Major leading with Hi-Tek coating

[Ausglock]

Brilliant post, DougGuy.
This is what I had to do to my Para GI Expert 45ACP to get it to run.

A gunsmith here in OZ, Victor Oliveria at Victor Precision, cuts the absolute best chambers to suit coated bullets.
Afterall, 90% of all handgun bullets fired in OZ are coated lead, with copper plated next. Very few use actual jacketed rounds.

[jmac2112]

OP here with an update. I haven't been able to shoot them yet, but I have loaded up 100 each of the two bullets I was talking about: Bayou Bullets .38 cal. 124 Gr. RN and Blue Bullets 9mm 125 Gr TC, both sized to .358. I was afraid that I would have to load the Blue Bullets really short, but they ended up being .045 longer than I have been loading my homemade boolits, and the seating depth is almost identical. I made a few dummy rounds first and pulled the bullets to make sure there was no swaging and that the coating wasn't being scratched off, and everything looks good so far. Now I just have to find time to get to the range to try them out....

[Gatch]

OP here with an update. I haven't been able to shoot them yet, but I have loaded up 100 each of the two bullets I was talking about: Bayou Bullets .38 cal. 124 Gr. RN and Blue Bullets 9mm 125 Gr TC, both sized to .358. I was afraid that I would have to load the Blue Bullets really short, but they ended up being .045 longer than I have been loading my homemade boolits, and the seating depth is almost identical. I made a few dummy rounds first and pulled the bullets to make sure there was no swaging and that the coating wasn't being scratched off, and everything looks good so far. Now I just have to find time to get to the range to try them out....

Nice. I bought a 130gr 2r rn mold from mihec. Just coated and sized a batch today. I've got to make another expander plug (hopefully tonight) so I can load a few and again, hopefully shoot a few this week. Fingers crossed I've got all the boxes ticked now.

[5 iron]

Can you load a .358 bullet into a 9mm case without shaving the coating?

[tomme boy]

Yep. Adjust your flare and seat. Crimp in a separate step or it could shave a little.

[jmac2112]

5 Iron: On my Dillon 650 I use a .357 NOE expander plug in position 2. You get about .001 of spring back, resulting in about .002 of tension on a .358 boolit. The plug is designed to flare the mouth if you go deep enough, but I find that those plugs tend to crumple the case if I go that deep with them. I go just deep enough with the expander so that I won't swage the boolit, and then do a little bit of flare with the powder funnel in position 3. Then I seat the boolit in position 4 and crimp in position 5, just enough to remove the flare. No problems with shaving.

[Burnt Fingers]

I've been using the powder funnels from Uniquetek for my pistol reloading. They are like a Lyman M die.

[Ausglock]

I use the factory dillon funnel/flare tube for all me reloading. Squaredeal or 550B. 9mm, 38Super, 38 Supercomp. bullets from .356 up to .358. no issues at all.

[tomme boy]

Use a 38S&W expander instead of a 38 Spec. It is the right size and length for a 9mm using lead bullets

[jmac2112]

Ausglock: Out of curiosity, what is the hardness of the lead you are using? I use COWW, so my boolits are probably in the 11-12 range, which may explain why using Dillon powder funnel swages down my .3585 boolits. As I recall, the Dillon funnel measures .3525 or so, which is no doubt fine for jacketed or hard lead, but seems a bit tight for anything else.

[Ausglock]

I use 2,6,92 hardball alloy

[jmac2112]

OP here with an update. I have now shot a batch of each of my test bullets (one from Bayou, one from Blue Bullets), both sized .358. The gun is a CZ Shadow 2, and the barrel slugs at .3565. I got significant leading from the Bayou bullets, heavier near the front of the barrel. The Blue Bullets left some residue near the rear of the barrel, but it did not appear to be lead. So far, all I can conclude is that the coating on the Blue Bullets (whatever it is) is apparently tougher than the Hi-Tek coating on the Bayou bullets. I'm going to run another batch of the Blue Bullets through the gun and see if I get the same results. .358 is the largest size they offer for the bullet in question, so I hope this works out. The residue took some scrubbing to remove, but it was not much worse than what I get from my PC boolits.

Eventually I will probably send my barrel to Doug Guy for the proper treatment, which should also allow me to use a wider variety of bullet profiles and have more control over OAL. My barrel has some freebore, but it's pretty meager....

[Gatch]

It may not be the coating at all. It might be the hardness of the lead.

[jmac2112]

Gatch,

Bayou says the hardness of their bullets is BHN 16-17. Seems hard enough. I believe the real problem is my barrel, since practically everyone else in the world seems to have great success with Bayou and similarly coated bullets. Even with my powder coated boolits I end up with a fair amount of residue that requires some effort to scrub out. As I said earlier, I'll probably end up having my barrel reamed to provide a better, gentler transition for the bullets, and to allow for a good OAL with a wide variety of bullet profiles.

[fcvan]

I never had leading when sized to .358 using range scrap from a range that only saw 38 HPWC which are staged soft lead. That was 35 years ago with a S&W 459. I did once lead a 9mm when I tried .357 and it was horrible. Switched back to .358 and no problems.

Years later, I started ASBBPC and have shot them through 11 different 9mm weapons, including a Marlin Camp 9 and several AR15s in 9mm. Since I still have thousands of pre-historic lubed rounds loaded in the dark ages, those don't lead either. Even so, I still finish my range day with a mag of PCd boolits which leaves the bore smooth and shiny. I don't need to, but running a patch through a non lubed barrel cleans up PDQ.