"Jacketed bullets accelerate barrel wear"

Dave T · #51 08-08-2017, 10:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigBill

If you cut a jacketed bullet open or shoot one into wet sand it's a copper steel coated jacket. There's no way that a soft copper jacket is going to wear out a hardened steel barrel. I did a lot of wet sand ballastics testing and found out every copper coated bullet has a thin steel jacket.

Now I use moly coated leadcast bullets. I do not wash the moly out of the barrel. I run some full power jacketed bullets at the end of the shoot just to keep the feel of the full power loads. The moly eliminates wear of the forcing cone and barrel.

Bill,

Maybe we shot different kinds of jacketed bullets but all those I dug out of dirt banks, sand piles and even baffle boxes showed no evidence of a steel jacket under the copper jacket. I've even seen slide shows depicting the making of jacketed bullets and nothing but a copper alloy jacket with a lead core was ever shown.

YMMV,
Dave

steelslaver · #52 08-08-2017, 12:25 PM

If you suspect steel, try a good magnet on it. Copper is so much more malleable than steel I don't know why they would use any steel unless special application for penetration or form retention.

But, will hold to my belief that some powders are harder on a barrel than a soft copper jacket. The area right behind a bullet is a very nasty environment.

BigBill · #53 08-08-2017, 07:19 PM

Try to bend the jacket when you remove it from the sand. I find shooting into clean sand the jackets look and feel like shrapnel. Very tough to bend leads my to believe it's a copper coated thin steel.

steelslaver · #54 08-08-2017, 07:42 PM

No, it becomes work hardened copper. Working metals like copper and brass hardens them considerably. That why some people annealing their rifle brass after multiple reloads. Take that copper jacket outside, hold itin a pair of pliers and use a torch to get it red hot and drop it in water. It will become dead soft copper again. Kind of the opposite of steel which would hardening if heated red then quenched

DWalt · #55 08-08-2017, 08:10 PM

"Copper is so much more malleable than steel I don't know why they would use any steel unless special application for penetration or form retention."
Copper alloy coated steel is a very common bullet jacket material and has been used for military ammunition since WWI. Maybe even longer. Steel is much cheaper than copper. Much of the 150 grain .30 M2, .50 BMG, .45 ACP, and some .30 Carbine ammunition made during WWII used steel-jacketed bullets. And later, so did some 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammunition. The Lake City Product Guide shows many cartridges specified with steel-jacketed bullets.