Ok I am going to ask! do you really need the groves on a boolit if you use powder coat? curious!
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Ok I am going to ask! do you really need the groves on a boolit if you use powder coat? curious!
Aussies have been shooting pistol with out grooves, haven't gotten my 30 cal almost grooveless mould yet. Probably a month before I get results. My 9mm almost grooveless works fine. IMHO a grooveless 223 would do fine, add some weight & strength.
got an old lee single I think I will try
There's a guy on the Hi Tek part of this thread that had a machinist remove the "lube grooves" on his lee mold, I believe it was 9mm and he shoots a ton of em.
If you use a tumble lube LEE mold, by the time you spray once or DT twice, you have pretty much filled in all the microgrooves anyway. Why bother messing around with a special mold?
All my TL molds fill in until they are almost smooth coming out of the sizing die.
banger
Banger - true but it doesn't add any real load bearing to the boolit. The TL grooves should come out with some 600 paper easily.
Attachment 97282
Bullets without the grooves work great! We we're getting the same groupings as the store bought swaged bullets we compared them too.
we shall see what am I going to lose think the mold cost me $10 15 years ago.
If you modify the mold, do it on nothing less than a mill and make sure it's indicated in perfectly. A few tenths of a thousandth is visible on a cast bullet, but being off a little usually covers with the powder coat and sizes out. My mold was made without lube grooves to start with and it hasn't hurt.
Never seen a lube groove on a jacketed bullet. I would consider powder coating more of a polymer jacket than a bullet lube.
Oh oh oh, I just coined a new term! I did a Google search and got: [No results found for "full polymer jacketed bullets".]
From this day forward they will be called FPJ bullets. :drinks:
If the no groove boolits pan out better than grooved ones, I am sure mold group buys can be easily arranged for. Mold makers would likely be most pleased if they did not have to make cheeries.
I might remove all the grooves and GC shank on my surplus 75gr 223 mold... At least on some cavities.
I thought about this for a while and started to find a group buy on a smooth sided mold only to realize I was just searching for a way to spend money again.
If someone wants to do a side by side comparison, I have a 230 gr. RN .45 mold and 115 gr. RN 9mm mold I'll borrow.
HDS - I'd leave the GC shank on em. The lube & crimp groove are the weak spot, will collapse (slump) before the body. Could mean you can push the same alloy a little harder. Don't see any other advantage to us, maybe they drop easier, less CNC programming & QC work.
What about accuracy if you don't use a gas check but keep the shank?