Man, Oh Man!! If this one doesn't stir up a hornets of strong opinions, I'll be surprised. There are more favorite lube recipes than you can ever imagine and there are always shooters who will tell you that their particular recipe is the absolute best. In my case, I have tried a LOT of home recipes but I keep copming back to Bore Butter. It works well for me and doesn't smell all that bad on my hands. If you apply a dab to each individual patch, it can get pretty messy and be a bother in the field. What I do with it is to take a strip of patch material and lightly but adequately coat it with the Bore Butter. I do this at home before going out to shoot. Then I fold it so the bore Butter side is inside. I fold it over and over a few times so that it is now a short strip. Now, I put it between several folds of news paper and apply a hot iron to it to melt in the Bore Butter into the strip of patch material. This gives you an even moderately light coat of Bore Butter on your patching material. When I go to the field to shoot, I cut off a piece of the Bore Butter treated patching material and hang it over the end of the ram rod. Pull it up close to the first thimble and it will hang there quite well and be ready when you load your gun. This requires that you carry a patch knife to cut your patches at the muzzle but this gives you better accuracy than precut patches anyway.
There is a lot to be said for spit patches, too. Many people will tell you that spit will give you more accuracy than other patch lubes. I have seen graphs that woud indicate that in many rifles that may well be true. Many of the guys with whom I shoot use spit as their lube of preference. The way many of them do it is to carry the patch for the next load in their mouth where it soaks up a bit of spit. When they get ready to re-load they remove the patch from thier mouth and use it to load the next round. At that time, they will stick another patch in their mouth for the following shot. I see no problem with this when shooting targets where a load will not sit in the barrel very long before it is fired but if you are hunting and a load may sit in the barrel for well over an hour or even several hours, I am afraid that the spit may dampen the top of the powder column and cause it not to burn at the same rate as dry powder. This could change your MV and result in a change in point of impact for your bullet.
Why do I prefer Bore Butter for my guns over other products? Well, first it works for me and secondly, it has a "seasoning" effect on the bores of my rifles. It seems to be sort of like seasoning iron skillets. I can't tell you the metallurgy of it but when I use Bore Butter exclusively, I seem to have less fouling. It is a non-petrolium based product and they tell you to never use petrolium based products in the bore of a rifle that has been seasoned with Bore Butter or you will remove the seasoning. I just wash my bore with hot soapy water, rinse with boiling water, wipe dry and let the barrel sit for several minutes to finish drying. When it is cool enough to handle (it will be too hot to handle after you pour the boiling water through the bore), I run a patch lubed with Bore Butter through the bore and it is ready for the gun safe.
That's my routine for patched round balls. It may work for you and it may not. There are gobs of commercial patch lube products out there and no end of home recipes. Try as many as you can afford or are willing to cook up in your kitchen. Each rifle will prefer one lube over another and you just have to find that one lube that it likes. I recommend Dutch Schultz method for finding the most accurate load for your gun. He sells his method for a few dollars and he can be found by Googling "Dutch Schultz".
If you are shooting conical bullets or sabots, that is a whole different world. Spit as a lube is out of the question. You will have to use a lube that is thick enough to stay in the grooves of the bullet. Here again, the recipes are legion and, again, the opinions are strong. I have tried many commercial and home recipe lubes but still come back to Bore Butter. I'm not saying that it is the only way to go or even that it is the best waay to go but it works for me. I have a friend who has his secret recipe for bullet lube. It consists of bees wax, lard, and I don't know what all. He sits his bullets on their bases in a shallow pan,melts his secret formula and pours it into the pan of bullets. When the lube has cooled and solidified, he uses a piece of tubing to slide down over his bullets and cut them free from the pan. The lube is pretty thick and stays on his bullets pretty well. Before putting his lubed bullets in his possibles pouch, he wraps each one individually in a strip of paper to keep the grease in the bullet grooves and not in his pouch. It seems like a lot of work but it works for him. I once (emphysis on ONCE) tried a home brewed recipe that contained some Moly Coat grease. Lord have mercy, what a nasty mess that was. Never again. But you have to try as many as you can to find what works for you.
