Barrel leading

[Ruger45]

A friend of mine asked me a question that I did not know the answer to.
Why does a .22, using dead soft lead bullets not lead the guns barrel?
I know why it does in larger calibers, but this seemed to be a good question.
In all my years of shooing .22's I myself have never seen a leaded .22 barrel.

[felix]

The boolit's expansion covers the entire barrel, groove and lands, which fully obturates the opening. ... felix

[jh45gun]

Depends. If the shells you have get hot and the lube melts off you will get bad leading even in a pistol barrel. I had some Remington Thunderbolt ammo in my glove box over the summer I never gave it a thought about getting hot enough to melt the lube. I shot them shells in a Ruger Mark II Government and I noticed I was not hitting what I was shooting at anymore so I shot it at some paper and saw the bullets were elongated and going side ways. That barrel was leaded so bad that the bullets were extruding into wire like shapes. Yea for the most part it never happens but it can under the right circumstances. That Ruger barrel gave up lead in chunks it was a bear to clean and I later got rid of it figuring I probably abused that bore more then thousands of shots would have done between the aggressive cleaned to get all the lead out and the pressure of the lead beind extruded like that in the barrel.

[DieselPro]

Wanted to buy a new Ruger MarkII years ago but wanted to try one out first. A friend of mine let me try his. Took it home and put it on sand bags and shot a clip thru it. Went to look at the target and it was full of "key holes" I noticed the barrel smoked when I shot it. Lead was actually extruding out the end of the barrel.. Never saw a barrel that heavy leaded up.

[uscra112]

I've got an Iver Johnson revolver that leads at 6 o'clock just past the forcing cone every time I fire it. Only gun I have that does, though. I even firelapped it extensively. I suspect that the chambers aren't lining up with the bore, due to the barrel-to-base-pin dimension being a poor match to the cylinder. Hey, it's a cheap gun !

[Old Caster]

Until just a few years ago the only bullet anyone would think of using in a Bullseye match for a 45 was the Star swaged pure lead bullet and no one ever had lead problems. The false idea that harder bullets are better at pistol velocities has been thrown around for years and it is in fact the opposite. The only reason pure lead isn't used for casting bullets is because the temperature necessary to achieve fillout is way too high. The reason they can't be bought is because they get beat up too badly in shipping. Rimfire pure lead bullets go past 1200 fps and won't lead unless something is wrong with the barrel. Bullets used in BPCR competition are lead with only tin added for easy mold fillout and they go upwards of 1300 fps with virtually no leading. The reason those barrels are constantly cleaned is because of the surety of corrosion from the black powder.-- Bill --