Wax bullets

[lcarreau]

A while back, I made some wax bullets buy pressing a primed case into a candle. It worked pretty good except for the fact it woulsd not cycle the slide on a Glock. It made a bit of a mess in the barrel, but it was easy to clean. Anyone else tried tyhis?

-Lonnie

[MakeMineaP99]

I think Koski used to do this.

Alternatively, you can cast some slugs with hot glue and proceed the same way. A slug made out of glue packs enough of a punch to kill mice, etc. and will put a dent in drywall.

[Steve Koski]

I'll try and find my wax bullet writeup. It's cheap & fun. I chrono'd the 10 grain wax bullets from a G23 and 27 once. Memory says they were going 400 ish FPS-ish.

[AdamN]

Right now I wouldnt want to use up the primers on that. The dudes over on Casr Boolits are big on the hot glue bullets. You can also buy rubber bullets that are re-useable.

Its real fun if ya got plenty of primers

[Bultx1215]

Many moons ago, there was a write up in Popular Mechanics or some mag like that on how to use shotgun primers for wax boolits. Obviously, the cases would have to be drilled out. My dad had it somewhere...may have to look for it. I wouldn't mind wasting shotgun primers since they are a little more available.

[JW6108]

Years ago, before I got hold of some Speer plastic bullets and cases, I used to make up wax bullet loads for fast draw practice in .38 Special. Cases need to have the flash hole drilled out; if left as they are, the primer will set back and bind against the recoil shield; don't know if that would cause some issue with a semi auto or not. Cases so altered should be marked in some way so they don't inadvertently get used for regular loadings.

I used magnum primers, mainly because that's what Bill Jordan recommended in No Second Place Winner, but I don't know why regular wouldn't work. I bought paraffin blocks in the canning section at the grocery store and would just push the unprimed case into the block one at a time. The thickness of the block worked out just right for a bullet. In the book, he shows a setup for doing 50 at a time in a vise, but I never got that far. He did say not to prime the cases until you were ready to use them, since the wax could ooze some component if warmed up and contaminate the primer.

The Speers were more convenient, so I gave up on the wax.

[NuJudge]

Wax bullets used to be commercially available from a maker here in Michigan back in the 1970's. Someone inquired about them on another website and I sent all I still had to him.

I want to say I saw a more recent manufacturer in Washington or Oregon.

You can do a better job of making wax bullets by either buying sheets of wax intended for canning, or make your own in a double boiler.

CDD

[Steve Koski]

From memory...


Case Prep

Deprime and size a case (or don't size, some claim not sizing is better).
Make a Wax Cake

Melt 1/2" of paraffin in a pot on the stove.
Throw in a crayon for color and mix if you'd like.
Let it cool completely.
Turn the burner on high and melt a thin layer of wax and turn/pop the wax cake out. Keep the pan moving during this phase. You're just trying to release the cake, not melt it down again.
Loading Them

Take the wax cake and soak it in hot tap water until it feels rubbery.
Set wax cake on a dish towel.
Take your unprimed cases and jam them mouth first through the wax cake.
As the wax cake cools off, the wax will start to fracture as you press the case through. This is generally OK, as a bullet with some internal cracks still works, but it gets harder to press the cases through the wax.
I've seen pics of some press devices that push 50 cases at a time through a wax cake. I never tried this just thumbed them through one at a time.
Prime them. Yes, you can prime first, but then the wax bullets want to push themselves out. You can just push them back down if you like.
Shooting Them

I had poor accuracy shooting through a .357 revolver, shots hit low and were not consistent, not sure why. Happened with several revolvers.
Don't use magnum primers in a revolver, they back out more and tie up the gun.
You can drill out the flash holes to reduce the primer backing out problem in revolvers.
Shooting them in a Glock, I got wonderfull accuracy for 50 rounds or so, then it would decay as the bore filled with wax buildup.
I also broke/chipped a Glock extractor by chambering single cases and then slamming the slide on them.
If you want to shoot them in your Glock, stick the case part way in the chamber, let the case head/rim hang down, and then close the slide and let the rim ride up under the extractor normally. I use my old chipped extractor for wax bullets and just slam it.
Memory tells me the 10 grain bullets chrono'd about 350 FPS from a G27 and about 400 FPS from a G23.
You can stop the wax bullets nicely with a hanging blanket or sheet. They fall to the ground whole.
If you shoot metal targets the bullets explode and you get to vacuum up lots of little bits of wax.
You can practice draw fire drills with a timer if you adjust the timer sensitivity up, or hang the timer down near the muzzle.
You can have a lot of fun with a buddy dreaming up stupid courses of fire in the winter and trying them each 5 times to see who can do it best. Downfall is that you only get one shot each go around with your Glock.
Cleanup

Push a patch through the bore on a jag. The first one takes some serious force and scrapes out a lot of wax.
Repeat a few times until you're not scraping out wax any more.
A little solvent on a brush followed by a dry patch and you're done.
Big Slick says: Hit da dirty barrel wit a hair dryer for about a minute an dat wax a all come out wit one patch http://glocktalk.com/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Fatdaddy]

I wonder if you could take some shot and mix with the wax for a homemade snake load. .44 or 357 would be a good platform to try it in.

[chewy]

There great for roach'elitos! I don't have to clean em' up cuz dog eats the kill.