Don't Be Afraid!

[Jester896]

I saw a question in another forum that I participate in some and thought that I would share this here. Their question was about removing Molly coating from bullets they were thinking about picking up but were unsure of them being Molly coated.

I had seen where ammonia or BarKeeper's Friend would remove Molly coating from bullets so I ran a little test this morning. I have never really tried to remove it but do put it on my long range bullets.

For this test I used 1 TBS of BarKeeper'd Friend in 1C of warm water. I picked up the BarKeeper's Friend powder at Lowe's last night for $2.16 I think. I had a bottle of clear Publix's Ammonia already that I use to clean out my spray tank after using Round-Up...not sure of the cost...PG got it for me.

These were a box of older Nosler BT that I had picked up in a trade I made.



As you can see they may have been coated with an older method. Anyway I put enough ammonia in a Mason Jar to cover the bullets and the BarKeeper's Friend mix in another jar. I figured it was going to be the easiest way to keep my Ultrasonic fairly clean to make things go faster.

I let the ammonia ones soak while I started with the BarKeeper's Friend batch and let them soak while I ran the ammonia batch, both of them ran for a normal 180 cycle. I rinsed them both well and dried them on a paper towel. The molly continued to come off on the BarKeeper's Friend batch as evident from the black on the towel.

Here are the results.
Ammonia:

Most of the molly is gone and it doesn't come off on the towel but are discolored.
BarKeeper's Friend:

You can see much more came off and is still coming off on the paper towel.

Then I ran both batches through the corncob with Nu-Finish for 30 minutes each separately.
Ammoinia:


BarKeeper's Friend:


Either of these are still suitable for plinking or deer harvesting..IMO. I combined them and put them back in the Thumbler's Tumbler to see if they polish up any better.

All minimal effort really...no need to be afraid of them.

 

[bullgator]

I used to coat mine with Danzac, but I never tried to remove it.

 

[sleepr71]

What is the Molly coating hurting by being on there? Why remove it?

 

[Jester896]

What is the Molly coating hurting by being on there? Why remove it?

IMO nothing.
The question someone else had was how to remove it.
I just tried to show how easy it was to remove. I guess I didn’t do a good job.

 

[rosewood]

Nice detailed process. Good work!

 

[bighonkinjeep]

I'm no metallurgist but it's my understanding that moly acts similar to or may even be a PTFE that doesn't just coat, but impregnates itself into metals at the molecular level.

 

[rosewood]

I'm no metallurgist but it's my understanding that moly acts similar to or may even be a PTFE that doesn't just coat, but impregnates itself into metals at the molecular level.

That is probably why the bullets don't look like new uncoated bullets now.

 

[Jester896]

That is probably why the bullets don't look like new uncoated bullets now.

They were probably done the old way with a glass jar and ball bearings in a tumbler. When we do them when we can't get them factory coated we do them with ceramic media in a Lyman tumbler.

After I finished all of this I put them back in the tumbler and they came out a lot better. I was just trying to show the how to and with minimal effort. They would still be good plinking or hunting bullets...don't know if I would try to shoot a .5MOA group at 1K with them.