Is leading really as dreaded as my gunshop owner has been telling me ??

Can it be gotton out relativly simply??

PC, Leading isn't as difficult to remove as many believe. You can use certain bore solvents, e.g., "Shooter's Choice," "Kroil" (either alone or 50:50 with Shooter's Choice), "Ed's Red" (which you brew yourself); or a pure copper version of steel wool wrapped around your bore brush. The pure copper scouring pads are sold here under the brands "Kurly Kate" and "Chore Boy" and they contain no soap or other additives.

Mostly you just have to keep an eye on your bore. When working up a load with a new batch of bullets, check every shot or two. When you see leading start, stop and clean. Someone already mentioned some good solvents and potscrubbing stuff works well, too, although I use the silver kind. (Both the copper and the silver look like lathe shavings.) You just wrap a few strands around and old cleaning brush and scrub away.

Something else that works very well in the .44s and .45s is a cleaning rod and brushes intended for the .50 BMG.

This is all no biggie. If your bullets and lube are good and your expectations reasonable, you may never experience leading at all. Once you have a load you are satisfied with, you can back off on checking the bore. I have frequently shot 100 cast bullets in an afternoon with no leading.

At the other extreme, I once had a cheap German single action .357 revolver come into the shop so leaded up that you could not see the rifling. I drove junk cleaning brushes through the bore with a mallet. Once I could work brushes through the bore by hand, I cleaned normally. Took me an hour or so. Once I got it clean, I took it out back and put a dozen rounds of fairly heavily loaded hard cast .38 Specials through it. No leading, no spitting. Put a dozen dead soft wadcutter target loads through it with the same results.

Gave it back to the customer, charged him $25, and told him it was a piece of junk, but he should not have any trouble if he stuck to .38 Specials. Never heard from him again so it must have worked.

What's leading?