Hot weather and black powder don’t mix well

[Russell13]

Don’t know how many of you live in a hot climate, is Southern California boys get a nice long spell of it. Went out today and the sun was beating down. Everything becomes harder to do with the revolver. I had worked up a nice solid lube that was staying in place but the heat was just to much and it would blow off the front of the cylinders. My lubed wads were messy, everything was burning hot. Shooting in the heat is no joke.

that and I just had a bad day shooting. Nothing was connecting, couldn’t ring the 50 yard steel, wasn’t breaking clays at the 25 yard mark. Stuff I can do pretty constantly on a normal day.
I’ve been pulling 12 hour shifts at work and this was my first day off. I’m guessing I was just tired and couldn’t get in the zone.
Anyways thanks for letting me vent.

 

[TheOutlawKid]

I live in deep south texas and its very hot and humid all year long...so i know what you mean. As far as lube...i dont use it over my bullet/ball...i use a very very hard lube that id a 5:1 or 6:1 ratio by weight of beeswax to mutton tallow. And i use it in the form of very thin lube disks i make myself. Also i usually shoot paper cartridges cuz i dont like fumbling around with stuff especially since its hot aaaaand its fun. If u do a search of my previous posts you can see my setup of paper cartridges and thin lube disks and how i make them. It will make ur shooting experience so much better

 

[Mike 56]

Anymore when I shoot in hot weather I bring an EZ Up. I went out yesterday for five hours I packed up at 2:30 it was a 101 the shade and the delta breeze made it tolerable.

 

[SlowFuse]

I've got a very small hard side cooler that I keep my lubed minies and other lube containers in. It was a recommendation either here or on the n-ssa forum.

I dont use actual ice, just one of those blue ice blocks wrapped in a rag to keep moisture down. Everything lube wise is in sealed plastic containers anyway if there is a little water, just less mess this way. You're still going to get soft lube but to me it helps keeping it cold until you're ready to use. Its not freezing cold in this cheapo cooler but it's in the shade when the lid is down and maybe 30 degrees cooler than outside!

As outlawkid said hardening your mix for hot weather helps to a point too. Beeswax melts at like 140f. I think. The straight tallow/crisco is less, id say around 100f.

I'm in Alabama, no stranger to heat and high humidity. That canopy sounds like a great idea!

 

[Dave T]

I'm a BP cartridge shooter, mostly 45 Colt in SAA style guns and in my case USFA models. One of the things I've noted in hot, dry weather (Central Arizona) is how hot the guns get, at least my revolvers. And with traditional styled bullets with narrow grease grooves the revolvers start binding before I finish the second cylinder (10 rounds). A different style bullet (Big Lube) fixed the binding problem but being able to shoot more just makes them hotter. After a couple cylinders the guns are literally too hot to handle. I solve it by taking a couple guns and after 5 or 10 rounds set the first one aside and warm up a different one.

Firing a magazine of BP cartridges though a lever action rifle (1873 in my case) made the barrel too hot to touch for anything but a second. That was in +100 heat.

I've often wondered what it would have been like for troopers or even civilians in a protracted fire fight against hostiles in Southern Arizona, Southern New Mexico, and West Texas. There were such battles historically and gun handling must have been difficult. Of course, they were considerably tougher back then than we pampered products of the 20th Century. (smile)

Dave

 

[paul harm]

I use to shoot at Friendship on the pistol line. It got pretty hot down in that valley, and shooting all day from 9 till 5 with the revolver it could get hot at times. Back then [ in the 70s ] I didn't meet anyone who used anything but grease over the ball. I wish I would have thought of the wafers but instead it was grease all over the front of the revolver. I haven't been there for about 30 years now - kind a miss it.

 

[BullRunBear]

Northern Virginia gets its share of hot steamy weather in summer and early fall.It won't be as bad as parts of the SW states but it is nasty. The barrels do heat up, especially the BP cartridge guns. The dense felt wads completely saturated with Gato Feo recipe lube I use between ball and powder and in cartridges works fine in those conditions.

Having said that, nothing beats those first cool autumn days at the range. C'mon October!

Jeff

 

[damoc]

Change bullet lube with season in hot climes I add beeswax.

 

[Eyrie G. Dogg]

For shooting in California during the summer I wear a hat, up the bee's wax and make damn sure I don't start a forest fire.

 

[792mauser]

A cooler with some drinks, sandwiches and ice makes it a lot better.

108° here today. I usually take my lube to almost all beeswax/soy wax since in the AZ heat anything else is a waste.

Either way, a day at the range still beats a day doing yard work in my opinion.
Just take it slow easy and take drink breaks often.

 

[TheOutlawKid]

I guess heat was a problem back during the civil war too...they made a really stiff lube of 8:1 ratio beeswax to tallo. I find that usinga thin hard disk is all you need and performs way better than a thick wool wad. The thin size helps the lube disk to desintegrate easier and coat the inside of your barrel....where as something thicker is harder to melt. Also the the harder lube prevents any powder contamination/squib loads from happening and i can put them inside my paper cartridges without being worried about powder contamination or the cartridge paper soaking up the fat/oils out of the lube disk. Ive used Gatofeo #1 lube in ky climate and it contaminated my powder if i left it sitting loaded for a long while...also the paper cartridge would soak up the oils from the lube and get that clear looking paper as if i put a greasy friend chicken drum stick on a napkin....it will also do it over time so i no longer store paper cartidges with that lube. If i do make that lube its made with equal parts beeswax as the other ingredients ...that way its a stiffer version than the original. I actually really am liking the stiff 5:1 or 6:1 ratio (by weight) and works in both hot and cold weather

 

[mushka]

I'm down here in Yuma, we just go out early when the temps are in the 80's and about ten or ten thirty the temps start getting over a hundred or so we go home. Gives us about three hour or so to shoot which is fine. No problem with lubes as we generally just shoot rifles or single shot pistols.
After about eleven thirty it starts to get uncomfortable.

 

[midland man]

here in Oklahoma it gets hot here so I sometimes shoot pistols out of my ac conditioned running truck then I just go home after shooting for a little bit!

 

[Russell13]

Had a nice day today. Got to the range early but it still got hot later in the day and my lube lasted longer but still broke down

I found a piece of lube on the card board target I was shooting at and it was hard enough to almost penetrate it

 

[TheOutlawKid]

Make your lube thinner. A thin disk will desintegrate inside the barrel...thicker ones are dont and will shoot out of the barrel almost whole.