What happens if you shoot cast lead bullets with no lube?

You'll have to clean your barrel VERY often !!

The lead will get stuck in the grooves. It'll probably start with some streaks in the corner of a groove, then get longer and sometimes go all the way around the inside of the barrel. I saw a S&W 686 that was leaded for about 2" from the forceing cone forward. It took the guy about 2 hours to scrub it all out. He wasted a 35 cal bronze brush and used a larger one to dislodge the hardest parts.

You don't have to get piles of $$ invested in lube-sizers. Some guys pan lube, others use Liquid Alox. You can get a small piece of stick lube warm in your hand, then smear a little in the lube grooves with a finger.
The Lee push through sizers are cheap and would help to clean up any excess lube and size the bullets also. If the bullets are way too big it can drive the pressures up.

If you want I can send you some samples of different stick lubes to try. Just PM me your address and what your shooting.

Thanks for the info.

That explains it.
I can't do what I planned on doing.

If I start casting, I will be back with lots of questions.

Unsolicited Testimonial:

My brother has a Sharps 50-90 he shoots Lar's BP lube. Shot 48 rounds without cleaning.

I use his red lube in all of my CF rifles with cast bullets. The stuff works great.

Rich
DRSS
Knowledge not shared is knowledge lost...

I have been shooting my 30-30 with undersize bullets (bullets .309, grooves .311) using 1cc IMR 4198 and 1.6cc Cream 'o' wheat. I am getting great accuracy and absolutely no leading. Those bullets were miserable with any non fillered load I tried in the past. (Meister plain base) I think I'm on to something here, but if anybody tries this remember to only use rifle powders, and a whole lot less of it than you would normally use because pressures are way higher than normal with the addition of fillers.

Nobade, am I understanding that you are not lubeing the bullets at all? Do you think the Cream Of Wheat is scrubbing the barrel clean as you shoot?
Have you tried it with bullets sized to .311 or .312"?
TIA

generally with cow loads they shoot better with no lube on them and the cow does scrub the bore.
i wouldn't do it in a shouldered case though.
maybe the taper of the 30-30 helps but it works better in the straight cases.

Hi Lar45,
I haven't tried it with bigger bullets yet. I normally shoot the SAECO 305 sized to .312 with lube in this rifle, but had a bunch of the commercial bullets sitting around so I thought I'd give them a try. I couldn't believe how well they worked, so last weekend I tried the same thing in my 35X30-30 rolling block rifle. A 200gr. plainbase bullet, no lube, and 1/2 COW with 1/2 Varget. I couldn't get a place on the bigger range at the time, but at 50 yards 10 rounds chewed out a ragged hole. It seems to work! I am going to cautiously try this in the .308, but I would imagine the straighter cases would be better. Not sure if I'll see any pressure spikes in the 308 or not, but I gotta try it.