On the topic of coated bullets...anyone care to share thoughts and experiences? Moly, Danzac/WS2 (tungsten disulfide), HBN (boron nitride), etc. -Al
Al, I’m sure you were around when the big coating craze hit back in the lat 1990’s. Just about every other post on Benchrest.com was something about coatings. Was it good, bad, which was best, etc.
One bullet maker, Jeff Fowler, even told his buyers that if he caught them coating his bullets, he would’ve sell them any more.
Back then, Moly and Danzac seemed to be the coating of choice. Some people played around with that white stuff, (can’t remember the name), that scorers hated because it didn’t leave that classic black border around the bullet hole.
The big winners were the manufacturers who pushed it, Berger in particular. If you bought that yellow box with 100 bullets, they would get $1 extra if you wanted them coated. Since it cost Pennie’s to coat 100 bullets, that was a big money maker.
The biggest selling point was you could skip cleaning as often. However, the tune was different. If you did clean, it took four or five coated rounds to get the barrel back. A local here in Houston was set up to coat with moly, I drank the cool aid, until Jeff said to cease.
I think it ran its course, because I cannot name one shooter around here that uses coated bullets. Maybe it is big in F class, Precision Rifle, or ELR, or some other disciplines where shooters do not have the opportunity to clean as often as Short Range Competitors.
In the end, I think coatings are a clever solution to a non existent problem.