Yuku free message boards

Lead: Prove it!

The reason for the completely jacketed/plated bullet purchase is some people are convinced that the exposed lead of a standard FMJ will be vaporized during firing and enter the air and their lungs.

Now, as a long-time cast bullet maker/shooter, I have recovered many cast bullets and the base of the recovered bullets was NOT any different than before firing, so any vaporizing must be micro amounts. I even read a couple of decades ago, in Handloader magazine I believe, that one of the testers marked the base of the bullets with thermo-activated wax to determine what temperature the base actually saw during firing (remember, there is a large “heat sink” of lead in every bullet). Recovered bullets still had the wax and the wax had not changed color to indicate any high temperature.

Also, I have been firing cast lead bullets through compensators for over 30 years and have NEVER had any lead build up in the compensator. Some may, but I haven’t.

Personally, I gave up on FMJ bullets decades ago and if not firing my own or commercial cast bullets, I go right to JHPs. They are more accurate, almost every single time. I know that most shooters don’t care about accuracy, since low-smoke and cleanliness is how they judge their shooting (snark, snark) and whether they can hit really large targets very quickly, but I’ll take the edge every time.

I just started to use jacketed bullets in the last couple of years when commercial cast bullets went up in price enough that the additional cost of jacketed 9mm and .38 bullets were well worth the cost.

Finally, if you aren't ordering 3000+ bullets at a time, you aren’t working very hard at shooting or lowering your costs.