If the leading isn't starting until a couple of inches into the barrel, that could be due to a couple of things. One is having a tapered bore (usually considered a good thing for lead bullet accuracy), and the other is just that the coating is staying on the bullet until it gets a couple of inches down the tube.
Several suggestions come to mind. First, whatever else you do afterward, I would start by getting the bore truly clean. I would get some No-Lead and apply it per the instructions. For me, it does a great job. On Midway, the reviews are mixed. Good reviews (mine, for one) and bad reviews. Among the latter are people who clearly ignored the instructions. Don't do that. A few seem to indicate the maker has had production QC issues from time to time. But what I have works very well, indeed.
Try dipping the bullets into Lee Liquid Alox (LLA) lube and letting it dry before loading to see if that mitigates the problem. You can thin the LLA in mineral spirits before applying it to get a thinner coat onto the bullet's powder coat. If the problem is stripping the coating off, that extra lube may prevent it.
Another way to prevent injury to the bullet coating is to lube the bore. Put a little 2-cycle motor oil on a patch and push it through the bore and follow that with one dry patch, so the oil is thin. This oil is designed to withstand combustion heat, so it tends to hold up for at least a few rounds. By then, the follow-up LLA on the bullets starts taking over for it. The overall idea is to prevent the leading from starting, as subsequent lead generally sticks to the initial layer.
Since your bore is already half a mil over nominal groove diameter, one cure, firelapping, may be unattractive as it removes another fraction of a thousandth. You can, however, do just a polishing version of it that won't measurably affect groove diameter. Shoot a very light load of two or three grains of 231 using cast bullets rolled against 600-grit lapping compound on a steel or glass surface to embed it in the lead. Follow that with bullets who've had the lube replaced by JB Bore Compound to polish it up. About 20 of each will smooth and polish the surface without removing any readily measurable amount of metal. Note, though, that you will want to push a patch through every five rounds or so and look for leading. If you find it, you need to clean it out again, as there is little point in firing the polishing rounds if the places most in need of polishing are covered with lead. That will keep the polish from getting at those places.
When you have that done, you can clean the barrel very carefully and treat it with a permanent lube. There are several on the market. Sprinco Plate+ silver is an expensive but effective one. You apply it to a clean barrel and let it sit for 72 hours to bond to the steel. It lasts 1000 rounds or so.
CAUTION!
I have to recommend against firing jacketed bullets to "clean" a bore. I did some experiments with that back in the '80s in a 357 Magnum which proved to my satisfaction that it doesn't really work. It raises pressure enough that Smith & Wesson and Beretta specifically recommend against it. I believe it was Allan Jones who mentioned having seen a couple of guns burst by doing it. It's one of those folk-wisdom remedies that isn't endorsed by anyone who can actually measure pressure. It is akin to shooting a jacketed bullet into a bore coated in super-viscous grease. Most guns are strong enough to withstand a good degree of abuse, so it isn't often that the practice results in gun or shooter damage, and that anecdotal evidence and the speed with which it is completed makes the idea seductive.
When I experimented with it, I found the nice shiny clean-looking bores that appeared to result from the practice really weren't clean. If you have one of the old Outer's Foul Out machines, you will find a lot of lead still comes out onto the rod after shooting the jacketed rounds and getting the bore "clean" by the usual methods. I found that after normal cleaning, I had what appeared to be a very smooth and clean bore that looked very shiny held up to a light, but when I ran a dry brush through it, large areas of the bore became dull due to the brush roughening the surface of the ironed-in lead. Since new lead sticks to old lead, such a barrel is actually primed to lead-up faster than it otherwise would.
Several suggestions come to mind. First, whatever else you do afterward, I would start by getting the bore truly clean. I would get some No-Lead and apply it per the instructions. For me, it does a great job. On Midway, the reviews are mixed. Good reviews (mine, for one) and bad reviews. Among the latter are people who clearly ignored the instructions. Don't do that. A few seem to indicate the maker has had production QC issues from time to time. But what I have works very well, indeed.
Try dipping the bullets into Lee Liquid Alox (LLA) lube and letting it dry before loading to see if that mitigates the problem. You can thin the LLA in mineral spirits before applying it to get a thinner coat onto the bullet's powder coat. If the problem is stripping the coating off, that extra lube may prevent it.
Another way to prevent injury to the bullet coating is to lube the bore. Put a little 2-cycle motor oil on a patch and push it through the bore and follow that with one dry patch, so the oil is thin. This oil is designed to withstand combustion heat, so it tends to hold up for at least a few rounds. By then, the follow-up LLA on the bullets starts taking over for it. The overall idea is to prevent the leading from starting, as subsequent lead generally sticks to the initial layer.
Since your bore is already half a mil over nominal groove diameter, one cure, firelapping, may be unattractive as it removes another fraction of a thousandth. You can, however, do just a polishing version of it that won't measurably affect groove diameter. Shoot a very light load of two or three grains of 231 using cast bullets rolled against 600-grit lapping compound on a steel or glass surface to embed it in the lead. Follow that with bullets who've had the lube replaced by JB Bore Compound to polish it up. About 20 of each will smooth and polish the surface without removing any readily measurable amount of metal. Note, though, that you will want to push a patch through every five rounds or so and look for leading. If you find it, you need to clean it out again, as there is little point in firing the polishing rounds if the places most in need of polishing are covered with lead. That will keep the polish from getting at those places.
When you have that done, you can clean the barrel very carefully and treat it with a permanent lube. There are several on the market. Sprinco Plate+ silver is an expensive but effective one. You apply it to a clean barrel and let it sit for 72 hours to bond to the steel. It lasts 1000 rounds or so.
CAUTION!
I have to recommend against firing jacketed bullets to "clean" a bore. I did some experiments with that back in the '80s in a 357 Magnum which proved to my satisfaction that it doesn't really work. It raises pressure enough that Smith & Wesson and Beretta specifically recommend against it. I believe it was Allan Jones who mentioned having seen a couple of guns burst by doing it. It's one of those folk-wisdom remedies that isn't endorsed by anyone who can actually measure pressure. It is akin to shooting a jacketed bullet into a bore coated in super-viscous grease. Most guns are strong enough to withstand a good degree of abuse, so it isn't often that the practice results in gun or shooter damage, and that anecdotal evidence and the speed with which it is completed makes the idea seductive.
When I experimented with it, I found the nice shiny clean-looking bores that appeared to result from the practice really weren't clean. If you have one of the old Outer's Foul Out machines, you will find a lot of lead still comes out onto the rod after shooting the jacketed rounds and getting the bore "clean" by the usual methods. I found that after normal cleaning, I had what appeared to be a very smooth and clean bore that looked very shiny held up to a light, but when I ran a dry brush through it, large areas of the bore became dull due to the brush roughening the surface of the ironed-in lead. Since new lead sticks to old lead, such a barrel is actually primed to lead-up faster than it otherwise would.
