Plated Commercial Bullets

[Winelover]

Anyone have any experience with these types of bullets? Should they be treated as jacketed or cast, in terms of optimizing size selection? For instance Berry's offers the same profile bullet for 9mm (.356 dia) as they do for .38 caliber (.357 dia.)............ intended use is a 9mm carbine that I size to .358 diameter for conventional cast. They also offer a "thick plate" option for speeds up to 1500 fps, which is the way I would go for the higher carbine speeds. Also concerned with recovery of bullets, in terms of remelting and or contamination of my recovered range lead. Is there any downsides?

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

Good morning

I have shot a lot of extreme plated bullets in the standard thickness coating.
I have used the 40 cal 180 fp and the
9mm 124 rn.
The loads I have used are middle of the road jacketed and they have all shot with great accuracy in pistol and carbine.
No extra fouling, and no jacket stripping.
My powder choice was hp38 only because I ran into a sweet deal and bought 16# of it.
So far it has worked out quite well.
I worked up loads that would shoot well in all guns used for just bulk plinking ammo.
I am sorry I have no answer for you on sizing I just went with the size they offered and the results were good enough that I seen no reason to expiriment.

My self defense loads are taylored to the gun for accuracy and I use different bullets.

Have a good day
Max

 

[Gary]

Shot a lot of Rainier plated and never had a problem. Quality plated bullets.

 

[fiver]

I have shot a lot of plated bullets too.
when I was doing light commercial and some custom cast bullet work back in the early-mid 90's I started carrying plated bullets as kind of a supplement to the cast bullets for those guys that freaked out about shooting lead in their 9mm's.
[weirdo's reloading the 9mm for their custom 1+K guns and blowing through 4-500 rounds a weekend then worrying about a little antimony wash]

anyway re-melting them is no big deal but you will suck some of the copper into your lead alloy.
not a bad thing but too much can pose some serious problems.
[if you want more copper in the alloy toss some tin in the melt, and run some wax fire on top it will help pull more in the mix]
melt them as one batch and then add that alloy into your other alloy.
the core material most company's use is quite soft [near or is pure] lead so that along with the bit of copper I got re-melting them using it to cut other alloy is how I go about it.

as far as diameter I was using 311 in my 308 rifle and had got the speed up to 36grs of 4895 with enough accuracy to easily hit baseballs at 100 yards, and golf balls were in serious trouble with the load.
I use 308 in the 30 carbine with regular data, and 356 works in the 9mm fine but I wasn't going quite full jacketed speeds there.
in the 45 acp's I just use jacketed data and 451 diameter never gave me any grief.

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

They reclaim just dandy the plating usually breaks on impact and the lead just melts right out.

 

[RBHarter]

You'll gain copper .......

 

[Ian]

I've used Rainier 230 Ball a good bit in 45 ACP, excellent bullets, best of both worlds really for target. They obturate the bore like cast but don't lead...or copper foul like normal jax. VERY accurate, too.

 

[Winelover]

Thanks, that's the kind of information I'm after. My dilemma is what size? Same bullet weight and profile is available in .356 or .357 diameter..............should they be treated as a cast or jacketed when choosing? Currently, sizing cast to .358 and using a gas check to keep the minimal leading at bay.

 

[Brad]

I would go .357. The plating isn't real thick so they act a bit like a cast bullet.

I melt down hundred of pounds of them each year. Never had an issue. Just wish my club has more 45 shooters and fewer 380 shooters.

 

[Ian]

The ones I used were groove diameter. They're fairly soft antimonial lead and will seal well without being oversized. I don't know if there is a probability of scraping off the copper in the throat if the bullet is too big, but it seems logical. At high pressure, one tick above groove might be advisable as long as there is at least some taper to the throat. I actually took what I learned from the plated bullets and applied it to powder coated ones, in a lot of ways the plating and pc behave the same way and respond favorably to similar treatment.

 

[Winelover]

Ordered Berry's "thick plate" 9mm (.356 dia) bullets. Seems their 38/357 caliber bullets aren't available in "thick plate". Berry's states that their standard plated bullets are good up to 1250 fps and the "thick plate" are good up to 1500 fps. Checked the Lab Radar printouts and all of my carbine loads are much higher than 1250 fps.

Extreme and Rainier bullets are only available in .355 diameter.

 

[fiver]

give e'm a try.
I run them through the 30 carbine like they are jacketed.
the plated just seem to be in halfway land, sized about half way, speeds about half way with some here and there exceeding or failing with our expectations.

 

[358156 hp]

I always wondered if adding a few plated bullets to my mix might add some copper to the alloy. Now I have my answer.

Thanks fiver...

 

[GRMPS]

Berry's 32 cal Plated bullets size down from .312 to .309 in an NOE size die just like Powder or HiTek coated bullets with no damage to the copper.