45 ACP, Glock and Lead Bullets

[Marco Califo]

My fast lead loads did not work out. 3 of 3 failed to extract, and there are dark smudges in the Glock polygon bore. End of test. my 45 plated loads have worked fine.
So, I am shopping for a Lone Wolf Alpha rifled barrel, for future lead loadings, which will be slower.

HDC shows Winchester 231 was one of the slowest powders used for 45 ACP
185 GR. HDY JSWC, so I think that is apples to oranges, compared to CFE Pistol.

Manufacturer Powder Grs. Vel. (ft/s) Pressure Grs. Vel. (ft/s) Pressure

Hodgdon 700-X 4.9 873 14,000 CUP 5.5 959 17,100 CUP
Hodgdon 800-X 7.1 883 13,600 CUP 7.9 991 16,700 CUP
Hodgdon CFE Pistol 7.1 1,008 15,800 PSI 8.1 1,139 19,700 PSI
Hodgdon Clays 4.5 855 14,500 CUP 4.9 981 17,400 CUP
Hodgdon HP-38 5 762 12,000 CUP 5.9 906 15,800 CUP
Hodgdon HS-6 8.6 888 12,200 CUP 9.5 996 16,800 CUP
Hodgdon Longshot 7.2 919 11,300 CUP 8.2 1,044 17,000 CUP
Hodgdon Titegroup 5 892 14,600 CUP 5.5 956 17,000 CUP
Hodgdon Titewad 3.5 754 14,900 PSI 4.2 887 19,400 PSI
Hodgdon Universal 6 908 13,100 CUP 6.4 977 16,800 CUP
Winchester 231 5 762 12,000 CUP 5.9 906 15,800 CUP
Winchester 244 5.5 915 15,000 PSI 6.2 1,022 19,600 PSI
Winchester 572 6.7 930 17,200 PSI 7.7 1,036 20,000 PSI
Winchester AutoComp 6.7 856 12,600 CUP 7.4 958 16,200 CUP
Winchester WSF 6.8 886 13,400 CUP 7.5 981 17,400 CUP
Winchester WST 4.4 794 14,100 CUP 4.9 866 16,500 CUP

 

[Nathan]

Glock has to make those warnings for their average users. Their average user shoot, wipes off the end of the slide and puts it away to be shot again with the lowest quality of ammo available in the universe at any given time.

If you do stuff like clean it or shoot slightly decent ammo, the warnings may not apply to you.

This is why, even with USA….Universal Safe Action, they have to write in their manual that there are no safeties in the gun that will keep it from shooting you, if the trigger is depressed by any means.

 

[ChimpMunk20]

Before coated I shot lubed lead bullets in my stock Glocks. Just clean more often. The poly rifling tends to strip lead more so than conventional & pressures go up with a leaded bore. Then some try to shoot the lead out by chasing with a jacketed & that is usually where it all goes bad. Would I still do it today, sure, but with coated I dont have to clean anymore than if shooting jacketed.

 

[Marco Califo]

So, after the 3 shot test, I disassembled the G30. There were "smudges" in the bore closest to the firing chamber. I ran my 45 bore snake through with some CLP. That "seemed" to clear up the barrel, but bore snakes don't gauge cleanliness. I rolled up a half sheet of paper towel, wetted each time with CLP, twisted it and stuck it through the bore repeatedly twisting and pushing to , and got some grayish-black residue. Another dry paper towel came through twice, clean. I "think" the barrel is lead free now. I plan to shoot one 230 FMJ, and repeat the above cleaning process.
Lone Star Alpha barrels (not threaded for California) are out of stock. I will wait for that rifled barrel before trying lead in the G30 again. Probably start with slower loads, too.

 

[Unclenick]

All the 1911 45 Auto barrels I have owned got a little lead smudging in the rifling corners near the throat, but it's small and doesn't seem to be any worse after 3000 rounds without cleaning than it did after the first fifty or so. I've seen at least one photo of a polygon barrel that had that crud pretty much all the way down the bore in the "corners" of the polygon. That, in turn, caused bullets to start stripping, and that, in turn, can lead to a very rapid additional build-up. One fellow had his gun shooting just fine for several hundred rounds, and then in the course of just one magazine, he suddenly got heavy case pregnancy bulges and extraction failures and bullet keyholing. So while it is popular to dismiss the warning as meaningless safety over-reach, I think that person's experience makes it easy to see that people who don't fire hundreds of rounds at a session and who clean after every session might never see an issue and that some might never see it anyway. It's almost like an oddly random event that the dangerous build-up starts, so there's no way to be sure you'll get it, but no way to be sure you won't, either.

If you want to get lead out completely, I've found Wipe Out maker's NO LEAD cleaner works reasonably well. Short of that, with the old Outer's Foul Out no longer made, probably the best thing is to use either a Lewis Lead Remover or the all-copper Chore Boy strands wrapped around a 38 bore brush to scrub the stuff out. In my youth, we plugged a bore and filled it with mercury and let it amalgamate for fifteen minutes, poured the mercury back into its bottle, and then just brushed the amalgam out easily. Unfortunately, that old method causes tiny mercury beads to come out on the brush bristles and go flying into the air, so it's considered a hazmat-spreading situation to do that now. But NO LEAD also makes the lead a brittle compound after about an hour.

 

[Marco Califo]

Thanks for that UN. I have repeated my cleaning process daily, and am still getting dark gray smears. I will order a bronze brush and cleaner supplies. It is easy enough for me to only use plated and jacketed. I have not fired anything through that barrel, because I am still picking up what I think is lead. This experience has convinced me that I do not want to shoot lead bullets in polygonal bores.

 

[reynolds357]

I have a 45 ACP Glock 30. I have Jacketed, and Plated Bullets, but also have 500 very hard cast (Brinnel 18 - 22) in 185 and 200 grains.
Glocks come with polygonal bores, and they warn against using Lead bullets, but many people do, with no issues with leading. I have seen other reports of leading problems developing before emptying one magazine.
I am using BE-86 and CFEPistol, at warmish loads (midway between start & max). They should be moving around 1100 fps.
So, am I heading for trouble?
I have been thinking that hard cast bullets are less likely to leave lead in the barrel. Yes, I know barrels are made with normal rifling. That is not my question. My question is about leading in Glock factory barrels.

This is the deal with a Glock. Most people run cast with no problems whatsoever. Some people for some reason run cast and ruin the barrel. Why? I really don't know. Nothing about their bullet or load was indicative of what should have been a problem. My guess is lube. I have run multiple thousand cast bullets through multiple Glocks with no problem. The only problem I have personally had with a Glock barrel was a Gen 2 mod 23. Shooting jacketed bullets, in less than 5k rounds, it turned into a smooth bore. It was a dept owned pistol and Glock warrantied it. It had to be bad steel because none of the other g23 our dept owned did that. Had I shot cast in it Iwould have most definitely blamed it on cast.

 

[akinswi]

Except its extremely difficult to wear out any barrel using any type of cast lead, you would literally have too shoot hundreds of thousands of rounds especially a pistol barrel.

Reynolds,

That’s awesome they warranty the barrel? was it a no nonsense or did they ask you questions?

 

[Jim Watson]

Yup. A friend wore out two PPC .38 barrels with a mere 150,000 rounds of wadcutters each.
They weren't even completely worn out, still shooting pretty well with about 1/3 the length of rifling eroded away and a bulge from a stuck bullet in one of them.

 

[Unclenick]

Yes, lead won't wear a barrel out. The issue with polygons is that some individuals get fouling buildup thick enough to raise pressure unacceptably or else start to see keyholing or both. Why this is more of a potential issue with polygons than with conventional rifling, I don't know. Leading tends to occur at the inside corners of conventional rifling lands due to gas bypass there, and perhaps that happens over a wider space with the polygon. If so, it might be that going to a bullet 0.001" bigger than cast bullets are usually sized, or using gas checks would prevent it. I don't know.

 

[Marco Califo]

"Reynolds,
That’s awesome they warranty the barrel? was it a no nonsense or did they ask you questions?"
Different categories of Glock shooters will get different levels of warranty service. We are talking about service pistols owned by a LE department, likely under a contract. This is Glock's core market (along with global militaries, too). These end users also qualify regularly, so the pistols get shot a lot. These large institutions likely receive warranty service promptly without red-tape. I have been told at least some, and probably many, LE departments have Glock Certified Armorers among their officers and/or staff, specifically supporting department pistols. Compare that to Joe Tin Can Shooter, who would have to answer questions about ammo used, who has worked under the hood, etc., and could wait 2 months for a slide refinish and have to buy his own barrel.

 

[reynolds357]

Except its extremely difficult to wear out any barrel using any type of cast lead, you would literally have too shoot hundreds of thousands of rounds especially a pistol barrel.

Reynolds,

That’s awesome they warranty the barrel? was it a no nonsense or did they ask you questions?

They didn't ask any questions. They did tell me that "the problem I was describing was impossible." They gave Return authorization and it was back in about a week. They even warrantied the G23 that one of our officers tore the frame in half on. She had it under her seat and the rail and seat cut it in half. You can run over it with a M1 tank, but Terry can tear it in half with her electric seat. Go figure.
At that time, we did not have an armorer.

 

[44 AMP]

Lead, being softer than steel won't wear out a steel barrel. Hot powder gas under a few thousand psi pressure, will, given enough time.

Don't know what they would say today, but I do recall something I once read, written by an armory worker back in the 30s, that said they considered a revolver barrel to be good for 30-40,000 rounds before it was worn out from shooting lead bullets.

 

[Marco Califo]

The complication with Glocks is two-fold:
1. Glocks have polygonal rifling. Five or Six flat surfaces spiraling. NOT the usual lands and grooves. The polygonal rifling can have different leading results between polygonal or after-market land and groove barrels which are sold as "drop-in" parts.
2. The polygonal barrel can experience dramatically rapid barrel leading, as in less than one magazine.
The conventional wisdom is to use a land and groove barrel if you want to shoot lead.

 

[GeauxTide]

My favorite load for an ACP is 7.0gr of Unique under a 200 SWC. At 1000fps, I get very little leading and one hole accuracy. Since your warranty is void, get a standard rifled barrel. I got one for my 34 and it's great with 125 SWC.

 

[Unclenick]

If you have a copy of Ed McGivern's book, Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting, he's got before and after groups from a K22 at 200,000 rounds that he then sent for factory rebuilding, including rebarreling. The new barrel's group is no better than the old one's. Light 45 softball target loads have never done anything I can discern to either throat or bore. The target guns shoot loose and need reworking after a time, but actual bore wear isn't something I've never noticed in them.

 

[joelaw99]

Lead reloads

I put lead reloads (mine) 9mm about 1050 fps thru a gen 1 glock 17 over a summer with nothing more than a little streaking that was easily removed.

 

[Nevmavrick]

I use a Tanfoglio which also uses parabolic rifling.
I use, only, lead(cast) bullets. I've used over 12k through mine.
If you keep the diameter .002-.003 larger than the bore, you won't have any trouble with leading.
I don't use pure-lead bullets, but you don't really need very-hard, ie 18-20 Brinell, bullets either.
I used Wheelweight alloy bullets when I could find them, but now that most W-Ws are at least partly zinc, those can be used as they are harder. You'll have to learn to cast partly-zinc bullets though.
Glock just wanted it's customers to not use handloads, and there are no factory lead bullets.
Have fun, Gene

 

[Unclenick]

I've read that Tafaglio uses semi-polygonal rifling, which was described as conventional rifling with the edges of the lands tapered and blended into the grooves. But most of their handguns use "traditional" rifling, and I've not had a chance to look at one of the semi-polygonal bores.

 

[Marco Califo]

The Lone Wolf 45 ACP barrels for Glocks have been out of stock for over 6 months now. Using the recommended bore solvents got the lead out of my Glock barrel.