Lube applicator

[STEVES]

Besides a stick or popsicle stick, is there a special device that people are using to put grease on top of the balls and a revolver? To be more specific...so the top of the ball has no lube on it, only seals the sides.

[Rob FreemanWBR]

Neon green, IKEA plastic kiddie knife.

Light weight, low cost, durable, easily cleaned AND it stand out like a sore thumb in my range kit, so I can easily find it.

[STEVES]

Do you have a pic? Or a link? I looked, but did not find anything...

[lmcmahon]

Plastic knife from any fast food restaurant.

[bobanderson]

Popsicle stick.

[Ron The Old Reb]

I have seen some shooters using small cake decorators. I used a dixie cup spoon.

[Sven205]

I'm another low-tech user, I use a tongue depressor that my wife brought me from her office (not previously used!)

If your ball is sitting close to flush with the face of the cylinder it naturally won't have much grease on top of the ball but more around the lower areas/edges when using something flat to apply it.

I have been skipping the shortening/Crisco lately and using a lube disc cut to near chamber size. Seating the ball just slightly deeper than if using soft grease, drop one in each cylinder and press it down with your finger. It expands slightly with finger pressure on top of the ball to a fairly tight fit and wont fall out. It also doesn't make the greasy mess or blow out after the first shot or two like the plain Crisco does. I'm using blends based on the Gatofeo recipe, and have tried varying amounts of tallow, paraffin and beeswax to get different hardness. Pour melted mix in a small level pan about 1/8" to 1/4" deep then punch out discs with a HF hollow punch sized at 7/16" for 44 and 3/8" for 36 cal. Throw a hundred or so in an Altoids tin and it takes up a lot less room in the bag than the can of shortening.

Attached a pic of some discs next to .454 balls for size reference...

[Des]

I have found a large plastic syringe works great. These are readily available on Amazon.

[Chris Sweeney]

The big advantage to popsicle sticks is that they have straight edges and you can easily tell if you have a high ball that needs to be thumped down a bit more. Then there's always fingers - they work good and you never worry about losing them