Yondering, or others that have extensive experience shooting PC'ed bullets, what bore cleaning issues are to be expected? Shoot 100 rounds of jacketed bullets and you will have to clean powder residue and copper out of your bore. Shoot 100 rounds of lubed cast bullets and you will have to clean powder residue and lead out of your bore. What is left after 100 rounds of PC bullets....just powder residue? Or is there a buildup/smear of the PC coating to clean out? What should be expected in terms of bore maintenance?
My first batch of PC'ed bullets in .459 and .309 shot very well in initial tests. The second batch slumped while being cooked! I learned that a little bit of extra heat might just turn out to be too much heat. Looking forward to going into full production of cast/PC bullets for fun and games but got to thinking about longer term cleaning issues. What is y'alls experience?
Just the powder residue. And if we're talking about the bore (not the action) it's the same amount of powder residue after 5 shots, or 100, or 1,000. I've never seen any coating residue in the bore, in anything from 700 fps pistol loads to 3,000+ fps rifle loads.
Some of my barrels only get used with powder coated bullets any more - I never clean them. Not because it's bad to clean them, but because it's just unnecessary. I do wipe off powder residue from the exterior, but that's it.
Controlling the temperature in your baking oven is important, and an oven thermometer is only a few dollars. Some guys are baking way too hot and trying to just pull the bullets out before they slump, but that's not what the powder coating needs for a good cure. The coatings I use are pretty specific about needing 400° F part temperature for 10 minutes; to me that means ~20 minutes total time in the oven, with the first 10 minutes to get the bullets up to 400°.
