To Molly or not to Molly, that is the question

[The Gun Pimp]

Thanks Danny - but to pluck a few quotes from the article:

"When it comes to increased barrel-life statistics start to get a pain in the butt........A shortcut to prove less barrel-wear was to find out whether temperature of the barrel was lower with moly bullets..........There was no difference in temperature at all..."

Danny, you may get a 'statistical' increase in barrel-life but if it's in the order of 5% it's surely insignificant. The problem is, it's so hard to do a true test - two identical side by side barrels shot in EXACTLY the same way for about 5000 rounds - but who is going to do it?

Shooting methods account for changes in barrel-life - example the 7mmWSM - In F Class where it's one shot every couple of minutes, barrel-life will typically be 750 rounds. In benchrest where it's five rounds in 15 seconds, that drops to around 450 rounds.

[Dannywayoflife]

Thanks for your input Vince. :)

[Laurie]

Norma always said too that the carnuba wax coating is an essential part of their process. Most companies who offered moyl'd bullets only applied the MD, same as home mollyers. As TGP says, very few now do as the demand dropped off so much that it became uneconomic to process relatively small batches. There was a big controversy in the US some years back about the material - some influential people incliding Bill Gravett and his people at Sinclair International claimed that MD attracts moisture and consequently breaks down into corrosive acidic products (presumably, the Disulphide part forming a weak sulphuric acid) which wreck barrels. Other top American shooters disagreed completely, but the damage seemed to have been done to MD's reputation. With growing scepticism about many of the claims for the product, people thought 'why take a risk?' for what might only be marginal benefits at most.

Having said that, I was talking to big Richie Jones at Diggle today and he's a user. Richard was 4th in the FTR GB league last year. Steve Donaldson, current GB FTR champion is another user. Richie also applies moly barrel treatment after a thorough clean and says that 'normal' behaviour resumes with around half a dozen mollyd rounds down the barrel. He finds that grouping starts to open up after around 180 moly rounds without cleaning and a full scrub is needed. Steve goes 300 + between cleans. Whether down to MD or other factors, I couldn't say, but Steve D has had impressive life from his Broughton barrels mostly shooting 210s over Viht N550. Richie was out at Diggle today after rebarrelling and his previous barrel (Broughton too) was replaced at 4,700 moly rounds shooting 155.5s at 3,060 fps. (The new barrel works fine too - 99.7v at 800 yards on a dull, drizzly and windy Diggle afternoon for 1st FTR and 2nd overall on V-count to the Gun Pimp who was shooting in F-Open.)

[Dannywayoflife]

I guess it's a case of suck it and see then. Thank you laurie I love reading your posts. If you ever rent your brain please can I have first dibs on it?

[spikedueller]

At the safari club conference a few years ago I attended a lecture given by Kenny Jarrett of Jarrett rifles fame. He makes some superb "bean field " rifles, his view was not to molly due to fouling. He described heating a barrel to cherry Red and still the moly fouling remained. So he was an emphatic don't do it.