I found a couple sticks of old Lyman orange lube, in one of my junk boxes.
It's soft and sticky. Is that what it's suppose to be like? What velocities will it hold up to?

it's soft because the lyman sizers didn't have heaters.
if you want their black lube just add some moly to it.

it'll hold up to about a million feet per second.
the problem is you gotta do all the rest properly.
lube won't save your ass, or fail you[unless it's absolute junk]
it simply goes down the barrel with the bullet and leaves a tiny amount behind.

it may be too soft for the heat, or too hard for the cold, or you blow it out of the groove and down the barrel, or it doesn't flow properly when the pressure drops off.

those are simply mis-matches in the system, and you can tune a lube to compensate or you can change one of the parameters to help the lube do it's job better.

but there's not really anything 'wrong' with the stuff you have.

Is it Orange Magic lube? If it is, then as per the blurb below, it should be a relatively hard lube that requires use of a heater on the lube/resizer.

"Among pistol shooters, Lyman's Orange Magic has earned a reputation as one of the best lubes. Cast bullets without leading are assured to give faster velocities. Because of its minimal smoke emission, it's ideal for rapid-fire pistol shooting. Will not melt out of loaded ammunition at high temperatures - (Use with the Lyman Lube Heater)"

Thankyou Lamar, I was hoping you would see this.
I didnt tell you, but I got the exact mold I was hoping for. A 265 grn Ranchdog style for my marlins, 44 mag and 444.
NOE had one in stock for $90. Two cav. one plainbase one GC. Standard grease groves.
22 grns of W296 and the PB gives 1700 fps, no leading except a little dry stuff, and the best accuracy the rifle has ever done.
I'll work on the GC version and the 444 shortly.

excellent.

the grey dry stuff is probably just a little antimony streaking.
nothing wrong with that, it doesn't build up and it shows your basically in the zone but on the edge.
LOL.
not like your gonna go any faster, chuckle, so you hit it just about dead spot on.

Thankyou Lamar. Shit luck, but that still counts doesn't it!

educated guess... LOL