Alloy Question

[Kurt]

Thanks Jim and again Kurt.

Kurt, your statement about "tinning the bore" is intriguing. I got away with the 97/1.5/1.5 with my 38 caliber NASA, which has a long nose; I got away with it insofar as accuracy went but I did have some leading. Thought I might size it differently to see if it helped but now I'm wondering if that was the issue or if it was the alloy.

Hard to say John. Lead in it's self is sort of a lubricant and it takes tin or other elements added to it for hardening and this makes a solder and it's mostly the tin that does the smearing. Try to use pure lead and a torch to make the lead stick to metal or even copper, you will have a hard time making it stick. I think what causes barrel leading is a clean dry bore shot with a lead/tin bullet that has a clean dry nose that gets set back and makes contact with that clean dry bore. Also if you check the bore from the chamber forward with a bore scope after the first shot fired you might see that the 45 degree chamber end has rubbed off alloy and it gets smeared forward with other shots following if your lube fails
Another thing I have found. A frosted bullet that was cast to hot seems to smear the dry bore faster then a unfrosted bullet. The frosting is the tin, like you see in galvanizing sheet metal.
But I might be wrong. I cant verify all this for sure.