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Dirty Bayou Bullets?


rwagner24

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I just used the last of my berrys plated bullets and decided to

give bayou bullets a try. I couldn't find a bad review anywhere so I

ordered 4000. I have a open xdm 9mm and a limited xdm. I could shoot

over 200 rounds through my open gun with the berrys before my cmore

lense needed cleaning. I went to a falling steel match last weekend and

could barley see through my lense at the end of a stage. I had some

berrys with so I cleaned the lense and shot 3.5 stages and could see

right through. My comp, blast sheild and cmore were covered with what

looked like black spray paint. I had to use lime away to get it off my

lense and a die grinder with a scotch brite pad to get it off my carver

sight mount. 115gn bullet, power pistol powder 1200fps. Limited gun

seemed normal. Anyone else see this before?

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Hello: Wrong powder for an open gun. Thanks, Eric

Why is it the wrong powder? Please explain why or it's impossible to understand why you made that comment, and this is a forum where people want to learn.

It is simply because it made the lens dirty, or some other reason(s)?

Edited by superdude
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Alliant blue dot would be a better choice for an open gun than power Pistol if you use Alliant powdwrs. Generally slower burning powders, which can produce more gas to work the comp, are used in open guns.

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The powder has a lot to do with it. The more common 9Major powders are HS6, AutoComp, Silhouette, True Blue, 3N37, 3N38, N350. You could get away with Power Pistol but it likes heavy bullets with 9 and not the light ones.

Do you have the latest coating from Bayou? How long ago did you order it? I have shot some through my open gun and my only complaint was the smoke but that was the old formula.

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The powder has a lot to do with it. The more common 9Major powders are HS6, AutoComp, Silhouette, True Blue, 3N37, 3N38, N350. You could get away with Power Pistol but it likes heavy bullets with 9 and not the light ones.

Do you have the latest coating from Bayou? How long ago did you order it? I have shot some through my open gun and my only complaint was the smoke but that was the old formula.

When did the formulas change?

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Not exactly sure but I believe in the last year or so. I still have 4-500 of the 135 of the old formula but never used them up since they didn't run like I wanted them in Open. I will eventually load them up for some minor loads.

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Hello: You want a slow burning powder for an open gun that creates lots of gas. There is lots of info on here about 9mm open powders to use. The search function is your friend. Makes good reading and is less filling. Thanks, Eric

It often requires more Power Pistol to make major than it does AutoComp, and AC is popular. For example, in my 38 Super and 115 grain bullets it requires 8.0 gr of PP but only 7.6 gr of AC for the same power factor.

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Hello: You want a slow burning powder for an open gun that creates lots of gas. There is lots of info on here about 9mm open powders to use. The search function is your friend. Makes good reading and is less filling. Thanks, Eric

It often requires more Power Pistol to make major than it does AutoComp, and AC is popular. For example, in my 38 Super and 115 grain bullets it requires 8.0 gr of PP but only 7.6 gr of AC for the same power factor.

You can't go by weight alone, there are many more factors in the equation and PP is just not a good powder when you start pushing it up that high. I tried it with 124s getting to 170 PF and it was horrible and had some serious pressure signs. I backed off and used 147 for a while since I had a ton of them and it was okay. Several other guys I talked to said the same thing when I was working up that load. PP is also very flashy and loud, almost like LongShot but not as bad. Longshot is a decent powder but really dirty and loud. You can make Major with it with 124s but it also suffers from a serious point of "diminishing returns" so you can only push it so far.

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I don't think the question is about what powder to use. I think he is asking why might this load be so dirty out of his open gun and making his lens so dirty but a similar load out of a non-open/non-compensated gun seems to be rather clean.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Hello: The powder is too fast for that bullet. That is a hot burning powder at 1200 fps and you are burning the coating off. Use slower burning powder and you will see the difference. Give Donny a call and see what Kay is using for powder since she is using the same bullets in her open pistol. Thanks, Eric

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I made a similar change in revolver using power pistol. I'd imagine mileage varies a bit with the open gun. Hope this helps anyway.

I switched from 158 grain berrys in .38 specials to a 160 grain Bayou in a .38 Short Colt case (roughly 9mm dimension).

When I made the switch, Power Pistol got dirtier and changed the type of fouling it left behind. It seemed like unburned powder started accumulating where it hadn't before. Prior to that, the fouling was almost all bronze/black that stuck in a very thin layer to the cylinder of the gun. It was coming from the flash at the barrel cylinder gap. (this could be similar to what comes out of your comp) It was hard to get off, but was benign to the function of the gun. The outside of the gun was much dirtier than the inside.

You should see a reasonable jump in velocity with the Bayous with the same powder charge. You can probably reduce your powder charge by a couple tenths and get the same velocity. It may get cleaner with the reduced charge, too.

Hoppe's 9 and a little time to soften it up cleans up the fouling well.

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I don't think the question is about what powder to use. I think he is asking why might this load be so dirty out of his open gun and making his lens so dirty but a similar load out of a non-open/non-compensated gun seems to be rather clean.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Actually it is. The powder is a huge factor with lead/coated bullets. And a lot of the build up is due to powder.
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I'll agree with aircooled6racer. There are a lot better powders out there for an open gun. Autocomp, and HS6 are the most common and the CFE works well too and is almost identical to autocomp. Slow powder is the way to go.

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Hello: The powder is too fast for that bullet. That is a hot burning powder at 1200 fps and you are burning the coating off. Use slower burning powder and you will see the difference. Give Donny a call and see what Kay is using for powder since she is using the same bullets in her open pistol. Thanks, Eric

This is what I was thinking. Power Pistol burns very hot in my experience. I used it in my .40 open gun. It is probably vaporizing the coating off the bayou bullets. You generally don't want to run moly/poly coated bullets or exposed lead base bullets in Open division.

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From reading the op posts it sounds like he only loading to 138 pf in the open gun. And using the same load in the limited. Why would that load burn be so hot it burns the coating off in the open gun and be fine in the limited?

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