mollycoated bullets

[42769vette]

what does mollycoated bullets do to a barrel. any how do they group i know they group diffrent in every gun im just wanting general experence with them.

[D. Manley]

You're going to get a lot of different opinions on this so I'll save mine. All said & done though, the moly thing has (for the most part) pretty well came and gone.

[42769vette]

ya i did a search and got nothing conculsive. someone offered to give my 25 bullets just to try. they are 243 55gr nosler and i was mainly concerted with the affect they would have on my barrel. the barrel only has about 30 rounds through it so it isn't broke in yet. i plan to use it in small competition shoots and would hate to screw it up.

[D. Manley]

SCHUEMANN BARRELS has some good information on moly use and it's effects that can be summed up by his quote:

"In precision rifle shooting the mild polishing action of the moly disulphide, which is beneficial to precision rifles, will wear out our barrels prematurely."

Some shooters believe moly to be a lubricant but I've read that moly's original purpose was as an anti-galling compound and thus, actually tends to polish the bore. As I said originally, this is one of those things that have strong opinions on both sides but the popularity of moly has waned considerably. What the decline actually means...who knows?

[wingman]

I basically destroyed(in my view) a 45acp barrel using moly so that was the end of using coated bullets. While it continued to shoot accurate it looked terrible somewhat like an old steel water pipe with rust,I need shiny clean barrels.

[James R. Burke]

I found that I got really good results with the groups, but it was not muck of a difference. It was a hard to remove from the barrel, so I stopped using them, and just went back to my regular stuff. To much hassle for me when I was done shooting. Just my opion.

[brickeyee]

It was a hard to remove from the barrel...

There is no reason to actually remove it.
That is probably part of the reason many people could not get it to work (while plenty of others did).

Once the molly is in the barrel the goal was to keep it there.

It is not an abrasive, but an extreme pressure lubricant.
It does reduce barrel friction, since extra powder will be required to get the velocity back up compared to non-molly coated bullets.

The extra powder needed is a more likely cause of barrel wear than the molly itself.

[totalloser]

Some of the marketing claims are really misleading. The reduction in friction does little for "barrel wear" as the rifling only wears out to any meaningfull level at the throat of the chamber. And this wear is not from friction, but from flame erosion, which the moly won't fix.

I got all the bs to tumble moly on my bullets, and after playing around with it, I determined it to be a complete waste of time for my application. I only shoot semis, and found no improvement in accuracy. And what a mess! I also found measureable changes in bullet weight from the moly building up more on some projectiles. Particularly in the recess behind the boat tail, and in the cannelure.

[Unclenick]

The process was originally developed and patented by the late Roger Johnston at NECO. He worked with Merrill Martin on it some, too. His method is licensed to Sierra and Norma and Berger. Works fine. No build-up; very significant metal fouling reduction, IME, and improved long range accuracy and slight effective B.C. improvement due to better bullet self-alignment in the throat. The lowered start pressure means you do need to work the loads up to match non-moly barrel times to get you back into a sweet spot, so there is a powder cost. Most people testing moly against plain bullets don't know to do that. I still use it in some barrels.

The problems for moly began when Wheeler Engineering decided to cheapen the process and ignore the NECO patent and start selling inexpensive moly kits through Midway. Same thing they did with firelapping kits. Wheeler's owner was a lawyer who decided he could tie up NECO in court forever and told them as much, and they decided they didn't make enough money from the patents to fight him over it. Moreover, Wheeler's kit did not use the lab grade moly that NECO's does, skirted part of the patent by not impact plating with shot, left off the carnauba wax overcoat, and didn't recommend the pre-wax tumble to eliminate excess moly. Moreover, as more people copied Wheeler's example and sought to compete on price with moly coating kits, some surplus moly contaminated with iron that had been recovered from metal stamping operations got into the market and initiated rust pitting and damaged the process's reputation. Hornady didn't want to license the process either, and started selling moly-coated bullets with big clumps of excess moly on the bullets and in their boxes. Much of the non-NECO moly is much less expensive and coarser particles than NECO's.

You can easily remove moly with Gunzilla. Just wet the barrel and let it set overnight and patch it out with more Gunzilla. The moly in the barrel is a mix of moly and carbon, and Gunzilla is a carbon cake solvent as well as a gun cleaner. It seems to take it right out of a smooth bore, and a follow up with J-B or Iosso Bore Cleaner will take out any remaining traces.

Sierra ran some tests a few years back in .308 that were published in Precision Shooting. They didn't get an accuracy improvement, but they didn't adjust the charge to compensate, either. They didn't see barrel life improvement, because that really is due to heat exposure in the throat, but they saw no deterioration of the barrels, either. Most of those kinds of claims are just speculation that isn't proven by testing. You can bet that Sierra and Norma and Berger or even Hornady would not continue to sell these coated bullets if barrel damage was being reported caused by them. Usually barrel rust is either from the junk moly or from using mixed combinations of incompatible bore cleaners. Don't ask me how I found out.

[wingman]

Good info guys but for the average shooter moly is not a big gain.