I think bullet lube should be softer than lube pill lube. Bullet lube should be more of a 50-50 wax to lube type. You know make 4 oz. wax to mix in 4 oz. lube(like olive oil,crisco,unsalted lard, mutton tallow).
It depends I guess on whether you want the lube to stay on the bullet or fly off after the bullet is in the air.All stay on would be a harder adhisive type and all come off would be a softer oily type I guess. Don't want some to stay on and some to come off and unbalance the bullet and de-stabilize it.
The smaller grooves bullets probably would want the lube to stay with the bullet and the Big Lube type Bullets with big lube grooves would want the lube to fly off.
Pearl Lube is said to work well. I think Dick Dastardly at CASS sells it or gives the recipie for free.
I'd want a lube that works to reduce fouling and,I'd guess, the best is SPG Lube. It's a softer type. It has the secrete ingredient in it that made the lube good enough to take the blackpowder cartridge world by storm. When Steve Garbe(discovered the main de-fouling ingredient and makes and sells SPG Lube) won the matches without cleaning between shots for the entire match his lube became a valuble asset to accuracy. Wonder LUbe and the other YELLOW lubes sold commercially now for muzzleloading have the secrete ingredient in them. Throwing some wonder lube 1000 into a wax and mixing it can make a really good lube for bullets. Kinda like making your own SPG Lube.
I've noticed the more experienced shooters using Big Lube Bullets have gone to a 50-50 mix of wax to lube. I'd say 50-50 or 2/3rds wax to 1/3rd lube is in the right ball park. Stay within those parameters and you'd probably be doing alright.
Pan Lubing? Heck with that. Get a lube sizer and do it better. Do it neatly and make real nice looking lubed bullets that are sized right to what you want. I've never regretted getting a Redding Saeco lubisizer mounted on the loading bench. Put a bullet in ,pull the handle down and up and BINGO a perfectly lubed bullet.
If a Lubesizer is too costly then....Lee sells a lube/size die that is used on a loading press with the bullet pushed up thru the die to make it sized and neat.That's just running the pan lubed bullets thru a sizer though to size the bullet and make neat the lube. Makes the bullets look like they were run thru a lube sizer. Makes loading the bullets neater without excess lube getting on the dies and all.Kinda cool and cheap too.
Lube is so important to blackpowder cartridge shooting I don't recommend messing around with homemade lubes that may not work well and give poor accuracy. I'd just go right for SPG Lube or...put a good amount of Wonder Lube 1000 in the mix for the lube part. Who the hell wants to go thru the trouble to load and all and get poor results from a poor lube. I'd go right for the best known lube and learn from the mistakes all the other guys already made. Like taking a shortcut to good accurate blackpowder cartridge shooting. The closest I've come to making SPG type lube is 50-50 wax to lube or with the "equal amounts of bees wax,paraffine wax,mutton tallow. It can be equal amounts "soy wax(cheaper than beeswax)",paraffin,lubey stuff(mutton tallow,olive oil,lard,crisco,canola oil," ect.ect.
I think soy wax has inherent lubing qualities within itself that bees wax doesn't have. On it's own beeswax isn't a good lube. Soy wax seems to be a better lubey stuff and is cheaper to boot. It's sold at candle making places.
Anyway....SPG Lube is the best I'd say. It is kinda soft too.
SPG costs but...its proven to help win matches. Proven to work really well.
One thing......cleaning a barrel of all oil or grease before shooting with an organic non petroleum based lube is important. Wipe it out....wipe it out again....saturate patches with alcohol and wipe it out again. Then use alcohol and wipe it out again and again. Get the oil out of the micro pores in the steel. After that and after shooting it's good to store the gun with Wonder LUbe 1000 in the bore as a rust preventative. That way the bore gets seasoned to the natural lube and gets less fouling stuck as time and shooting goes on. You know...use Natural Lube 1000 in the lube recipie or use SPG Lube and then never use oil or grease in the bore again. Use the yellow Wonder Lube 1000 to prevent rust. Wonder Lube..Natural Lube whatever they call it it's the same...it's the yellow stuff.(they dye and scent it to hide the secret stuff) It has the secret ingredient in it that makes SPG Lube the best there is and it's proven by all the matches it's helped win. Before SPG Lube the shooters had to clean after every shot to try to keep fouling controled. After SPG Lube....the shooters had to swab the bore a lot less and still maintained accuracy. I just add that the Wonder Lube or Natural Lube has the secret stuff in it in case a person wants to mix it in "their recipie" instead of buying SPG Lube. They call the stuff Natural Lube 1000 because when Thompson Center bought the recipie of the secret ingredient they tested a rifle and fired it 1000 times and never had to clean to be able to get the muzzleloding ball or bullet in the barrel and the rifle stayed accurate.A 1000 shots without cleaning? Unheard of before the secret ingredient SPG brought out was found or re-found.
Anyway..maybe a person would want to make a recipie like equal amounts of bees wax,paraffin wax,Natural Lube 1000. Try it out and see. Might be a match winner. All I know is....it's good to keep petroleum based oil/grease out of the barrels once you start to use a natural organic lube mix. At least remove every trace of oil in the barrel before shooting with a natural lube.
Hope this helps. Just my opinion is all.
I might add...supposedly there's an old recipie in an old Rifleman magazine from the 40's that has the ratio of 10 lbs. paraffin wax,10 lbs. mutton tallow, 5 lbs. beeswax for grease grooved lubricated bullets. That would be like one part paraffin wax to one part mutton tallow(the lubey stuff) to one half part bees wax.
