The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I've got a friend who's asking about UK suppliers of HBN powder and/or has any actual experience of its use as a low-friction bullet coating. Any information / suggestions, please?

Cleaner than moly, same method of application, I use stainless steel ball bearings and tumble 50 bullets at a time. Got my HBN from Canada several years ago.

Some of the powder coating and epoxy coating cast boolit lads use it in their mixes, some report it make boolits very "slippery" haven't herd of any accuracy improvements with its use in these applications though.

I've tried it but didn't really see much benefit over moly coating, apart from the lack of black dust coating everything in the room!

Another shooter I boron coat bullets for says he gets more consistency with them but hasn't found any increase in accuracy over moly, which is what I suspected.

As for UK sourcing the powder, I looked into that a couple of years ago and couldn't find anyone who would supply small quantities of the right powder, so I just bought from the States.

There is a lot of talk about using powder with the correct particle size(s). I don't think it's as important as some make out as I did some experiments with the 'special' powder David Tubb developed and compared the results against some powder bought from ebay. Couldn't tell any difference when they were shot. Also compared tumbling methods - ball bearings + bullets in a tumbler vs. bullets only in a small tub placed in tumbler. Same result when shot.

One thing I don't like about it is that with moly you can very clearly see when you've coated the bullets properly and the finish is very uniform. With Bn coating, the coating invariably looks patchy and speckled, even when there's a proper layer of Bn on the copper.

I find ceramic media give a more even and quicker coating than steel ball bearings, the media is also considerably cheaper to source.

Where do you get ceramic media from Davy?

I am not sure where it came from, I ordered in a few bags a while ago and am still using some of it. From memory it was very cheap as well.

Does HBN or Moly actually condition the bore?
Is there any adverse effect going back to plain jacketed bullets?
I keep looking at these and wonder if its worth the faff!
Tony

mag41uk wrote:Does HBN or Moly actually condition the bore?
Is there any adverse effect going back to plain jacketed bullets?
I keep looking at these and wonder if its worth the faff!
Tony

Moly certainly conditions the bore. The evidence seems to suggest Bn does as well, but maybe not as much as moly. Switching between moly, Bn and naked bullets in any barrel is something I wouldn't recommend doing unless you have the time to test what happens with your particular combination.

I do know someone who shoots primarily Bn coated through his barrel and he switches to moly bullets without seeing much difference, although it needs approx. 5 'settling down' shots in between.

I have a barrel I shoot only moly coated through and when I tried going back to naked bullets once, they didn't like it at all.