Cast Lead and Glocks

[rat31465]

Is anyone else shooting cast lead bullets through a stock Glock barrel?

I know that the Polygonal rifling isn't supposed to work well with cast lead but my G17 doesn't exhibit any problems with them.

I shoot a .357" dia 125 gr SWC with acceptable accuracy...so far with almost 1000 rds through it I haven't had any failures to feed other than one which I credit to a bullet not seated to the proper depth.

I am considering an after market barrel swap with square cut rifling in the near future but for now this one seems to be working fine.

[Mark/MO]

Do you experience leading or any other issues? I must admit I've thought of a replacement barrel for my G19s for lead shooting. For IDPA/USPSA it would sure reduce the reloading costs.

[rat31465]

Shortly after starting this thread I got a call from a friend of mine who was having some problems with one of his rifles and asked me to meet him at the range.
I grabbed my pistol and a hundred rounds of my reloads and headed out to meet him.
The problem he was having turned out to be a loose scope mount that was fixed with a little loc-tite and some degreaser.

I loaded up a magazine for my Glock 17 and three rounds in I had a failure. Slide didn't go all the way forward into battery and the round i extracted had a nice little ring of lead around the case mouth. I'll note also here that I use a Redding Taper Crimp die and had a decent bell on the casings mouth when i reloaded the rounds.
I cleared the pistol and a couple of rounds later...exact same thing happened.
Out of 50 rounds I ended up with twelve bad rounds all which looked similiar. This bothered me.

Upon arriving home I tore the gun down to clean, there were no visable signs of either Mechanical troubles or anything else which I could find that would have caused this problem.

As stated in my first post in this thread I have run right at 1000 rounds of the same reloads through this pistol with only one problem round.

Suspecting my reloads to be the cause of the malfunctions I got out my dial calipers and took measurements of the bullets I had recently purchased from my usual supplier. They were marked on the box as 125 gr SWC .357" dia.
Eight out of the ten that I measured actually measured at .358", curious I found the box from the last purchase I had made from the same vendor. the box was marked identical to the new bullets but the bullets left over in the old box actually measured .356"
I pulled the bullets of all the bad rounds and also noticed that the bullet lube was a different color than the previous lot...shouldn't matter there i would think.

I am thinking that when these newly bought bullets were cast that they were ran through the wrong Lubri-sizer? I have never had any such issues with this companies cast lead before but with the supply as it has been I am thinking the rushed some out the door.

My own experience casting lead is limited to lead round ball for a Muzzle loader...so does this sound like a reasonable answer to my problem?

[tpd223]

I saw a guy split the barrel of his G17 in a class. He shot a case of lead bullet reloads, then started to shoot FMJ when he ran out of the RNL.

The barrel was badly leaded and the JHPs being forced down the tube caused enough of a pressure issue the barrel split lengthwise.

Just sayin, make sure the barrel isn't leaded.

[rat31465]

I have read these stories too and I sure do take them into account when I shoot cast through my guns.
I rarely have ran more than a hundred rounds at a time through mine and it gets a thorough barrel scrub once I am through.
That is primarily why I am considering the barrel swap.

[Bimmer]

There's been another thread on this, but I'll repeat what I posted there...

For years I've been shooting virtually exclusively lead bullets through my .40 Glocks (M22s).

I load them pretty light as practice rounds... 5.0gr of Unique under a 155gr RN, or 4.5gr. under a 180gr. SWC.

I've never really seen any signs of leading in the barrel. Sometimes there's a bit of lead built up on the inside of the chamber (where the bullets strike as they chamber), but it doesn't seem to impair function.

After 1,000s of rounds, I've never had any problems.

My cleaning routine is nothing special - I typically tear down my "practice" gun and cursorily clean it with Hoppes 9 and a bronze brush only every 500 rounds or so.
I've got another Glock configured identically as my SHTF pistol, and it stays clean.

YMMV,

Bimmer

[KellyTTE]

I run 9mm dry-film coated lead bullets from Precision Bullets which shoot very accurately, but I did run into a fouling issue with them using Titegroup. When I first ordered the bullets, I didn't notice the little caveat at the bottom of Precision's page about powders like Titegroup. Apparently the high nitro content burns hotter than other powders and causes excessive fouling, which I have run into.

From what I've been researching, lead hardness and powder burn rate seem to be the biggest factors in fouling issues, so keep those factors in mind as you shoot reloads.

[tpd223]

I'm not talking about stories, I'm talking about a guy standing next to me with a blown up pistol.

We had a S&W 66 in our armory when I took over as rangemaster, had a bulged barrel from getting leaded up badly and then someone getting lazy and deciding to shoot JHPs through it to "clean out the lead".

As afrr as shooting lead bullets in Glocks in particular, or handguns in general, I wasn't sayin don't do it. I was just saying, be aware of the issues.

Carry on.

[TomMcC]

I think I came pretty close to blowing up a G23 some years back by shooting moly coated lead reloads ( my reloads). Things started off pretty well, but by the time I finished shooting a couple hundred rounds, the recoil became very stout. I stopped shooting, and looked over the gun, then the barrel. Couldn't see any of the rifling for the last 1.5 inches of the barrel. I never did that again.

[ARx3]

I've been shooting lead bullets through my stock barrels since 2001. I use 140gr. Bushwacker RNF and Precision 155gr. RNF in my G-22's and Precision 200gr. RNF in my G-21SF,G-30SF,G-37,G-38. I load the .40's with 6.0grs. Vihti-N-340 and the .45ACP and .45GAP with 3.9-4.2grs of Clays over CCI primers. I normally shoot around 300 rounds at a GSSF match but have gone through as many as 500-600 rounds in a Defensive Handgun class while training before cleaning. My cleaning procedure consists of 2-wet patches of Kroil followed by .45 brass chamber brush,followed by a patch of JB's non embedding bore paste, followed by 2 more wet Kroil patches. I finish up with 2- dry patches then 1 patch with 10-12 drops of KG-6 moly bore prep, let it set for 5 min. then 1-dry patch. It has worked well for me the past nine years .

[Heavy Metal]

.357?

9mm bullets are supposed to be .355.

[rat31465]

For the most part .355" is the correct dia for 9mm bullets if Jacketed.

Casters often over size the bullets some to help ensure a better seal.
I have been using .357 dia bullets in 9 mm and .38 Super for more than 20 years.
I use them in the glock since the polygonal rifling upsets the bullets shape rather than cut into as with square cut rifling methods.
I believe that this is why I have had good results with cast lead in the Glock.