Pappy John
New member
I bought two new revolvers in the last year in .44 caliber and out of the box I shot both using 250 gr Keith style cast bullets. It wasn't long before the leading in both barrels and cylinders forced me to buy one of those Lewis lead remover tools. Even if I only put eighteen rounds or so at a time downrange I was breaking this thing out during my cleaning process to clean out the rifling.
I got tired of that hoowah all the time, so when I ran low on those Keiths, I decided to try out plated bullets to lighten up on the cleaning chores somewhat. First I orders a 500 count box of 240 gr Rainiers.
They worked out well as far as the clean-up went....CLP on a brush and after dry patching the barrel was clean as a whistle. The only problem was the accuracy just wasn't quite there....bigger overall groups and the occasional wild unexplained flier. But I slogged through that box anyway. Then after hearing some good words about plated West Coast Bullets, I bought a box each of them in 240 and 200 gr. Pretty much the same deal....great to clean up after, but bigger groups than I remembered from cast bullets. And after recovering one of the crazy fliers, discovered that they were resulting from the plating peeling off the core in flight like a banana. I believe now that the peeling was my fault though....too much crimp. After loosening my crimp die up a bit the crazy ones went away, but the groups were still not satisfying.
After running through most of that pile I got a good deal on some more of my old favorite 250 gr cast Keiths and decide to go back to shooting them to get my old groups back....even with the extra cleaning they require.
COOL BEANS!!! Shooting all those plated slugs must have polished my barrels to the point that they aren't leading at all anymore. I've done 200 rounds each in the past few weeks and I see nothing in the grooves yet that requires the Lewis to come off the shelf. Even the forcing cones are staying much cleaner. Just a very little lead hanging to the cylinder bores. Exact same bullets as before. Same groups as before too.
I guess I could have saved some money by buying a tube of Bore Shine, but it was a nice surprise anyway. Now my guns clean easily.
I got tired of that hoowah all the time, so when I ran low on those Keiths, I decided to try out plated bullets to lighten up on the cleaning chores somewhat. First I orders a 500 count box of 240 gr Rainiers.
They worked out well as far as the clean-up went....CLP on a brush and after dry patching the barrel was clean as a whistle. The only problem was the accuracy just wasn't quite there....bigger overall groups and the occasional wild unexplained flier. But I slogged through that box anyway. Then after hearing some good words about plated West Coast Bullets, I bought a box each of them in 240 and 200 gr. Pretty much the same deal....great to clean up after, but bigger groups than I remembered from cast bullets. And after recovering one of the crazy fliers, discovered that they were resulting from the plating peeling off the core in flight like a banana. I believe now that the peeling was my fault though....too much crimp. After loosening my crimp die up a bit the crazy ones went away, but the groups were still not satisfying.
After running through most of that pile I got a good deal on some more of my old favorite 250 gr cast Keiths and decide to go back to shooting them to get my old groups back....even with the extra cleaning they require.
COOL BEANS!!! Shooting all those plated slugs must have polished my barrels to the point that they aren't leading at all anymore. I've done 200 rounds each in the past few weeks and I see nothing in the grooves yet that requires the Lewis to come off the shelf. Even the forcing cones are staying much cleaner. Just a very little lead hanging to the cylinder bores. Exact same bullets as before. Same groups as before too.
I guess I could have saved some money by buying a tube of Bore Shine, but it was a nice surprise anyway. Now my guns clean easily.
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