Plated vs Jacketed Bullets: Load Data and Considerations

[Music] reloading with plated bullets can save you money can help you shoot in more places and can help with the characteristics of your loaded ammunition but what about load data we're going to cover that and more in this video [Music] gavin here from ultimatereloader.com i recently had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the folks from barry's manufacturing about reloading considerations for plated bullets the conversation started with the question what load data do i use for plated bullets you've got hardcast lead data and you've got jacketed data you don't frequently see plated load data well we got into that discussion i'm going to cover all that in this video but i also learned some other things about plated bullets what to look for specifically and so on and so forth but first let's talk about berries manufacturing berries manufacturing was founded in 1961 it is a third generation family usa business they make their bullets in the usa they're here in the usa awesome stuff plated bullets are barry's primary product offering but they also offer other products like the qd500 vibratory tumbler that we just showed on the channel so let's talk about plated bullets plated bullets offer many of the benefits of jacketed bullets but at a lower price point and one of the key things to note about plated bullets when you compare them to hard cast lead bullets or hybrid bullets that might have an exposed lead base for instance but are jacketed is the fact that they encapsulate the lead and if you're shooting indoors this is a big factor there are gases that are expelled when you shoot ammunition if there's exposed lead you're going to get lead gas in the air some indoor ranges won't even let you shoot ammunition that features bullets that have exposed lead so the encapsulation of the lead on the bullet is definitely an important factor also there are certain characteristics like accuracy that can be improved compared to hard cast lead bullets when you have this plating so plated bullets in general are preferred over hard cast lead bullets because they have improved characteristics and they're also more affordable than jacketed bullets but offers many of those same relative benefits when i was talking to the folks at berry's manufacturing there were two key considerations that they raised that you need to think about when you're loading ammunition with plated bullets the first is staying under the velocity threshold if you look at the berries manufacturing product pages for bullets and you click on the considerations for loading you're going to see a maximum velocity listed i'll go over that in more detail in just a moment what happens if you go over that maximum velocity is the bullet stretches and if you could think of this as like a dove bar and you stretch a dove bar the chocolate on the outside will crack and separate just like that i guess in a in a more literal sense with ammunition the plating will do the same thing there's a soft core and there's a brittle exterior which is the copper and if there's too much stretching of the bullet it will separate when the bullet flies out the end of the barrel the plating blows off the bullet deforms and you get bad accuracy and other issues the other issue which is related in terms of what the effect is is over crimping if you crimp a plated bullet too far you will cause a ring cut all the way around the plating and there will be a separation there when the bullet flies out the end of the barrel the plating around that cut line will separate blow off and cause all sorts of problems and if you look at the picture here you can see what over crimping does to a plated bullet if the bullet is pulled and you can see that cut line so what are these velocity ceilings berries has fine control over the thickness of the plating and can vary their process to suit different applications so for normal pistol bullets for example the maximum velocity is about 1250 feet per second and for applications like 9 millimeter or 45 acp that is plenty adequate you're going to be just below that and that helps to keep the cost down okay step up to a magnum cartridge like 44 magnum you need a little bit more velocity capability they can turn up their process a little bit plate those bullets a little bit thicker that's going to result in a maximum velocity of around 1850 feet per second and based on the bullet weights offered by berries you're going to be well under that even with a full house 44 magnum load for instance stepping up to rifle is where things get interesting rifle bullets in general from barry's manufacturing have a velocity max ceiling of 2000 feet per second and obviously that's something you're going to have to pay special attention to if you're running high velocity rifle cartridges so where do we land with load data in general you can use jacketed load data for plated bullets as long as you stay under that velocity ceiling and in talking with barry's manufacturing the performance for a plated bullet with a particular load is usually very equivalent to the result that you'd get with a jacketed bullet i did a quick experiment i've got a standard load for 45 acp that uses a 230 grain hollow point bullet and 6.0 grains of cfe pistol this is my hornady xtp load that i've been running for years and i've just started using barry's hybrid hollow point which is also 230 grains and also a hollow point design so i loaded up 20 rounds in two different magazines i did 10 shots each to compare what the velocity would look like and for the xtp load we had of average velocity of 742.1 feet per second with the berries hybrid hollow point we had an average velocity of 750.5 feet per second same exact powder charge and i was very careful with seeding depth to make sure that i had the same volume under the base of the bullet so i looked at the bullet overall length i looked at the cartridge overall length to make sure we receded to an equivalent space for the powder and the air inside the cartridge to make sure that pressures would be equivalent in terms of that volume and be basically an apples to apples comparison as you can see we've got less than 10 feet per second difference between the two and that is a really good clear example of what this can look like so again you're going to want to be very careful with the rifle bullets let's say you're loading 308 winchester with one of barry's 30 caliber bullets 308 winchester can go up to you know in the 3000 foot per second range obviously that's going to be well above the 2000 foot per second max velocity for berry's rifle plated bullets so you want to use care there and then if you're using a plated bullet in a pistol caliber 357 magnum for example and you've tested it in your revolver it's fine you're going to want to think about what would happen if you put that in a longer barrel 357 magnum like a lever gun which i'm about to do here soon and i can't wait for that all that to say if you went over 1850 feet per second and that's what it was listed at you're going to want to make sure that you validate that if you have any issues you know that's something that you can look back at so speaking of issues there's two key issues that you're going to want to look for that translate to hey i'm in trouble here with my particular load first you're going to want to look for key holing if you've got copper plating separation or other related issues the bullet won't be stable and it's likely to keyhole on the target here i've got an example image that shows a rifle bullet key holding the the bullet can hit sideways which gives you essentially a silhouette hole on the target if you've got pistol bullets they're going to look like you know enlarged ovals or or similar shape it's not going to be that clean round hole that you're going to expect the other thing you can do with a test target at approximately 30 feet is look for copper flex around the bullet hole in the paper target as the plating is blowing off it will impact the target i've seen this actually with 44 magnum early in my reloading career when i didn't understand plated bullets that is another sign that you've got issues and that's likely excessive velocity so i hope this video will help you understand how to think about plated bullets and loads low data testing and validation and so on and so forth i use berries plated bullets for a variety of applications here on the channel you'll see a bunch of nine millimeter a bunch of 45 acp what i like about these is that they're subsonic and i'm doing a lot of suppressed shooting speaking of suppressed shooting barry's 220 grain 300 blackout subsonic bullet is totally awesome you can see a 762 by 39 example here as well as a 300 blackout example i've got lots more features coming including some totally killer lever gun stuff for both 357 magnum and 3030 you're definitely going to want to see that those individual stories i'll link to those in this story article if you click on that first link in the video description you can easily find that my question for you is what has your experience been with plated bullets loads and load data please drop a comment and we'll start a discussion that concludes this video and that means it's time to wrap it up i hope you liked this video if you did please give it a big thumbs up also make your voice heard if you have something to say please drop a comment make sure you're subscribed with notifications because you're not going to want to miss the awesome content that is coming up and finally flex your reloading pride you could look great in one of these t-shirts we've got multiple designs at the ultimate reloader store i'll see you later because i'm off to go shooting [Music]

Channel: Ultimate Reloader

Views: 64,925

Keywords: .223 Remington, 224 Valkyrie, 330 Blackout Subsonic, 45 ACP, 45 acp vs 9mm, 5.56 NATO, 6.5 Creedmoor, 9mm parabellum, AR-10, AR-15, Berry’s Manufacturing, Berry’s Plated Bullets, Glock, m1911, Plated Bullet Load Data, Reloading, Reloading Blog, Reloading Press, Reloading Videos, Ultimate Reloader

Id: xfAkFLB6_lE

Length: 10min 55sec (655 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2022