Leading seemed to remove itself

[cook50_03]

An interesting thing happened the other day at the range and I wanted to see if it seemed possible/made sense to any of you on THR. I began my session by shooting some commercial hardcast lead bullets through my Ruger 9mm. These are 18 BH and if i remember correctly were somewhere in the upper 1000 fps range with HP-38. I noticed while shooting the 100 round box of reloads that I had brought that the grooves in the barrel were beginning to sort of disappear as they were getting full of lead. After the box was gone, the grooves looked really bad. I don't recall any major accuracy issues, but I was probably only shooting between 5 and 7 yards.

Instead of stopping after 100 rounds and going home to clean the gun out, I decided to shoot another box that I had cast myself (approximately same velocity, 12 BH). In my previous experience with these, I had never had leading as I had been careful about slugging the bore, lubing, sizing, etc. After shooting just (1) 15-Round magazine, accuracy seemed normal, but the grooves had cleaned up significantly.

Is it possible that the second box of bullets could have cleaned out leading caused from the first box? Maybe because of a better bore/bullet fit, softer lube, and a softer bullet? I have read on here about people using jacketed to clean out rifling, but I can easily understand how it does not remove lead but merely irons it into the grooves. Thoughts?

 

[rcmodel]

Yes, that is exactly what happened.

The first bullets were too hard, and did not bump up to seal the bore so you got gas cutting by the sides of the bullets & leading.

The softer bullets did bump up to fit, and scraped out the leading.

rc

 

[rsrocket1]

Agreed. I would not buy any more of those commercial "hardcast". They are too small for your bore and too hard to bump up to prevent gas cutting. Lucky for you, your homecast boolits are "superior" for that gun.

 

[CraigC]

Agreed, 18bhn is too hard for your velocity.

 

[Gadzooks Mike]

May people seem to have this thing about velocity and BHN. It's pressure that's the key, not velocity. Proper fit, of course, is most important, but following closely is the pressure.

 

[Striker Fired]

I tried once to "shoot" some spots of leading out of a Kart 45 barrel,after 5 shots with jacketed loads,the spots were still there,so I quit and cleaned it out normally.That is the only time,I don't know if it will work other times or not.

 

[Waywatcher]

I have found that a clean shooting lead load cleans out the bore better than any jacketed load. Trail Boss with soft lead bullets does this well in .38
Special. Power Pistol with Gas checks is excpetionally clean burning also; Power Pistol might be worth a try in your 9mm.

 

[jcwit]

I use a fairly soft cast bullet that I cast myself. It consists of 2 ingots of range lead and 1 ingot of wheel weights. What is the hardness? I have no idea, I do have a Saeco Hardness Tester, but I get the same readings with soft lead roofing as I do with straight wheel weights, so who knows?

I believe this concept of using HARD bullets is way, way overblown.

 

[336A]

I believe this concept of using HARD bullets is way, way overblown.

^^^^^ +100 to that. I while back myself and a lot of others on another board discussed this in depth with a commercial bullet caster. He is the only commercial caster that I know of that casts all of his bullets to a BHN 12. Not one of his customers has ever had anything bad to say about his bullets even those shooting magnums. The late Elmer Keith never used super hard cast bullets in his .44 mag loads, his bullets were in the 12-14 BHN range.

I wish that more commercial casters would cast they're bullets in the 12-14BHN range vs the to hard 18 BHN and up that are so poular.

 

[Waywatcher]

There's a place for the different BHNs. I'm glad Rim Rock makes 12, 15, and 22.

The 22s shot the cleanest over 2400 in my .357 magnum.