I've posted this sort of point of view before, but an experience yesterday makes me want to share again. Plated bullets are a WHOLE lot tougher than people think, and there's an enormous amount of misinformation about them. I even recently read an article in "American Rifleman" about loading plated bullets, and if any of this stuff was true it's a wonder those bullets survive shipping Seriously, Ive loaded many thousands of Berry's plated bullets at this point, and my experiences dont match 3/4s of the garbage I read or hear.
Last evening, I was shooting a 629 and 240 grain Berry's plated flat nose bullets, moving along at roughly 1100 FPS. My range is right out my front door, so I shoot steel plates...and anything else I feel like. I took some dry firewood, which was hardwood beech and shot a few. The bullets cause each peice to split in two as of an invisible splitting maul was slammed into them. Notice the bettes path through such dense hardwood...notice the lack of deformation, the rifling marks, and my semi firm crimp line. Plated bullets, at least Berry's bullets are much tougher than people realize. I dont baby them, I crimp them hard, I load them to jacketed velocities, and have never experienced a single negative issue. I've shot them into all sort of things and have NEVER seen the plating "flake off", become damaged in any way, and am often shocked at how well they hold up when shot into very hard targets such as this hard wood, cinder blocks, metal objects, etc. Proof is always in the pictures. My point is, dont baby them or be scared away from them. Load em, push em, enjoy them...but dont feel the need to baby them.

here's some pics...240 grain flat point .44 cal Berry's plated bullet. Wood is dry, hard Beech wood.