Hi-Tek Versus Traditional Wax Lube

First topic message reminder :

I'm curious what your experiences are comparing the two. Accuracy, leading, reloading ease, barrel wear...

Honestly my only experience with coated bullets was some 38 super bullets I tried from Missouri bullet Co. I didn't have great accuracy out of that pistol with anything but noticed what I though was an unpleasant odor when shooting from I guess the coating either burning or just getting hot. 

I do like the idea of less buildup on the dies and possibly less leading of the bore.

PhotoEscape wrote:

S148 wrote:

PhotoEscape wrote:I'd love to know what caused two out of 10 ring shots.  Dave's testing protocol is impeccable, so it must of been something with variations during loading.

Does anyone know trajectory of 38 DEWC out to 25 and 50 yards? 

AP

Maybe that's how that barrel shoots that ammo.  That's what the target says.

Ammunition is under no obligation to meet our expectations or assumptions.

One could extend your question to ask why those shots in the 10 ring were not in the X ring. Was that also caused by something with variations during load?  See what I'm saying? The target is the data. But it's only one target. Another target with the same ammo would almost certainly produce a different result, and it's anybody's guess what that result would be. Larger? Smaller?

I respectfully disagree with your approach to answering my questions.  As Mr. Wilson stated verbatim: "I have noted about a dozen postings with no empirical data." in his post, your answer falls in the same category.  Mr. Wilson provided factual target, and supplemented it with chronograph data.  As such we have something tangible to analyze, although we can only make assumptions in answering my first question.  Very specifically chrono data shows relatively low Standard Deviation number - 13.7, yet Extreme Spread is 53.1.  With average velocity being 696.4 we have couple of stand out shuts to either + and - direction, specifically 720.7 & 711.6 (+), and 667.6 & 673.3 (-).  However my second question has no relationship to any particular barrel.  It is well known fact that each caliber has its own trajectory, with same pattern exhibited regardless of the barrel shut was fired from.  Very specifically projectile will rise first and then arch down.  Leaving a side variables like shape of the projectile, and all others but velocity, I'm interested to learn in what phase round in question finds itself at 50Y mark, is it still rising or already descending.  That is the nature of my second question about trajectory of 38WC round.  Since trajectory is a function of velocity, and correlating with the fact that we adjust our dots down when changing from 50Y to 25Y, I tend to think that all our rounds are on descend at 50Y.  Hence my assumption would be that two rounds in question would be those of the lowest recorded velocities. 

I'm interested to learn what you think of my analyses above.

AP

First, something for clarity: the rising and falling you describe is due to the line of sight intersecting two points in the bullet's trajectory. The bullet does not rise after it leaves the barrel. It starts to drop as soon as it leaves the barrel due to gravity. 

One of the two rounds outside the 10 ring is to the right, but not lower than a bunch of other hits that were in the 10 ring, so bullet drop due to its assumed slower (or faster) speed does not clearly describe its behavior. And the lowest hit is on the left-ish side of the hits, so if two odd velocity shots (2 high or 2 low) account for those two hits, it's having an opposite effect. 

Folks can calculate the bullet drop due to different projectile speeds at this link if they have to desire to do so:  www.jbmballistics.com  Still, even if the numbers match with the hits outside the 10 ring, it doesn't mean that those were the shots. Correlation does not equal causation. It requires one to specifically identify those two shots and their velocity. And even then, it would have to be repeated many, many times to ensure a causal relationship. 

With respect to data, the link below has lots of data showing that 15-shot groups fired with the same ammo do not have the same size. They can be close to three times different in size, and that's with the gun in a Ransom Rest. Also, there does not appear to be any association of group size with velocity standard deviation. That is, smaller velocity spreads don't make smaller group sizes. That hypothesis was tested in the article, and it was tested two times, first with a sample of twenty 15-shot groups, and then again with a sample of twelve 15-shot groups using a different load. Dave showed us a sample of one. Other samples could produce different sizes and distributions.  While it is tempting to say the two hits outside the 10 ring are the ones with odd velocities, it is speculation and remains to be demonstrated. I've Ransom Rested a lot of rounds and have tried to correlate hits with velocity. I've not seen anything that makes that association. 

https://americanhandgunner.com/handguns/exclusive-consistent-velocity-accuracy/

One more thing. Shift the rings a little to the right and now all but one is outside the 10 ring. What does that mean? It means there is a little arbitrariness/bias in how we're looking at the hits.

You also have to remember that the bullets were hand cast. Very likely there were small defects not apparent.

My experience is with yhe Hi-Tek coated bullets i have used the 180 glay based and the 242s 160 flat base in both traditional lubed and coated. I used the 180s at the SL for quite a whilenwith excellent results. These are Summers bullets...no real testing at 50. Jon had an.excellent target offhand at 50nwith the same bullet.from Brazos.

My 160s were tested at 50.. for an example of one kkm barreled gun the traditional lubed bullets were slightly better than the Hi-tek.  both held around 2" but the lubed bullets patterned more.consistantly. those bullets.were hand cast so somewhat of a difference. All the bullets were inspected for perfect bases and shoulders. 



Hi-teks are great. Zero leading. Reduced smoke..dies stay clean. The only time I noticed the smell was indoors. Cleaning generally only requires a couple of patches pushed through.

I've coated some of my own bullets with the hi-tek and it does take some time and experience to get the process perfect. Brazos does an excellent job coating.

I have tried the Brazos HiTek coated 45s in a variety of weights.  Overall, I experienced more frequent reliability problems, primarily failures to fully go into battery as compared to traditional lube.  I can't explain the reasons why as they were loaded to same powder charges and OALs.  My theory is that the traditional lube bullet nose is more slippery going up into the chamber and less likely to bind.  I also believe that my experience is gun specific so would encourage use of the trial packs and trials before buying in bulk.  I will say the HiTek bullet coating was excellent and made for easier reloading.  I didn't do any comparative accuracy testing but didn't see any noticeable differences at the short line.

Greetings,

I recently started to shoot twenty shot groups as they offer more information.

Notice the majority of the shots are trying to hold the X-ring.

The errant shots, in my opinion, are defects in the bullet. Do remember that these bullets were hand cast.

There are many defects that can afflict a cast bullet. Air pockets, base not sharp, mould did not close fully producing a "fat" bullet, driving bands not filled out, precision of the sizing process, uniformity of the coating, the list goes on.

Personally, I was impressed with the group and it made me search my stash of moulds for my RCBS 38-140 WC. I did find it and, time allowing, I will try to duplicate the results.

By the way, if you test enough ammo, even Commercial loaded ammo will send one shot out of the group every once and a while.

The quest for "one-hole groups" continues.....

Cheers,

Dave

The hi-tek coating process requires two coats of the bullet, heating and then resizing. Its possible to miss the sizing( i know) and you are left with an oversized bullet.. can't say I've experienced this with Brazos. Much more work than simply running the bullet thru a star lub unit.

I'd check your crimp using the coated bullets

Dave that group is easily the best I've ever seen with double ended wadcutters. They were always short line practice ammo for my wifes 52

I don't have the level of expertise a lot of you have but I have shot many 1000's of rounds of Bayou 185 grain swc coated bullets with very few issues, I use 3.8 grains of Bulleye and crimp at .464=465.  From sandbags the gun will put 5 shots in a group that is just above an inch, For some reason my offhand groups are bigger.  I have been very pleased with how clean the barrel is after shooting many rounds despite all the soot bulleye leaves behind in the gun itself.  I would say at least for 25 yards they are worth a try.

Just ran 100 Brazos coated 160's through my gun with zero issues. It was at 50ft so i can't comment on accuracy but it was nice not having to see through the cloud of lube smoke. Dardas for instance ran great but that blue lube.....the RO at my indoor range won't miss the clouds.

A few months ago I compared T&B 32 ACP bullets with and without HI-Tek coating in my RR at 50y. Dr.Don subsequently did  a similar comparo. I found the Hi-Tek coated bullets superior in pretty much everything. A little more accurate, no leading, cleaner, etc. At virtually the same cost as the non coated bullets, it is a no brainer.

jglenn21 wrote:The hi-tek coating process requires two coats of the bullet, heating and then resizing. Its possible to miss the sizing( i know) and you are left with an oversized bullet.. can't say I've experienced this with Brazos. Much more work than simply running the bullet thru a star lub unit.

I'd check your crimp using the coated bullets

The sizer pushes the bullet through the die then it drops through a hole in the mounting table into a catch bucket below.  There is no way that an unsized bullet gets in there unless somebody puts it in the bucket.  So I'm going to say that although, its a one in a million kind of chance, it's mostly impossible.

I just did a quicky 50yd sandbag test of the Brazos coated 200gr SWC.  Had one flyer and the remaining 9 went into 2.65".  Again, this was a handheld sandbag group with a 2 moa dot.  No smell and no smoke.

I've been using lots of the T&B coated 64gr SWC in 32acp at 25yds.  Works good and no issues.

Steve

I've been through over 2000 of your 160s and never had an issue.. the unsized one I ran into was my own ..  you all do a great job on the coating!!