Wax bullets

[nemesiss45]

anyone shoot them? a guy I work with got a box of speer plastic bullets from his dad and it got me thinking on the subject of primer loaded practice rounds and that lead me to wax bullets. I had a .45 shell with a live primer I had to decap, so I decided to press it into a candle to make an improvised wax wadcutter. I put up a cardboard box as a backdrop and at about 2' it popped a hole in it.

anyone know what kind of wax is used for a proper wax bullet?

will a standard solvent clean the fouling out?

[TATER]

http://www.waxbullet.com/

I use carpet as a backstop.. The wax itself is not brittle, sort of like chewing wax, (did I just show my age with that reference)

[Unclenick]

Since cast bullet lubes often have a high wax content, I expect any cleaner suitable for lead bullet shooting to be adequate. Using a brush should help.

Typically, wax bullets require drilling the flash holes of the cases out to 1/8 inch. This is to prevent the primers backing up hard enough to jam a revolver cylinder. In normal shooting the primer backs out, but powder pressure then backs the case up enough to reseat it. That reseating pressure is absent in a wax bullet load.

[FrankenMauser]

When I was a teenager, my father was cleaning out his reloading room and coincidentally ended up handing me a bundle of paraffin candles to go to the garage, and a Lee .44 caliber 240 gr SWC mold to go in the trash.

I never made it to the garbage can. I, coincidentally (), ran across a box of matches in the garage and started casting some wax bullets. When my father noticed my absence and found me, he joined in the fun. When the candles were gone, we had about 100 bullets to show for the effort. They were extremely low quality, since we, quite literally, just lit the candles and let the wax drip into the bullet mold cavities until full.

Rather than going primer-only, we used a powder charge of something like 1.5-2.0 gr Bullseye or Unique in .44 Special cases. About 50% of the bullets were torn apart by the pressure and splattered all over the target vicinity, but the rest were accurate enough for popping cow pies at 10-15 feet. The primers backed out a bit, but none went far enough to cause a problem.

Had the bullets been a homogenous casting, rather than void-ridden layers of only slightly bonded drippings, they probably would have been much more consistent and destructive.


I don't recall having any problems just using Hoppes #9 for cleanup.

[JD0x0]

I've seen someone home make a wax slug for a shotgun out of spare bees wax. It's definitely not something to screw with, as just the wax slug, with a tiny bit of bird shot peppered in the wax, shot a hole into a hotel safe, and almost exited out the other end.

[GP100man]

check out this :

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-boolits/page9

[Mike / Tx]

I remember my pop had some pulled LC ammo he was messing with once. He decided that the wax thing was just the ticket to clear the primers out before reloading them. I remember him shoving a couple into a big block was paraffin and then setting up a cardboard box out on the screened in patio. I was sitting there with fingers in ears when he dropped the hammer on the first one. I heard the little pop, the box moved and then I heard glass break.

After pop replaced the window in the fellows out building a couple of houses down the street we decided that the brick flower box outside would be a MUCH better place to put the target box instead of in front of the screened in porch.

Just a reminder that some of those cool things DO need to be looked at from several perspectives rather than just thinking how low powered they are.

[LE-28]

Yea, they'll shoot through a corrugated box and through the dry wall in your garage to with just a primer!

Try getting spackling to stick to a hole with wax all over it.

[Chuck Dye]

I bought prepared cases and wax bullets from C&R. The only problem I have had is with the cases: the shotshell primers fit loosely and will fall out unless I take care to keep the cartridge pointed downward until I close the action.

[PanzerIV]

Years ago I would load wax bullets with paraffin wax such as used in canning. The "bricks" of wax where about 3/8" thick, just warm a little and push nose of a .38 casing through it. Load with primer only and good to go. Great fun at about 20 ft. shooting into cardboard box stuffed with crumpled newspaper.

[skizzums]

that sounds like fun, ive always considered the hot glooblet, but this sounds much easier and safer

[Wreck-n-Crew]

I have made them with bottle rocket tips ( the whistling kind ) for 9mm. Warmed them up enough to stretch them out a tad (from.292 to .355) over a FMJ 9mm. Filled them with hot glue and loaded them (casing) with a primer. Made for more fun than practice.

They actually fit well in a Mosin casing (bottle rocket tip) (7.62 x 54R). But I never tested one in a gun. However we made homemade flash bangs out of them (Mosin Casings and bottle rocket tips).

[FrankenMauser]

I bought prepared cases and wax bullets from C&R. The only problem I have had is with the cases: the shotshell primers fit loosely and will fall out unless I take care to keep the cartridge pointed downward until I close the action.

There's no need to use cases modified for shotgun primers. Shotgun primers use pistol primers inside the steel 'capsule' that gives shotgun primes their unique shape.

Standard primers work just fine.

[skizzums]

yeah, i assumed i would get good-enough performance running a mag primer, i read on qiuckLOAD that mag primers let off a longer priming steam than regular ones, and that rifle has the longest of all, they dont mention shotgun primers charachteristic, but a rifle or mag should do it

[Chuck Dye]

Originally Posted by FrankenMauser:

There's no need to use cases modified for shotgun primers.

Swapping fresh for spent without tools is a plus.

[Unclenick]

I think that's why the opened up pockets are on the loose side. They can easily be tightened slightly by putting the case over steel rod in a vice to act as an anvil, and then taking a drift punch and hammer lightly to the edge of the pocket. Have a spent primer in place and push it out or wiggle it to help you feel when you are hitting just hard enough to make it begin to rub. You might need to hit three spots in a rough triangle around it to go as far as you need to, but trial and error should get you there.