This is a guest article from our reader Mike R. covering Brass Butter, a reloading lube. Thanks, Mike!

I was pretty excited when Tom brought back a product for reloading from SHOT Show 2016: “Brass Butter”. Since he is not a reloader he offered the sample to me (and asked me to tell him what I thought) and I happily agreed.

Background

I have only been reloading for four years I am interested in experimenting with new products. I originally got into reloading during one of the many recent “scares” when ammo was getting really hard to find. I explained to the wife how I would save money by reloading my own cases. 😉

I started with .45 ACP and have never looked back. To date, I have about five thousand rounds logged, ranging from 32 H&R all the way up to 7mm REM MAG (and many between). For my test of Brass Butter I used the common .308 WIN.

Comparison/Observations

To give a fair assessment I used my single stage press as I really wanted to get a feel for the case and die when resizing. Since I needed something to compare against I used Hornady Unique. I have been using Hornady Unique for a couple of years and have had excellent results. I have tried a number of spray lubricants in the past, and none of them have ever provided a consistently smooth feeling while resizing, so I was a little skeptical that Brass Butter would be any different.

For my comparison I used 40 individual brass cases and decided to re-size 20 with Brass Butter, and 20 with Unique. I thoroughly cleaned the resizing die before starting and then again between the transition of the two lubricants. I cleaned the die with my preferred brake cleaner and an old nylon barrel brush.

The cases using Brass Butter went first. Having first disassembled the die for cleaning it was pretty easy to spray the inside before I reassembled it. I checked and did not see any over saturation. Then I sprayed the brass and inspected it. The Brass Butter dried as I assembled the press.

Still skeptical, I started reloading. The first case was placed in the press and re-sized. It was actually WAS as smooth as butter. The following 19 were all the same. When done the die was disassembled and the cleaning process repeated. Then I completed the other 20 rounds.

A brass inspection following the process showed two rounds with indentations in the shoulders of those that were reloaded with the Brass Butter. That is typically a hydraulic effect from too much lubricant. It could have been residual or possibly a user error (in all fairness).

Conclusion

Brass Butter is better than all the other sprays I have used. I threw out the other spray product I had and will continue using Brass Butter. I found it to be about 90% as effective as the Unique (counting the 2 potential failures), and without the problem of having my fingers covered in lube. Despite this, I will not be using it on my larger, harder to find brass–I will stay with my Unique. It is open for discussion if the only problem was user error. I took a picture of the two dented cartridges. Reloaders out there, what say you?

You can find more information about Brass Butter at: http://www.brassguys.com/