all winter I test shoot into a snow bank off my front porch. In the spring I can pick up bullets and see if they have expanded ect. Well ive been picking them up daily here and ran into something. I know many have asked if you can pc a gas checked bullet and leave the check off. I did a bunch of 130 rfgc 9mms with smokes brown. Did some with checks installed and some with no checks. they were all fired through my 4.5 inch ar15 in 9mm. When I picked up the bullets I noticed that the gas checked ones looked fine. Still had some color in the rifling groves but the ones I left the checks of looked like bare lead right up to the nose of the bullet that doesn't touch the rifling. These were all done at the same time, same alloy and went through the same sizer, and pc'ed together. All I can figure is without the check I'm getting a lot of gas cutting of the bullet. Every one I picked up that wasn't gas checked look like this. Barrel didnt lead after shooting 60 of them through the gun. I did check that right after I shot them. So apparently its still working good enough to not lead. At least not noticeably. Also found my 130 hp expands nicely with a mix of 1/4 ww 3/4s pure but the 147s didnt expand at all. Both were loaded with top end book loads and cast out of the same alloy. So the 147s must not be running fast enough out of that short barrel to expand. Same size hp cavity in both. Now my 200 grain hp 45acps looked like the picture pefect expanded mushroom cast out of that alloy and shot with 7 grains of unique.