Thread: Cupronickel bullets and barrel fouling

Originally Posted by Marty Henry

Nickel jacket ammo would be at least 80 years old. It wasn't considered a problem by the military so it shouldn't be for you either. There were many experiments in the 20s and 30s to "fix" problems probably the most famous being the American tin can 3006. It had been found that tin foil in artillery propellent bags significantly reduced copper fouling so they tried it with rifle ammo by tin plating the bullets. It worked but in storage they found the bullet cold soldered to the case causing drastic pressures increases so they figured that the fouling problem wasn't that bad after all which it wasn't.

That's interesting to hear.
I was reading about what you said last night how aluminum foil was put in the propellant of artillery rounds to remove fouling.
So this nickel plating was actually an attempt to prevent copper fouling?
I've read some posts that suggest some real early 303 ammo was actually steel jacket with nickel plating and you use a magnet to detect what rounds have it.
I would imagine those bullets would be hard on your barrel.
Either way, I can't see how a thin layer thats plated would cause much harm, but there seems to be a number of people who claim its stuffed their barrels and took a lot of effort to remove the stuff.

Speaking of fouling, my rifle has a ton of copper fouling that does not seem to come out, none of this was my doing, it was like it when I got it.
Visually, it looks OK when I look down, but I've lost count on the number of patches I've put down with hoppes no9 and it still comes out dirty.
It's pretty damn hard to push this cleaning rod through and im getting sick of it lol.
I have probably put through more patches through this thing than ammo.
The patches came out grey to start with, but after pushing through a real tight patch, it started to come out green, which presumably is copper.
Any other ideas on what to try? I've not had any experience with filling a barrel with bore solvent yet.
Someone told me im wasting my time and that a dirty 303 shoots better which i think is BS, probably just taking the pics lol.