Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Who would not shoot moly coated bullets

And why not?

I won't coat my own, not sure it's worth the trouble. I do, however, use Norma Diamond Line and they are moly coated with good results. Had to add 1/2 grain of powder over naked to get the same results.

This should be good. I wanna see what people say here as i have one rifle i shoot moly bullets in. I havent chronographed any of the loads yet, but i will shortly.

Better question is WHY would you shoot moly coated bullets ??

Because they look cool and shoot great.

I'm wondering if there is consensus as to whether it contributes to barrel fouling or not. Winchester ammo has their nosler accubonds moly coated.

Sorry to be contrary... and this is just my opinion for my rigs..

I don't see any real benefits vs the mess and the clean up involved....

I picked up a few factory boxes of molyed bullets...

shot a few... ran a patch thru the barrel and it was already making the bore coated... spoke with a few gunsmiths locally about it and they nixed the idea.. and called it a market gimmick.. like ARCO use to brag about putting graphite in their motor oil... so right out of the bottle it looked like oil that needed changing 10,000 miles ago...

I tumbled the rest of the bullets to remove the moly, so ended my testing of them...

but this is just my opinion and don't look at this as any negativity toward anyone else trying it...

just didn't turn out to be my cup of tea... didn't see the value in it for my needs....

Eye, I've found that it saves me lots of cleaning time.
I had a couple rifles, varminters, and they would foul, then it would take forever to pretty them. Copper. I tried all the remedies, the JB paste and the various evil potions.
So, I prettied them, then coated them, then shot moly. It was better, roughly twice the shots before accuracy would go away.
It took me about a year to discover a quick way to clean and keep shooting, but I did.
I was happy enough to decide to do that to all my guns. Now it is a matter of routine.
In the past couple years, I started using wet-plating, and that works well, in fact, the wet process seems to finally do what was promised. Less fouling, and I'm getting probably 25 percent more accurate shots before I have to either quick clean (brush wet, patch dry and go) or deep clean (strip and start over) my barrels.
I guess you could say moly has worked in that it's never made a problem WORSE....I don't have epic three-day copper soaks any more, either. I'm comfortable with using it, I know how to keep the black at bay, I live someplace dry so I can just shoot and forget without having to oil any barrels.
Maybe it's voodoo -- but I am NOT taking that bone out of my nose.

Thanks, Dave and Sea. Dave, how do you deep clean moly bores and about how many shots are taken before that happens?

This is in line with my own observations during initial reviews in the late 90's. I also noted that velocities were reduced with moly and some people suggested you needed to increase powder charges to get back where you were with non coated bullets. I never went there as slight velocity variations don't matter that much in hunting rifles.

I know Kenny Jarrett destroyed several barrels trying to get the moly out of his barrels which did not respond to traditional cleaning, to the point of heating them to try and break the bond. He hated moly and had a wonderful way is describing his displeasure.

At the same seminar, I reported that people are mesmerized by "pretty", and anything different to the usual copper and brass look was likely marketing related.

John

I've shot moly considerably, but don't anymore, partly due to my rather specialized job. I often have to test several different bullets in a rifle for an article, and I've found moly-coated bullets do weird things to the results from uncoated bullets.

I also pretty much gave up on moly for any purpose after thoroughly testing Dyna Bore coat a few years ago. After that I couldn't see any advantage in coating EVERY bullet shot, and then having to occasionally clean the moly out of the bore anyway, when DBC vastly reduced bore cleaning, plus made it much easier--all after ONE permanent coating in the bore.

I've shot nothing but moly plated bullets ever since Neco came out with their patented process. I see all pro, and no con to it. It gives me the ability to shoot longer w/o cleaning, nothing more.

While DBC may be the cat's azz for a factory barrel, there's no way I'm putting that in
a new $600+ Krieger....sorry.

I used to shoot moly coated bullets for in matches with my AR15 Service Rifle.It only helped with less cleaning.I could shoot a whole match with no decrease of accuracy.It did nothing to increase accuracy.Velocity dropped,but I increased my charge with no pressure signs.All in all to me not worth the trouble as I coated my own.Makes a freaking mess in the reloading area.Much todo about nothing.

aalf,

Nothing to be sorry about!

However, I must note that Charlie Sisk built several benchrest rifles for some friends in his part of Texas, using Krieger and Lilja barrels. They installed DBC from the get-go and say they're shooting in the .1's and .2's after 2000 rounds through their barrels without ever doing any cleaning except shoving out some powder fouling now and then.

JB,

In my pre-moly days, my PPC's would run into the 2000+ round area before accuracy would start to fall off as well.

I've seen where you've said the throats still get a bit rough, even with DBC, at a certain stage. So in reality, no matter what a guy does, there's only X amount of good accuracy in a barrel before you have to tap out.

Of course, barrel life has a direct relationship on your accuracy requirements....

aalf,

Agreed on all points. For my purposes, however, DBC is a much better deal in terms of hassle and practicality.

Absolutely, for the grind you go through, I couldn't/wouldn't probably do it either.

I do find it almost comical, though, the people that do bad mouth moly for whatever reasons, valid or not. Yet, for the performance I expect, and the results I do achieve using moly, I don't expect to quit using it anytime soon.

Okay, when I run out of moly, I'll try DBC. Maybe.

Eye, the super strip is a combination of everything -- Kroil, Wipe Out, Br9, Speedy Formula, Dawn soap, JB Paste, fine valve compound. The common factor is probably the Wipe. I always finish when I think I'm "done" with Wipe Out, used to be Sweets. Leave it overnight and see what a patch looks like in the morning with peroxide. (These are stainless barrels, BTW, if they are CrMo I'll soak a couple of hours).

My accuracy goes south usually about the time I end up seeing copper at the muzzle, which happens after about 500, 600 shots, but that number seems to be going up since I started wet-plating...I've not had to do a super strip for a while, and no, I don't really keep track. That may very well be because I wasn't plating my bullets all that well with the dry technique.

The quick clean is a one-size-over bronze brush (with a good guide, of course) and a big splash of regular Number Nine. I got mad one day in the PD fields, I wanted to keep shooting darn it. Dumped in some ice water, chased it with Regular 9, then rammed the brush in there, yanked it back and forth a bunch of times, then patched the mess out with three dry patches.
The whole show took two minutes and I think I went another 100 rounds worth of carnage before I started missing for no reason, a record at the time.

I would say if you haven't done moly, DBC is probably worth a look. But I probably will never go back to either naked bullets or naked barrels. I'm too poor for premium tubes, and moly has let me use the cheap stuff and still have guns that shoot better than I can.

I've found many humans bad-mouth stuff they've never used, or sometimes even seen!

of late I've started wondering if moly might help the bullet / brass fusion from occurring which would create more consistency with neck tension.