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Posted: 1/22/2004 2:12:23 PM EDT
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Does anyone use them? Are they worth the trouble and expense? How about for those who hate cleaning copper out of barrels? Does the barrel also have to be "coated" or "conditioned" with Moly in order to be effective? (I have a non-chrome lined barrel). Thanks |
| I only use moly in my rifles, yes even semi-auto's (have tried pistol cal's, see no point in the bother for the net gain), have been doing so for about eight years. I reload 95% of everything I shoot, the process is easy, using a tumbler. I swab the bores of the rifles after cleaning with a wet moly patch. Cleanup seems to be much easier, less fouling, higher velocities. |
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FWIW A couple of shooting buddies and I were discussing the pros and cons of Moly coated bullets one day and none of us could agree on anything. We decided to put it to the test and see what actually happened. We actually kept some pretty good data but I don't have it on this computer so I will paraphrase and condense it. 1. Cleaning: We fired 100 rounds of .223 moly in an AR. Non-chromed barrel. We than ran a brass brush through the barrel 5 times. We ran 1 patch soaked in hoppe's #9. we than ran dry patches through it until they came out clean. We repeated this with 100 rounds of non-coated. Results: Moly-coated = 6 patches. Non-coated = 10 patches 2. Fouling: This most likely applies to gas operated guns only. We did notice a slightly moist buildup of little round droplets of moly on the bolt and inside the upper. It had no noticable affect on performance but it did make the bolt and reciever slightly more dirty. 3. Velocity: Here is where it would be helpful for me to be able to show you the data, but here is what we found. We crono'd every round fired and we single loaded each round so each following round would not be affected by rifle action or chamber heat. We also let each round sit in the chamber for 5 seconds before firing. Moly coated ranged 20 to 55 FPS faster than the fastest non-coated round we fired. All non-coated rounds were within 20 FPS of each other. Here is the strangest part of the test. Moly-coated rounds had a large variance in velocity. We would fire 2 to 3 rounds at approximatly the same FPS and then would suddenly get a jump of +30 FPS. We would fire a couple more and get either a drop or a spike in velocity. There was no pattern to the drop or increase in these variances. I'm sure this will result in some interesting discussion as to why this happens. 4. Accuracy: No discernable difference in accuracy at 100 yards. Keep in mind, these are not scientific results, just the best 4 guys (that had nothing better to do) could do with what we had in our back yard. I did not adress barrel wear since I don't have the money or time to shoot 20,000 rounds of each to verify wear. :-) To sum it all up, I (we) don't see any true benifits in moly bullets. I am sure others will have different experiences and recommendations. Just my .02 worth. YMMV |
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