Moly cover bullets

[Sixgun]

Anyone ever use them? As I understad they prolong your barrel life. Is this correct and are they accurate.
thanks

[Colorado Osprey]

This is a copy of a response to the same question from another forum board by a member I trust:

"I have been shooting moly-coated bullets since about the time Norma and NECO came out with their "impact plating" process. This question is one of the most controversial one in shooting. You will see two distinctive sides to the story, parts of both are often either exaggerated or just plain untrue.

I grew up as the son of a gunsmith and have shot all my life. By now I have probably shot about as much with moly-coated bullets as without. Moly works for me. It does a couple of things that are desirable for shooting: 1) It lowers standard deviation, a great point for long-range shooting. 2) It raises ballistic coefficient, also very important for long-range shooting. 3) When properly used, in a bore capable of using moly, it will allow you to shoot much more before fouling degrades accuracy.

Moly, (Molybdenum disulphide) is a lubricant. It lets the bullet slide down the barrel easier, therefore you will need to increase your powder charge to achieve the same velocity as you would get without moly. This is one of the "down sides" to moly. Molybdenum disulphide is inert, it is not corrosive, nor acidic. It is a slight desiccant and will tend to attract moisture. This, coupled with the salts deposited in your bore from primer compounds and powder residue can cause problems in a humid environment. You should always run a Kroil-soaked patch down the barrel before storage to avoid any moisture problems.

The moly-coating on a bullet is extremely thin. If you have a rough bore, or copper fouling and try moly-coated bullets, they won't work well for you. You need to start with a smooth, well seasoned bore and clean it down to the bare metal" I like to "pre-treat" my bore with moly paste before using moly-coated bullets. The main object of the cleaning and pre-treating is to successfully getting the first bullet down the bore without depositing copper on the lands that will tear the moly from the rest of the bullets that are fired down the bore. Once you get that first bullet down the bore successfully, the rest is easy.....Just shoot!

If you have been shooting moly-coated bullets, and want to continue shooting them, don't clean your barrel the way you used to. You don't want to clean the barrel to the bare metal any more, you want to leave moly residue in the barrel. Just wet a patch with Kroil and short-stroke it through your bore, and follow it with a couple more Kroil-soaked patches. When you are ready to shoot again, just run a couple of dry patches through the bore to take the excess Kroil out, and you are ready to shoot. If you are done shooting moly, and want to go back to "naked" bullets, just clean your barrel the way you would before moly. Any ammonia-based bore-cleaner will quickly strip the moly out of the bore.

Bottom line: If you prep your bore, these moly-coated loads should work real well for you. I don't use moly-coated bullets on any of my low-volume shooting. For me, the big advantage to with moly-coated bullets is in high-volume shooting. In the days before moly-coated bullets, I would bring at least 3 rifles with me on a prairie dog hunt. I would shoot the first one in the morning, switch to the second and shoot it until afternoon and shoot the third for the evening hunt. Then we would all spend much of the night scrubbing copper out of the barrels. Now I bring one rifle, with a spare upper, just in case, and shoot that one barrel for the entire hunt, without cleaning! To give you an example of volume, on one of my trips to Montana we got rained out the first two days. On the third day the sky was clear and we got to our dog-town at about 9:00 am. The "town" was the largest one I had ever hunted. It was 15 square miles! 5 miles long and 3 miles wide. We parked on one edge and hunted until about noon. We hunted our way back to the truck where we reloaded our magazines, ate lunch and filled our pouches with more loaded rounds. We went back into the town and hunted until about 6:00 pm. By that time I had 404 dead prairie dogs dead, out on the ground. Not ones "I thought I hit", these were all out on the ground. Now I really don't know how many rounds it took me to kill that many PD's, but well over 400, I assure you! When I got back home, I took that gun to the range and it still shot 5-shot groups of about 1/2" before any cleaning! That same barrel would not do that before using moly-coated bullets.

Moly will work for you if it is used correctly. Is it an "end all-cure all"? NO, but it does work for what it was designed for. It does take a certain amount of "attention to detail" to use it with success. Over the years I have seen many people moly and have poor results. In every case, either their barrel was not capable of using moly, or they were doing something wrong.

Sorry for the long post. Moly-coated bullets are just one of the few things I know anything about!"



http://www.oa2.org/forums/viewtopic....t=moly+bullets

[Sixgun]

Well, I guess that says it all. THANKS A TON!!!!

[Hoser]

I have not shot a rifle bullet that was not coated in 10+ years. Coating the bullets yourself isnt hard. Its one of those cant hurt, might help kind of things.

As far as pistol bullets goes, the biggest downside of coated lead is the nasty smell you get when you shoot them. But they arent much more than lead, cheaper than jacketed, and dont smoke as bad as lead.