Moly Coated Bullets

[calhunter]

I was told by a couple of people in gun shops that if I started shooting Moly coated bullets in my 22-250 that I should not go back to regular copper jacket bullets. Is this true or BS?

[cking]

Well lots has been written about moly. The precision shooting magazine is probably the best source of current thinking. If you are going to switch the barrel should really be scrubbed clean with something like JB bore paste. Most barrels seem to have two spots where crud is stubborn, right in front of chamber and someplace near the muzzle like 2/3 or 3/4 way down barrel. Get those two spots absolutely clean and then switch as you want.

What I found is that moly and JB together polished up my barrels so smooth that it isn't really necessary to keep using moly. Now my guess is since I don't have a barrel scope. Is that with the barrels I did this procedure on were new or almost new. I scrubbed them with JB, then did a foul out. So they were squeaky clean. Then I coated the barrels with a spray in moly, shot a couple hundreds rounds of moly bullets with some cleaning in between. Then I cleaned with Jb again, and foul out. Don't think the second cleaning with foulout was necessary nothing turned up. Now I don't bother any more and barrels clean up very easily. Now if your shooting 600 yards and beyond high power rifle, well that's beyon my scope of accuracy and shooting. You will have to determine if moly gives you more rounds before accuracy drops off.

[Wap wap]

Moly bullets and spray work well for initial conditioning of the barrel, and as was stated previously that has been my experience. General concerns against it use are that moly is extremely burnishable which means that it is possible to "layer'' up the moly, shoot copper bullets over it, then plate the copper wash with a later use of Moly. The greatest benefit is the decreased necessity of cleaning and the velocity increase of the bullet itself. Diminished accuracy in a rifle arises from throat erosion which moly does not prevent. Accuracy in most cases, particularly in a good barrel, can be had by simply cutting the first two inchs, re-chambering, and re-threading. If the previous described coating occurs it will diminsh accuracy, as will to much cleaning, by simply wearing down the riflings (or in moly's case filling up the groove) that cause the bullet engraving. In my experience generally the "cheaper" the barrel the better moly works. It did nothing for a Kimber and Krieger in cleaning or velocity increase very little for my Remingtions- worked great on some Savages, redundant on chrome lined barrel AR's.

[gm iprod]

As far as I have been informed Moly in itself can not build up in a barrel. You put some on and it will eventually fall out through bullets passing over it and stealing some. It needs to be reapplied.

What some people claim is Moly build up has been found to be the wax protective coating prefered by some that gets into the barrel and seems to want to remain in some nooks and crannies.

I have used Moly (both directly applied to projectiles and sprayed onto barrels) and have never found the copper / Moly mix in the bore. I suspect that if I did not clean and recoat the barrel I would find copper fouling would almost certainly build up and it would be mixed with whatever Moly was remaining in the bore. Most of my Molying at present is via projectile application (tumbling).

I can switch back and forth with no problems, just make sure the loads are compatible with the appropriate projectile. ie do not put an un-Moly coated projectile over the powder charge for a Moly coated projectile.

[ErikW]

My reloads are all moly coated (powder only, no wax or carrier) and I sometimes shoot factory (non moly) ammo. I haven't noticed any ill effects.

[George]

My take on Moly is that it is a subjective technology. If you like it, it does wonders, if you don't like it, it does nothing and can even be detrimental.

I am in the middle and believe there are some small benefits, but that the drawbacks just edge out the benefits. Because it's a hassle and cost's more yet does little in comparison to the effort/cost investment, it's a no brainer for me to stay with plain copper through my barrels.

BTW, I do believe in firelapping rough barrels and feel that a nicely lapped bbl with plain match grade jacketed bullets will always shoot and clean just as well as any bbl (rough or not) using Moly treated bullets. It's just a different path to the same point.

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Regards,

Edited April 14, 2005 by George