Garrison Joe, SASS #60708

The commercial lubes seem to want a narrow temp range for best application.   The Star/Magma lubrisizers (and Lyman and RCBS too) were designed back in the 40's when Alox 50/50 soft lube was the main lube, and I think that is why originally they did not even HAVE a heater in them.  I probably have less difficulty because I make a home-made lube with wheel bearing grease and beeswax and Ivory soap.   It's a little sticky (I wouldn't ship lubed bullets), but it sure shoots well at pistol speeds and it's fairly cheap, especially if you know a bee keeper.

Good luck, GJ 

General distrust of polymer coated bullets, which is why I've not shot them.  I cannot believe it's faster or cheaper to poly coat.    I have seen some tests showing accuracy is less.    So, I'm not a good feller to ask about poly coating if you are trying to convince yourself to try it.

A magma luber is as fast as cheap lubing can get.  I lube faster than I cast.  And poly coated bullets usually still have to be sized.

But some folks must like poly coating.

(I have too many lube groove molds to even think about poly coat, too)   GJ

Well, I don't know of a cheap one except for what I use.

A dimmer switch, 15 amp, in a switch box,   I slide the slider up to about the right point for my lube, and turn on the standard switch that turns power to dimmer on and off.   So, they are in series.  And the output of dimmer goes to a receptacle box where the plug for heater goes.       Kinda cumbersome, but it's close enough once I mark the right amount of "dimming" for the type of lube I use.

I also keep my heat gun (super sized hair dryer) right by the Magma luber, so I can give the die reservoir and the lube reservoir tube a shot of heat when I get started lubing.     Saves a lot of time.

One could put a $150 PID temperature controller on the Magma, like casting pots are sometimes rigged with, to hold temp pretty precisely, but I would not do that unless I was lubing lots of bullets every day.   The Cast Boolits web site, vendor sales section, has a fellow who assembles these electronic temp controllers and has several thermocouples that can be used at the 120-160 deg F temperature range that most lubes want.   His screen name is Hatch.

Hope that helps, GJ

Well, the picture on Bullseye's site shows a walnut stocked gun, and implies this is a new import batch.   You're in Canada, which does not prohibit import from Norinco company.  U.S. black listed imports from them 15 years ago, so IAC has imported 97s to US from that time.

IF this is new production with all the improvements that the IAC batches had from 2006 forward, that is a killer price!   A big IF. 

You probably want to get a look at them - a close look.

You may want a standard gun rather than a trench gun if using it for Cowboy.    And a trench does not add anything but style points for WB.

Garrison Joe