In many catalogs and magazines the powerbelts are classified in three groups bal. tip, hollow point, hollow point lead...... My test was to see how hard or soft the copper bullets are.....well they are extremely soft LEAD, not copper with a thin copper plateing not a jacket. What I did was took a .45 cal. 225 grn. copper hollow point powerbelt and a .44 cal. 240 grn. Hornady HPXTP and did a simple test. I put them on an anvil and hit them with a 16 oz. ball pean hammer. The powerbelt flattened out fast and thin. There is no jacket the copper is just super thin plateing. The XTP was tough! It did flatten out but gave much moore resistance with the jacket containing the lead from compleatly flattening the bullet out. I was able to turn the .45 cal. powerbelt into a 1.5" Dia.X.025 thick disk with 10 or 12 smacks of the hammer. The XTP turned out less than 1" at about .125 thick. Very crude I know but thought I would pass it along since many people have had bad luck with powerbelts I thought they should know the were shooting very expensive LEAD bullets and not a high performance bullets like we are being led to belive.

I don't believe the makers of PBs claim that they're jacketed bullets. Think about it, they're close to bore size, with no sabot to engage the rifling. If they were jacketed, they probably wouldn't obturate and engage the rifling. I don't know of any jacketed bullets that don't need a sabot to engage the rifling, if it was possible I'm sure somebody would be making bore-sized jacketed bullets that could be shot without a sabot.

Ted, I'm just questioning your remark about the bullets being "plated" lead. I'm not aware of any method where you could plate lead. I suspect the outer casing may be extremely thin, but I hardly think they are "plated".

They are electro plated. A lot of companies do this. Speer does it and as for cast bullets I believe National Bullet does it. Look at the copperplated 22 Long rifle rimfire bullets. That sure isn't a think jacket with a core inside it. It's plated.

The harvester Sabre Tooth bullets are plated also. I have several plated cast bullets for both my 9mm and my 357 mag pistols. Not sure how they do it but plating is possible.

quote:

Originally posted by george roof:
Ted, I'm just questioning your remark about the bullets being "plated" lead. I'm not aware of any method where you could plate lead. I suspect the outer casing may be extremely thin, but I hardly think they are "plated".

Plating lead


Both copper-plated and nickel-plated lead shot in shotshells have been standard fare for decades.

MLKeith: How do you like the SabreTooth bullets?

"Plating" was the operative word, gentlemen. All plating is "electro-plating". That's how plating works. I just figured the term you're looking for is "copper CLAD" or "nickel CLAD". I'm not a shotshell or bullet maker, but I do know a bit about chemistry. Lead itself would be difficult to "plate" unless it was alloyed heavily with something like antimony, so I suppose that's possible with "hard" shot. I've seen Powerbelts in copper and nickel, but I'm unsure how it got there. For years I used a standard .45 pistol bullet with a sabot for my .50 charcoal burner. I know that bullet was jacketed.

quote:

Originally posted by george roof:
"Plating" was the operative word, gentlemen. All plating is "electro-plating". That's how plating works.

Sorry George,

"Electro-less Nickel Plating" is just that. Chemical plating is very common, and has been for a long, long time.

Just ran into a gentleman last night that uses PBs quite a bit for his MLer hunting. He said he almost never gets a pass-thru. Seems to be the story for alot of PB users.

Reloader

quote:

Originally posted by george roof:
"Plating" was the operative word, gentlemen. All plating is "electro-plating". That's how plating works. I just figured the term you're looking for is "copper CLAD" or "nickel CLAD". I'm not a shotshell or bullet maker, but I do know a bit about chemistry. Lead itself would be difficult to "plate" unless it was alloyed heavily with something like antimony, so I suppose that's possible with "hard" shot. I've seen Powerbelts in copper and nickel, but I'm unsure how it got there. For years I used a standard .45 pistol bullet with a sabot for my .50 charcoal burner. I know that bullet was jacketed.

Ther is electo-less nickle plateing also. No electic curent used at all build up from .001 to .125 are done everyday to repair water pump rotors.

Thanx for the info guys. I wasn't sure how it was done but that makes sense.