I had some surprising results testing a hot-for-alloy load in a 44 Mag lever gun, and again the same bullet in some loads in a 444. Powder coating some rather soft bullets that were not flying very true at the high pressure I was shooting them caused them to cluster rather tightly at 110 yds. I shot some more of the powder coated ones to see if the first 5 were a fluke, and they were not. So I shot the bare lubed ones again, and again, they were all over the target. So I sighted in the powder coated ones (a hollow pointed version of the Lyman 290 by NOE) for an inch high at 110, and I'll kill something with them this season.
In the 444, I had the same issue with bare lubed bullets that was again solved with powder coating. The difference was dramatic. Whatever the problem the powder solved, it definitely solved it. I'm glad to have that capability in my "tool kit' now.
Another addition to this thread: I shoot Lee's version of the 311299 that I badgered out a bit to have the bore-riding portion fit the lands of my 30-06 with the quenched WW I prefer to cast and shoot with for everything around 2k fps. I then tumble lubed the sized (.310), checked bullets, including the bore-riding nose. Before the badgering, that bullet didn't shoot. At all. I diagnosed the problem properly, because now it shoots the smallest groups at 100 yds with that bullet that this particular rifle produces with any bullet (right at .3" for 5). I use a stout 30 grains of IMR4198 to give me right at 2000fps in commercial cases, and 29.5gr in old military cases, which is just a hair warmer. I've not tried shooting them with bare noses. Why would I?
