An unexpected way to "de-lead" a barrel?????

[prs]

Now we have all heard of folks following a boolit shooting session with a round or few of copper condom bullets with the intent of forcing the lead out. Sort of like chasing hard cheese with prunes? I never knew if it worked or not since I don't have any copper clads and I never gave it much thought (the bullet thing, not the cheese and prunes).

Well, I got into loading for 45ACP a while back and in my enthusiasm I made way too many rounds of various boolit design loads with both my attempt at Recluse and also straight Lee Liquid Alox. Boolits cast and almost immediately lubed after cooling, then sized, and tumble lubed again before "curing" at least two weeks. I got leading in all attempts, some worse than others, all bad. I got real good at cleaning lead out of my SR1911. I put that overly generous supply of lead slathering ammo in storage and began reading and asking questions on this forum, then applying the information gleaned. Little by little the leading improved, but did not totally resolve until I switched to NRA 50:50 lube. Success is sweet! No more leading A-Tall!

But, I still have all of that initial abundant supply of ammo that super galvanizes my stainless steel barrel. So yesterday I loaded up three magazines of 7 rounds each with that bad ol' lead slather'n fodder and 12 more magazines with the good stuff. I shot the three leading prone magazines first. Like always back when I was shooting this "stuff" it was GREAT at first and then accuracy fell off after 2 magazines, the third was minute of dinner plate at 20 to 25 yards. I removed the barrel and saw the familiar sight, ughhhh. I was gonna clean it, but I decided to shoot a few of the good 'uns first. I did not expect any change, at least not improvement and actually sort of figured it would continue to worsen since the barrel was already gunked-up pretty badly.

After a few shots I was wondering if things were getting better and by the end of those 7 rounds I was pretty darn sure it was. Removed the barrel and there was some grey color to be sure, but nothing like it was after those first three magazines of "lead slatherers". So, I finished my shooting session with the balance of the good stuff. Enjoyed excellent accuracy, in so far as I can tell with my ability on steel plate targets at 20 to 25 yards.

At gun cleaning time, that barrel looked just like it does when I shoot only the "good stuff". A Ballistol patch revealed only one tiny glint of free lead and the barrel was all shiny and smooth with crisp rifling. So now, maybe I can "get rid of" that crumby lead prone ammo by shooting alternate magazines of it along with the "good stuff".

Thing is, I don't recall seeing such a report as this before. Is it typical for good functioning ammo to "clean house" after poorly functioning ammo like I experienced? If this continues or fails to prove-out in the future, I will report back.
I was dreading the chore of impact puling all of those rounds.

prs

[runfiverun]

yes it is typical of 'good' ammo to clean up 'bad' ammo.

[gefiltephish]

After each range session I fire 2 gc'd 357's through my wife's and my 686's. Don't even have to run a patch through after that. But they only get a small amount of lead just ahead of the forcing cone.

[Big Boomer]

PRS: For a number of years I cast all my boolits as hard as I could get them, water-dropping them from the mould, revolvers and .45 ACP. After reading a lot of posts here on Cast Boolits, last fall I started to air-cool my boolits and load them as I had before. In the past with the hard boolits, I had lots of leading. Surprise! The softer boolits did not lead the barrel. And that worked with three .45 ACPs (an old Chas Daly, a Ruger P90 and a Dan Wesson Pointeman II). Now I'm a confirmed air-cool caster of softer alloy. Going to try that with a .30-06 and a .243 Winchester. 'Tuck (as in Kentuck)

[MtGun44]

Great point Tuck. Glad to have a newer member making this important point, too.
Do recongize that with the rifles, you may NEED to add some hardness - but let the
target and barrel tell you if it is neededat your particular velocity/pressure level.

Bill

[prs]

Good p ost, Tuck. I also use air cooled. I tried water dropping and the hard boolits were no better, if not worse. Boolit fit, adequate lube, cartridge to chamber & barrel fit seem to be key factors for me so far.

prs

[Big Boomer]

Great point Tuck. Glad to have a newer member making this important point, too.
Do recongize that with the rifles, you may NEED to add some hardness - but let the
target and barrel tell you if it is neededat your particular velocity/pressure level.

Bill

Thanks Bill for the pointer ... casting for rifle will be new to me, but I need to find out what the '06 and 243 will do. 'Tuck (as in Kentuck)

[Cherokee]

I too switched from the "hard" to the "soft" cast about 20 years ago, after shooting nothing but the old Lyman 5/5/90 alloy CB's for 30 years. For me, I got the same performance with a cheaper alloy and the boolits held together better on hard targets.

[williamwaco]

You can fix that bad ammo if yo have enough of it left to be worth the trouble.

See:

http://reloadingtips.com/pages/lla_bullet_lube_2.htm



.

[prs]

Williamwaco; I could try that, the Lee Liquid alox boolits already have a noticable cured coating on the exposed part.

I tried again today, oh the suffering I go through ;-). I fired 43 of the leading prone rounds and then 7 of the NRA lubed ones. Repeated with another 1911 45ACP, same numbers. Both barrels were moderately leaded at cleaning. I guess its gonna take more good ones to do the job, or I will just de-lead the old fashioned way with elbow grease, Kroil, and bronze wool.

prs

[EddieNFL]

Now we have all heard of folks following a boolit shooting session with a round or few of copper condom bullets with the intent of forcing the lead out.

About 25 years ago I sold a Clark Custom S&W built for Bianchi Cup to a fellow shooter. He had a leading issued and used a cylinder full of jacketed to clean the barrel. Cracked the barrel and frame at the forcing cone. Still had a nice set of grips and sights, though.

[williamwaco]

Williamwaco; I could try that, the Lee Liquid alox boolits already have a noticable cured coating on the exposed part.

I tried again today, oh the suffering I go through ;-). I fired 43 of the leading prone rounds and then 7 of the NRA lubed ones. Repeated with another 1911 45ACP, same numbers. Both barrels were moderately leaded at cleaning. I guess its gonna take more good ones to do the job, or I will just de-lead the old fashioned way with elbow grease, Kroil, and bronze wool.

prs

Sorry that didn't work.

It worked for me.

Bronze wool is the "bore saver"

[Vinne]

You can fix that bad ammo if yo have enough of it left to be worth the trouble.

See:

http://reloadingtips.com/pages/lla_bullet_lube_2.htm

.

This is great to know!!

[Nickle]

You can fix that bad ammo if yo have enough of it left to be worth the trouble.

See:

http://reloadingtips.com/pages/lla_bullet_lube_2.htm



.

That's a pretty slick trick there. Dipped cartridges for 1, tumble relubing hard commercial boolits for 2.

[DougGuy]

Lead in a barrel will become compressed by firing a Jword through the barrel, it will sweep some of the lead out but it will do more to bulge the barrel because it is a barrel restriction than it will to clean it. Think about it. You have a .452" barrel on a .45, that has lead in it, it isn't .452" where the lead is, it is smaller. You fire a .452" bullet and it compresses the lead and spreads it out in the grooves and now you are forcing .458" worth of lead into a .452" space, with how much pressure behind it?

Most of the loads I shoot use a GC or a wax GC in .45 Colt, all of them are Ruger Only loads, I have very very little lead in the barrel but I learned to just take a cleaning rod with a jag and some chore boy to the range and it takes seconds to take out small amounts of lead. The gun shoots more accurately when the barrel is cleaned of lead anyway.

Gives me something to do while the barrel cools off.

['74 sharps]

My leading stopped completely when I quit purchasing "hardcast" , and started casting my own as close to pure lead as I could and still get proper fill out with no wrinkles.

[44man]

I don't get leading with any revolver no matter what I shoot until I get too soft and am at the slump stage or skid stage.
I add hardness until fliers go away and water dropped WW boolits work even with PB from the .44, up to the .500 and includes the .454 at max loads.
Hardness does not cause leading and neither does a little softer.
What the OP found was the sad Alox results. Even fit will not help.
There are better lubes then 50-50 too. After years and years of testing I will stay with Felix.
I would be inclined to add some lanolin to 50-50 and see what it does but I no longer have any other lubes laying around. Lanolin might be one of the most important ingredients for a good lube.
Yeah, Alox is popular but not at my bench.
Hard lubes on store bought boolits is the nightmare, not the boolit if it fits. I have flaked out the junk lube, replaced with Felix and shot great groups with no leading.
I have shot cast for over 61 years and never had a leading problem with a decent lube and I did use a lot of 50-50 until I found a lube will change groups.

[zuke]

PRS, have you thought of varying you method of loading the mag's?
Try one crappy one, one good one, one crappy one, one good one. See what happen's with that.

[waksupi]

If you have leading, shoot some low velocity cast boolits to clean out the leading. Then, fix why you are getting leading in the first place.

[bikerbeans]

About 25 years ago I sold a Clark Custom S&W built for Bianchi Cup to a fellow shooter. He had a leading issued and used a cylinder full of jacketed to clean the barrel. Cracked the barrel and frame at the forcing cone. Still had a nice set of grips and sights, though.

I was shooting some handloaded 45 Super in my 1911 (properly modified for the task) using boolits. I had really bad accuracy and a lot of lead in the rifling. I then loaded some factory 45 Super jacketed that I previously chrony at 1,300 FPS. I shot the first "cleaning round" and the chrony said 1,100 FPS and the report from the gun and the opening of the action wasn't normal. Probably shouldn't have but I fired a second round and had 1,300 fps again, back up to speed. I no longer use jacketed bullets to clean lead from barrels.

BB

[prs]

If you have leading, shoot some low velocity cast boolits to clean out the leading. Then, fix why you are getting leading in the first place.

waksupi; I did get the ammo problem issues resolved, I just have to shoot-up all of those nasty lead slathers I made before I wised up.

prs

[Whiterabbit]

You don't want to shoot jacketed to clean out the lead? I don't blame you. Then you have COPPER fouling to deal with! To heck with that.

Make some gas checked bullets and shoot those. I guarantee you a tight fitting gas checked bullet will clean out the leading WAY faster than yoru good rounds, and use much less lead doing it.

Sure it'll cost you a box of gas checks, but it's an excuse to buy a heavy for cal mold and try a new bullet.

And the copper fouling? There's a difference between a copper washer and 100% copper contact.