Anyone use grease cookies?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

In Cowboy Action shooting guys will use grease cookies between the powder and bullet to allow many subsequent shots without deteriorating accuracy.

I have been using this principle for years now and it seems to work well enough. I just use a ball block that is thicker than the caliber. I use a mix of tallow and crisco lube.

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

The pictures really tell the story. Just flip the block over and fill the back cavity with tallow. Load it into the muzzle tallow-side down.

The advantage is that you can load and shoot indefinitely without a change in accuracy.

The disadvantage is that you need to dress the bore with about 5 shots before it settles into a group.

 

[nkbj]

Well, kinda sorta yeah.
With some heavy bullet loads I use a pressed paper fiber card wad punched out of egg cartons. The stuff is really kinda spongy and soaks up melted loob real good.
That combo forms a dam against gas cutting and the loob also boils out into the plasma of burning powder to soften the fouling.
With some loads it is helpful.

 

[coloradoclyde]

I made a ball block that was thicker than the caliber and found centering the ball over the muzzle to be difficult.....do you experience this?

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I use my thumb to start the ball out of the block. This causes the tallow to protrude a bit. I just stick the tallow in the muzzle and finish pushing the ball out of the block.

It isn't fool-proof, because it doesn't go by feel since the tallow is too soft to align the ball. You have to go by sight.

I also found that it is pretty forgiving. Every now and then I'll see that things weren't aligned just so and grease gets shmeared at the muzzle. I have not noticed this to cause accuracy problems though.

 

[swathdiver]

One would think that doing such is bound to at least partly foul the powder charge, especially during a hot day if not fired right away. :idunno:

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

In Wisconsin it never gets THAT hot during hunting season. The only time I would worry about it would be summer in which I'm usually at a shooting range and the load seldom stays in the barrel more than a few seconds.

Don't recall any failure to fires caused by this.

It may well be the case that it does contaminate some of the powder charge but not enough to be problematic. At least not in my experience.