey]

A recycled diatribe: http://www.jouster.com/forums/showth...ted+cartridges
Your "rage against the machine" should admit a greased cartridge in an unsupported rimless chamber is damned dangerous, (1903), especially a low number receiver.
I am not a "go along" person, but you fail to make a case concerning the above.

I do not want anything between my case and chamber but air.

F. Guffey

When the debate is lost slander becomes the tool of the looser; Socrates