So far, I haven't had any luck loading lead or hard cast bullets in 38 special without lead fouling. Now, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I'm too fussy and the amount I see is normal. I've tried the full range of loading data in my old Speer manual for their lead bullets. I've used Speer lead 158 SWC, Bull X 158 CSWC , Missouri CSWC and Missouri CSWC with their hi tek coating all .358 dia. At least the Chore Boy strands on bore brushes does a good job of cleaning the bore, but it's a pest. I remove the yoke and cylinder, chuck the frame up a wooden jawed bench vise and place a sheet of white paper under the muzzle so I can keep track of the lead dust. So, is it just me? Is this fouling just something to get used to?

I shot a lot of Speer 158 lead SWC & HP bullets in the 70-90's in a K frame
with target and full loads and I just cleaned my guns and did not worry about
how bad the leading was.

I used, copper & lead fowling agents and wore out many a copper bore brush, back in those days.
I never did the "Chore boy" thing yet but now I an starting to shot coated bullets
that seem to clean up a lot easier.

I still shoot lead in my little J frame but the little 2" barrel cleans up in a hurry.

It works for me, so I still shoot it.

Have you tried slugging your barrel and measuring your cylinders with pin gauges? I've found the single most important factor in eliminating lead fouling is sizing the bullets to the gun.

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What could possibly go wrong?

The key to clean shooting bullets is bullet to gun fit. Simplest method; size (or purchase) bullets the same diameter as the cylinder throats. But there is some info you need; measure the throats (pin/plug gauge, expanding ball gauge, and slugging works). Throats need to be consistent and larger than groove diameter. Slug the barrel to make sure the throats are larger than the groove diameter and there are no constrictions. I have 11 revolvers and this has worked for each one. Some extra info that will help, don't buy into the "harder is better/hard cast" stuff. BHN 11-15 bullets is good for most all handgun calibers. Many jacketed bullet manufacturers sell soft swaged lead bullets that are often so soft they will lead the barrels unless loaded very light. There are more factors, but this is the foremost for shooting cast bullets. For excellent every day info on all aspects of lead bullets go here; Cast Boolits

You should have seen what recently came out of my Taurus 605, 357 magnum when I brushed it. For a brief moment I considered scooping it up to add to the melting pot.

What powders are you using? What charge weights are you using?

How hard are the bullets? Sometimes too hard a bullet will cause as much or more leading than a bullet that is too soft for the pressures generated by the load. We need more info to see if we can make suggestions. I don't usually get leading in my gun barrels from cast bullets., even in the 9mm.

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SWCA #3437

While exploring the art of cast lead is a worthy course of study, lending to a better understanding of how these things work, you need something that just works.
Transition to coated.

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it just needs more voltage

It often takes a lot of trial-and-error effort to find out what works best. A bullet of proper fit is a must and so is the right alloy mix for the load. A .38 Special load, even at +P velocities will often be quite accurate without bore leading with bullets as soft as 10 BHN (maybe softer, but I haven't tried those).

There are exceptions, but quite often, the softest bullet that will shoot without leading will be the most accurate. These may well equal or exceed the accuracy level of jacketed bullets. For handgun use, a jacketed bullet offers no real advantage over a "good" cast bullet.

With commercial cast bullets, you're at the mercy of whoever makes the bullets, but I would suspect there are some accommodating commercial casters.

Hi - Tek Coated bullets should eliminate all leading ...
The bullet diameter must match the throat diameter and that diameter must be larger than bore diameter . The bullets must not be shot over the makers velocity limit .

Some times a barrel can have a constriction at the forcing cone where the barrel screws into the frame ... this constriction squeezes down the bullets diameter and you have a small dia bullet going down a larger bore

A hard undersized bullet will lead up a barrel like all get out .

You need to slug and measure: throat diameter , forcing cone diameter barrel dia. at frame/forcing cone and bore diameter .
If any point along the bullets travel from throat to muzzle if it gets sized smaller than bore dia. ... you will get leading problems .

The rifling on some barrels are cut by a EDM process ... a sort of reverse electro plating process ... the only problem is this leaves barrels that aren't smooth ... they tend to lead and copper foul ... you might have a EDM barrel ... if you do it needs to be lapped and made smooth ...
otherwise you will chase your tail trying to fix the problem with reloads, different bullets , powders , coatings and bullet sizes ... the roughness is in the barrel ...not the ammo .

You will have a little powder fouling in loads with coated bullets but there should be no lumps or strands of lead ... if you do something is up .
Hi-Tek is good at stopping leading with lead bullets .
Gary

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I thought I was the only one with any Bull-X bullets left.

Yesterday I shot 2 boxes of 45LC through 2 revolvers and a box of 357's through another. My cast bullets from WW's. Sized and lubed. .454 and . 358. No leading. 2 passes with a nylon brush and a pass with a mop and the barrels were shiny clean inside.
Your "coating" may not be up to snuff. Your bullet could be too soft or not sized for your barrel.

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S&W Accumulator

Swaged bullets are a problem in a lot of guns especially when pushed to hard or wrong size for the bore. I learned that lesson 45 years ago with a Colt Diamondback. What a mess.
I shoot my cast bullets of scrounged lead lubed and sized these days with very little leading and no added expense of some coating. I enjoy the casting lubing and shooting of lead from handguns to large caliber lever guns.
Also some guns just have rough bores in spots that collect a little lead. My Rossi R92 357 always leads a small amount a few inches from the chamber. I just make a pass or two with Chore Boy copper and take it out. No big deal.

I will add this. Watch the bevel on the base of the bullets when you buy them. That bevel isn't doing you any favors. Some bullets have a really large bevel to them. I try to find ones that have no bevel, or a very small bevel. You have been given a lot of good information in the above posts. There are a lot of things that can cause leading.

Back in the day, I loaded up on bulk pack JHPs. Can't do that anymore, so I'm trying to cut costs by using a bunch of different lead and commercially cast bullets I inherited from a friend. Just got a new J frame snub for CC. Putting it mildly, I need some practice. So I paid scalper price for some primers and loaded some standard pressure 38spl with W231 and...lead city. Even with the Missouri hi-tek. It is a brand new gun. Maybe it needs some break in with jacketed bullets. Thanks for the advice. I'll keep experimenting.

You needn't break it in. If you're buying commercial cast rather than casting your own, trying as big a variety of cast bullets as possible is about the only way to go.

Fit and hardness are the most important factors, and in that order. I've yet to see a need for coated, painted, or plated bullets. They'll do no better and likely not as well as the "right" conventionally lubed cast bullets, but coated bullets that don't have an ideal fit might be more forgiving and shoot better than conventional cast and lubed bullets that have a poor fit.

He already tried-

Missouri CSWC with their hi tek coating

Experienced the worst barrel leading ever in my Ruger American 45. Must have not noticed it for quite a while as I clean my guns every time upon returning from the range (unless I plan to shoot the same gun within a very short time frame).

Leading showed as tiny waves in almost all the grooves in the rifling. A new 45 cal bore brush made little difference. Soaked the bore multiple times with different products but the waves just got fainter and fainter until I finally went to Mothers polish on Q-tips as far as I could reach into the barrel. Then scrubbing out the 1/2" or so in the middle.

I spent more time on this than on all the other multiple guns combined for the last three or four trips to the range. Only lead bullets fired this trip were medium velocity coated MBCs.

Didn't do the Chore Boy threads, probably should have...? Finally got it clean, but will be very interested in seeing if this was a one time experience due to insufficient attention on many prior trips?

Cheers!

First off, you never did answer the questions I asked you above.

Next, I'm at a real loss as to how coated bullets from the MBC caused leading in your barrel. The costing encapsulates the lead core thus preventing the lead from touching the barrel.

There is no reason to break in a new barrel with jacketed bullets before shooting lead.

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SWCA #3437

Barrel fit is critical. I like .002 over sized.

You might have to firelap the barrel if it is rough.

Get some lead slugs from Lead Bullet Technologies to measure your barrel diameter and cylinder throats. These fit on a cleaning rod and are a lot easier to use with no hammer required. Also, get the book from Veral Smith at LBT on cast bullets. This book answers a lot of questions.

The Chore Boy all copper scouring pad trick will remove leading easily and will also remove plastic from a shotgun bore.

I'd be taking a hard look at the diameter of the holes in the cylinders of your revolver. No need to measure anything, simply take 1 of your .358" bullets and drop it in each hole. The .358" bullet should get held up by the walls of the cylinder holes and then take light pressure with a pencil to push thru.

Light pressure ='s a finger & thumb holding the pencil and a light tap to push the bullet thru.

If it takes a lot of force to push the bullet thru that's telling you the chambers of the cylinder are cut tight, too tight for cast bullets. If you look closely at the picture you can see the step/throat in the chambers of the cylinder in the picture. This is what actually sizes the bullet & what everyone is telling you to measure.


If the test bullet goes thru with little or no force. Then take a look and what type of expander your die set has. Not all expanders are created equal with most being made/designed for the shorter/smaller in diameter jacketed bullets. Too small or short of an expander will not expand the case enough and bad thing will happen like swaging or egg shaping the lead bullets when seating them.

A lee factory expander stem next to a lyman m-die. The m-die is made/designed for the larger/longer cast bullets. You can clearly see a ring on the lee stem. That ring is made by the case mouths it expanded/where the top of the case ends.


The m-die expands the case deeper going all the way to the "step" at the nose of the expander stem/button.

When loaded correctly a coated bullet will not lead anything. I've loaded home cast/coated bullet that were 2/1000th's undersized in 9mm semi-auto's and never had any leading. Had 9mm firearms that had bbl's that slugged .355", .356" & .357" (typical). Sized bullets .356" at 1st and when I ran out of them I switched over to .358" for everything.

This is what a 686 looks like after a 200 round range session using a home cast/coated 158gr bullet sized to .358" and 3.3gr of bullseye powder. As you can see the cylinder has very little fouling on the sides and the cases have no soot on the sides of them.


I probably should of taken a picture of the bore but I took these pictures and did a thread on another website a week earlier. This is a 1911 chambered in 9mm after a 500+ round range session with 125gr cast/coated bullets and a 25,000psi/1100+fps load.


Yes there is a layer of grey fouling in the bbl. But it easily comes out with 1 wet patch of hoppe's #9 and +/- 10 passes. Then 1 dry patch to finish the cleaning in less then 1 minute.


Coated bullets do have their limits & the limits of the bullets I cast/coat had thiers in a 308w. I cast a 14bhn bullet coated and sized to .310" for the 308w. I've used loads with 50,000+psi with several different cast bullets in that 308w and never had any issues. But when I used a 50,000+psi load pushing the bullet over 2700fps I started seeing this.


Those black streaks came out easy enough using bore-tech eliminator. Just surprised me the pc coated actually started to scorch/burn in the bbl.

Anyway been shooting cast bullets since the 80's and started pc'ing my cast bullets in 2014. Never had any leading with a pc'd bullet. It actually takes something mechanical to scrape the coating off of a coated bullet to get leading with them.

You may have a barrel rifled with the new EDM process ... they lead a barrel like all get-out . Find instructions on "Fire Lapping"
Wheeler makes a bore lapping kit with 3 different abrasives pastes in different grits ... applied to bullet , fired through gun ... takes 20 shots to fire lap and smooth the barrel .
Wheeler Bore Lapping Kit -mfg. #299849 . It works very well .
Gary

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The Missouri Hi-Tek bullets are supposed to be .358 dia. but mic at .3594.
That's from a pre digital, Starrett 1 inch barrel mic that I have from my days as a tool and die maker. It is correct. That might answer the question of why they foul. I should have checked. I'm new to cast bullets.

mentioned in the list, but not as specifically as a stand alone test.
I've used both HT and PC beating both like rented mules on borrowed skateboards at the X games.
HT just worked in everything pistol where PC only just began to lead up the edge of the rifling around 2600 FPS.
Im thinking it's performance got lost in a string of tests

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it just needs more voltage

I used to shoot the heck out of those.

I got brave and fired 12 rounds of the Bull-X through my old Highway Patrolman and saw no signs of fouling. I figure it must be something about the new 637. I'm not planning on shooting the little snub that much anyway so I'll stick to jacketed bullets. I was expecting this little gun to be harder to be accurate with and I was sure right. The combination of the short boot grip, the tiny sights and the heavy double action trigger demands a higher degree of skill. I did send for a Hogue grip. I'll get there with practice. It will just be more expensive practice.

Your new 637 has an EDM barrel . As the above knowledgable folks have told you fit is king . Until you know the EXACT size of your throats & bore you're peeing in the wind . Throats MUST be larger than bore & should be of uniform size , easily correctible if too tight . Size bullets to match throats . Next is alloy & lube / coating .
This pretty much personifies most commercial bullet casters in that alloy is too dang hard , bullets aren't sized correctly & lube / coating is a joke . For those that think Misery Bullet Co. makes good bullets , I can't help you . Only thing worse is plated bullets .

One of my Dad's favorite sayings ... " Boy , you just peeing in the wind now ... " it was usually directed at something I was doing ... haven't heard it in years ,
Made me smile when I read it ... Thanks !

Your advice is right on ... the OP would be well advised to follow it .

Gary

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That size should probably prevent blow-by and increase the chances that the bullet is not causing the leading. Another vote the the EDM process is tearing the bullet as it passes through the bore/

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Front sight and squeeze

Bullets can be the wrong size, too soft, too hard, etc. I used to load a lot of cast bullets in my 357's and 44's but mostly went to jacketed bullets just to avoid leading issues. I had better luck with target 38 and 45 loads with lead.

My 638 is very accurate and it does not lead. I don't think it has ever seen a jacketed bullet. It outshoots both my old S&W 36 and my Taurus 605. It gets shot quite regularly.

I have to agree with you on the 638. I bought one more than ten years ago and it's noticeably more accurate than my other snub nose J-frame .38s, some of which I bought new forty or more years ago. Maybe the lock has something to do with enhanced accuracy... I seldom shoot anything but the 160 grain cast H&G #51 SWC in any .38 Special revolver.