Glock factory barrels Lead Bullets

[dahermit]

If you scrub the barrel with Chore Boy every 100rd or so it should be ok.

Did you mean, if the barrel becomes leaded?

[Grey_Lion]

Originally Posted by Marco Califo

I have heard of extreme cases of leading becoming a barrel obstruction.

This I have never heard of.....

Here's what my leaded GLOCK .40 barrel looks like typically - appx 100 rds of cast lead - wheel weights - see attachment 1.

And this is what I use to clean the leading out completely - see attachment 2. - I make my own .40 JHPs using a 9mm piece of brass as the bullet jacket. 2 of my swaged JHPs clear out the lead because of the ejector rim on the swaged bullet scraping it out.

[Unclenick]

Those cases of damage are where the pressure gets high. It has happened. Again, statistically the likelihood is limited, but it has been reported by some. It also may be a slightly different mechanism than I supposed. Bad leading may have to come first. It is, as Allan Jones points out in this article, most often a matter of gas bypass. That has little effect on jacketed bullets, so perhaps the random nature of the problem is about bullet fit. Also, some people run lead bullets hotter than others or not hot enough, as he gives an example of.

Up until the mid-1980s, I used to "clean" lead from barrels with jacketed bullets. I hadn't heard any of the warnings that the practice could result in high pressures. Then one day I bought a stainless steel bore brush to attack stubborn lead with (I also quickly abandoned them when I learned how hard they could be on barrels). But I discovered that after I had patched out a jacketed bullet "cleaned" barrel and got it to look all smooth and shiny when held up to a light source, that if I then ran the stainless brush through it suddenly had all these dull gray patches appear in it. That was lead that had been ironed into the bore by the jacketed bullet, reacting to its passage the way a super-heavy grease might do, being plowed through and burnished hard into the bore.

That hard ironing is also the cause of pressure spikes. In the same article I linked to, above, Allan Jones says that during his years at CCI/Speer he saw a lot of guns damaged by that practice.

A Big "No-No"

How many times have you thought it easier to shoot the lead out with a jacketed bullet? Well, don't even think about it. In extreme cases, this can cause irreparable damage. I've seen revolver barrel throats deformed and thin-walled barrels bulged. Either means a new barrel.

Allan Jones

This is the kind of advice that is almost always met by anecdotally-based derision. "I've been doing this for forty years without a problem." But that's the kind of thing that is only true until one day it isn't. And often that day doesn't happen to the fellow advocating the method but to some other unsuspecting fellow who owns a gun that is either weaker or looser in fit so that it leads more heavily. In any event, due to the damaged guns Jones has seen it cause, it cannot be recommended on the board without appropriate warning that it also could destroy your barrel.

[Grey_Lion]

I'm not disagreeing with you Unclenick -

A standard jacketed round will do naught but spread and smooth leading out.

It's the ejector ring / grove on my custom swaged JHPs that strips out the leading. A significant distinction, in my experience.

[Unclenick]

I get the idea, but the problem is the radiused ogive will do the same ironing and spreading ahead of the ring picking lead up, so I would expect the pressure issue to be the same on the first shot even if the end cleaning result is better. It would be interesting to run a pressure gauge on a barrel while doing this. I've also wondered before if one took a semi-jacketed bullet and cut it off and chamfered it at the leading edge of the jacket if that wouldn't scrape the lead off pretty well. But I'd be firing it at low pressure, just to be sure.

[J.G. Terry]

Can lead build up to blow up a gun? I have seen some terrible leading. It looks like the fouling builds up to a point. I have heard of heavy lead build up in front of the chamber. Also lead build up on top of the lands. The lead builds up to significant smaller than bore diameter. These reports come from those running circles with hair afire. You can kinda sort through and figure who's making unattributed quotes from the net and those who successfully load lead bullets in Glock's. I personally think any normally safe gun that is blown up had to do with faulty cartridges as in a double charge or similar.

Addendum: My G21 shoots semi-cutters like a champ. That would 452460. No problem with lead. Also, for 40S&W and 10mm the Lyman 401638 runs very well in my G23.4 and G20.3. Wheel weights are too soft-water quench.

[Unclenick]

It will raise pressure if it gets thick enough. That's the whole deal with the Glock polygonal barrel concern. If you have a barrel that doesn't support the case well at the back of the chamber (1911, original Glock barrels, etc.) once the pressure gets high enough, it will blow the case open at the unsupported area. That burst can do some damage. Much of it is to the remaining rounds in the magazine, but it also cracks the grip panels and can damage your eyes if you aren't wearing glasses, as gas and bits of brass get blown out the back through the gaps in the slide and frame fit. It's not normally the barrel splitting or the slide coming apart, but a polymer frame can be split by it. it's a pretty rude surprise to experience, I can tell you. In rifles such damage is worse because of the cartridge making a larger volume of gas.

The concern with Glocks is the reported tendency to shoot lead perfectly fine until all of a sudden, within the space of one magazine full, it goes from just fine to being so badly fouled that a case bursts, and does that with no warning and no prior history of a problem. It is mentioned as true under Urban Legends, true or false at the end of this article. This is what got Lone Wolf barrels a customer base, in good part; conventionally rifled barrels for people wanting to shoot lead in their Glocks without concern. Also because shooting lead bullets in Gen 1 through 4 barrels voided the warranty (I don't know if that's the case for Gen 5, which has different rifling that reminds me a little of ratchet rifling). LWD's comments are here.

The late Gale McMillan comments that if you ever tried lapping a polygonal barrel (with a soft lead lap) you would understand exactly why they are prone to lead fouling accumulation, though he felt harder alloys were less concern (see the bottom of this).

The problem is a little like slamfires in military rifles. Lots of people never experience one, but they do happen anyway, on occasion. I was present for one that happened with military ball ammo, so even using the right primers properly seated doesn't always let you escape the issue.

[Chainsaw.]

Shot thousands of cast lead bullets that were powder coated with not one single issue through glocks. I still clean my guns occasionally, not anal retentively, the bores still only take one patch to be bright shiney clean. All this dispite all of the post on all of the forums across all of the internet pontificating that some where, some one, knew a guy who had the opposite experience of mine.

[J.G. Terry]

Pontification :I'm not sure about this one day lead bullet don't work. My best guess on this situation is the use of store bought conventional lead bullets. When responses are polarized there is some factor missing in the discussion. The main culprit is too soft and/or too small bullets. These latter conditions are a real set up for gas cutting. Basically, if one keeps doing the wrong thing wrong result will happen. Note the consistency of replies of those who successfully use lead bullets. Gotta a LW 10mm barrel for a G20 forsale cheap here.

I'd be willing to shoot 100 rounds in my G20 and mail it to Unclenick for his assessment. This lead bullet warning may be a subtle way of saying no reloads. I have not seen factory ammo for self-feeders lately with lead bullets. Again, If you do not feel safe with lead bullets do not use them.

[Unclenick]

I don't know which bullets are the issue. With regular rifling, there are a lot of examples of soft lead actually producing less leading than hard lead does because the bullet bumps up to seal the bore under pressure better than a hard bullet, thereby preventing gas cutting due to loose fit. In the Glock barrel, though, the issue may be a trade-off between sealing and ease of stripping in the rifling profile. Or it may be none of the above.

This article blames the Tenifer nitriding process rather than the polygonal geometry. He thinks it leaves the surface grabby. He refers to engineering studies of the cause of the problem but doesn't give references to check.

I don't think shooting 100 rounds can be counted on to tell us anything. The reports I've have read claimed everything looked just fine until suddenly, over just a few rounds, all the fouling started to accumulate. It's like it is all good until one round strips for some reason, then the rest strip, too, building up the fouling fast. When that first bullet is going to strip is what is unpredictable. But I don't see how a rough surface explains that. I wish we could access the studies.

[F. Guffey]

A Big "No-No"

How many times have you thought it easier to shoot the lead out with a jacketed bullet? Well, don't even think about it. In extreme cases, this can cause irreparable damage. I've seen revolver barrel throats deformed and thin-walled barrels bulged. Either means a new barrel.

Allan Jones

That does not leave much time for the lead to get out of the way. And I wonder what happens when the bullet decided to pass the lead? And then there was that group that turned the bullet around with the flat base leaving the barrel first.

F. Guffey

[F. Guffey]

If you scrub the barrel with Chore Boy every 100rd or so it should be ok.

I have screens that are designed to sort particles by size, the process is simple, just fill the sieve and shake. I do not have any small particles to sort so I use the screens to remove lead from barrels, I also have some stuff called 'lead out'. I have not seen the lead out for sale in years but I do not believe I will run out anytime soon because of the last sale.

I have shotgun lead removing 'jags?' that allow for screens to be installed. Because the screens are sold in sheets there is no such thing as 'not fitting', and somewhere back in my memory it seems we used speaker cloth, or did we use mesh for speaker cloth, we did not have the Internet.

F. Guffey

[totaldla]

A couple of thoughts:

1. A properly fitting cast bullet will clean the lead buildup out of a barrel too - you don't have to shoot jacketed.
2. Usually there is a bit of experimentation required to find the load recipe that won't lead. My goto in 9mm & 45acp is a relatively slow powder pushing an 18bhn bullet relatively fast. Trying to go fast with a fast powder most always produced flame cutting (i.e. leading in the 1st inch past the chamber).
3. Lubes matter. My favorite was 45/45/10 Lee's alox, Johnson's Paste Wax & mineral spirits. But I usually only bothered tumble lubing 44 mag fodder. I've heard great things about powder coated bullets and they're on my todo list once my current stock is exhausted.
4. Like others, I've shot a lot of lead out of stock Glock barrels.

[Unclenick]

The problem with #1 is the greatest friction occurs between two metal surfaces when they are the same metal. So you get a trace of lead on a barrel and then it grabs more lead, etc, if you don't have some other mechanism preventing that from occurring. However, if the lead sticks to the barrel marginally, it appears that allows gas expulsion to erode it as fast as it tries to build up. I have a number of 45 Auto barrels that never have more than a trace of lead build up around the throat area. That holds true even if I shoot bare cast bullets in them with no lube at all. The thing they have in common is they are all very smooth and have toolmarks only in the taper of the throat.

If the article I linked to is correct, though, you can't smooth the nitrided Glock bore enough to get there.

[totaldla]

Originally Posted by Unclenick

This article blames the Tenifer nitriding process rather than the polygonal geometry. He thinks it leaves the surface grabby. He refers to engineering studies of the cause of the problem but doesn't give references to check.

Just a bit of game-show trivia, (and I may be wrong), but I think Glock stopped using the Tennifer process after Gen 2.

[Unclenick]

That could be. I'm not a Glock owner yet, so I can only pull from outside resources. We also don't have news about the Gen 5 barrel format's interaction with lead yet. It might be worth corresponding with Glock about all this.