Lead in Barrell

after reading many post here about powder coating bullets I thought this might be a way to go. I ordered powder from smoke and followed all the instructions to do the shake and bake. all went well and I got decent coverage and a glossy black. tried the Walmart non stick foil and it did not work well so bought the Reynolds brand and it works very well. cast some 124 tc tumble lube with a lee mould. pc them and loaded in 9mm. 4.0gr 231. they shoot very well no problems with that BUT the bbl is full of **** and a lot of lead. anyone else having leading with pc bullets? any solutions?. have altered loading to not put the bullet in a real tight case. still leading. disappointed as much I read was clean shiny bore after pc. send help if ya have any.
m:cry:

any chance you can post pictures of your powder coated boolits and loaded rounds?

I see a lack of the most important information. What size were they? Doesn't matter what you do if they are too small. I run .358 in every 9mm.

9 is high pressure, that is not a hot load. Mine shoots good @ 357, 358 leads, probably due to the sharp chamber/bore edge. Unless you HT, they will be soft until age hardening.

knew i would forget something. sized .357 after pc.

Type of lead alloy/ hardness? Coating pure lead doesn't work with high pressure cartridges. If you are not properly belling the mouth you may be scraping off the coating as it is loaded in sections. Crimp? Treat these like you would a plated bullet, and crimp just enough to remove belling at the mouth.

Like others have said, there's alot of variables. I had a bitch of a time setting my 9mm dies up to bell enough to not shave PC off, then crimping enough to not telescope, but then not crimping too much so that it cut a ring in my coating.

For the 9MM and PC, I load them unsized. Also had to make a larger expander for Dillon 550B.

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Originally Posted by Little Doc

after reading many post here about powder coating bullets I thought this might be a way to go. I ordered powder from smoke and followed all the instructions to do the shake and bake. all went well and I got decent coverage and a glossy black. tried the Walmart non stick foil and it did not work well so bought the Reynolds brand and it works very well. cast some 124 tc tumble lube with a lee mould. pc them and loaded in 9mm. 4.0gr 231. they shoot very well no problems with that BUT the bbl is full of **** and a lot of lead. anyone else having leading with pc bullets? any solutions?. have altered loading to not put the bullet in a real tight case. still leading. disappointed as much I read was clean shiny bore after pc. send help if ya have any.
m:cry:

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I found I had to wait a couple weeks to shoot mine to allow them to harden. Someone else in these forums was having the same problem and waiting worked for him as well. You may want to try letting them age harden for a couple weeks.

loaded 500 so guess will follow suggestion to let age harden for a bit. one week already passed will wait another and see what i get. lead was indoor range scrap, i would guess jacked cores, sg slugs and cast bullets. bhn test at 11. have water dropped this lead and in a week checks at bhn 19.would the 400* for 15 minutes just anneal them. the ones that i pc were not water dropped.
upnorthwis how large did you make your expander? i am using a 550b also. did this resolve the problem?

I made my expander .356" Original one was .353" PC alone did not cure leading in my S&W M&P. When using the .353" expander, the brass was sizing the boolits undersize. If you have an impact hammer remove a boolit and measure it to see what you're sending down the barrel.

I find that all my PC rounds need to have a more generous belling of the brass to prevent shaving of the PC on at least one cal. I use the Lee universal expander after a Lyman M-Die. This is for my fat 30s using .316+ boolits. Pull a loaded round and check for size and if the paint got scraped while loading. GP

If you have any of your previously loaded ammo that has not been shot, pull a couple of bullets and see what they look like where the bullets were below the case mouth. Any lead showing?

If not, load a few prepped but unprimed cases without powder and seat some bullets in them. Then pull the bullets and inspect them. Measure the bullet diameters that were put into the case.

Little Doc, I suspect that you got in to PCing for the same reason I did, I was not having any luck using lubed boolits in 9mm, and I thought PCing was the way to go. Well it didn’t fix my problem, I still had leading after PCing.

The problem was not lube, it was the dies and set up I was using, mainly the expander (Lee Dies). These dies are made to reload to factory specs using J-words, the stock 9mm expander only expands the case enough to get the J’s started maybe an 1/8 inch, and this is fine, the hard jacket expands the case when the J is seated. Replace the J with a Bp boolit that’s .002” bigger and a lot softer when seating the boolit instead of expanding the case, it resizes the boolit.

Pull a boolit and measure it’s ID and I’ll bet it’s been resized down to .355.
I corrected this by ordering a S&W 38 expander for my Lee die ($4.00 + shipping from Lee), set up the dies seated boolits and pulled a few, no resizing, and no more leading.


(S&W 38 expander is the fix for Lee dies, but I think others are using a Lyman M die for other loading presses.)

Did I go back to conventional lubes after correcting the problem? No way, for me PCing is easier and a lot less messy, cast/PC/bake/size/load/repeat.


BTW – I also loaded a few hundred rounds before fixing my real problem, I just about have them all pulled, lol.


Good luck

This is the exapnder plug IDO356 is talking about. I use it with my PC'ed Lee 356-120-TC and get zero leading in my M&P9. I also bought the Lee taper crimp die for 9mm instead of the Factory crimp die or instead of using the seating die to close the flare. I like to seat and crimp (actually just close the flare) on separate stations and the FCD has the sizing ring that will swage down the bullets. The pure taper crimp die can be adjusted to just close the flare without squishing the bullet.

looks like the expander may be the change needed. pulled several bullets and measured one was .355 others .356. the bullets were .357 before loaded. will make a new expander and see what the results will be. may be a few days. upon examining the length of the expander used it appears that the depth it goes into the case may need to be increased. the length is shorter than the length of the bullet when seated. no coating was pulled off the bullets that were loaded then pulled. will post results.

today i made a new expander for the dillon 550b. i made it .355 also made it a little longer so no case sizing at the base of the bullet. loaded 15 rounds and shot them. had stuff in the bbl that came out with a dry brushing. no lead in the bbl. loaded more with 90gr bullet that is sized .359. shot these and same thing. looks like the case was sizing the bullet when loaded.
many thanks to all who offered info, advice and shared their experiences. hope to shoot 100 rounds soon and see what give. i expect it to be the same. Thanks again everyone.
m

Yee-hah! Glad you got it figured out. I suspected the same thing as I started reading this thread as it is a common problem. Especially with 40SW and 9mm. We got us another PC convert!