Originally Posted by
curioushooter
Regarding grease grooves in handgun cartridges. I am beginning to think the agonizing over round/square/depth/volume is pretty pointless. One of the surprises I've had with shooting ballistic gel is that you get a snapshot of a bullet post-muzzle without it being destroyed. It's remarkable to me how LITTLE of the lube ever departs the groove. On wide, flat, deep grooves like Keith favored perhaps 80% or MORE of the lube remains in the groove (basically wasted). On shallower grooves it seems to me a greater percentage departs the groove, perhaps 50%. Lee tends to use very shallow grooves even on their traditional designs like the 358-158-SWCGC and these bullets still have a lot of lube in the groove after leaving the muzzle. People who get into grease wads and whatnot in handguns are probably wasting their time (and lube).
The important thing is that enough of the lube leaves the groove, and the more important thing is that the lube works well. The qualities of the lubricant seem more important than the lube groove to me. Perhaps with the lubricants Keith used (which were probably less sophisticated that what we have today) it was more important to have plenty of excess volume. I have done my testing mainly with Carnuba blue mainly (but I have also used Lithium-Moly-Beeswax and Synthetic Teflon grease-Beeswax and Felix Lube). I found that the it was pretty much true across the board, though it is hard to tell with the Felix and Teflon lubes as they are a dull white color. The black Lithi-Moly-Bee and Carnuba blue really stand out.
One thing that seems to be true is that you can have TOO small of a grease groove (though I've never encountered one), but not really too big unless things get really excessive. So I see why people favor big grooves.
Fit, alloy, lube type, and the qualities of the handgun seem to have more to do with it.