I acquired a bunch of 173 gr. FMJ .30 bullets that were pulled from some type of ammo, possibly military ammo?

The bullet jackets are silver in color and I am wondering if I can shoot them. I have been told they might hvae a Cupric Nickled jacket? An older experienced reloader told me that he remembered reading about cupric nickel and that it wasn't a good thing to shoot out of a barrel because the deposits of the jacket were harder to remove than copper.

Are these bullets Cupric nickel jacketed and should I shoot them? I am not expecting awesome accuracy but could have some fun blasting the steel out at our range with them.

Thanks

Neal in AZ

Cupro-Nickel is an alloy commonly used in bullet jackets. In my experience, it has less tendancy to leave metal deposits that something like pure copper. It is a common jacket material for military rounds. Not that the military is always that bright, but does it make sense that they would use jackets that have a tendancy to foul the bore badly?

Yes. They were used from the late 1890s-early 1920s, mainly. They replaced mild steel jackets in the U.S. .30 Gov't, which of course were prone to rusting. Lumpy cupronickel fouling accumulated near the muzzle and had to be laboriously removed with "Ammonia Dope" recipes like some given in Hatcher's Notebook, and lots of scrubbing. Tin was added to powders in those days to reduce the adherance of the cupronickel to the steel bore. Hatcher says the gilding metal was first used in National Match ammo in 1922, and replaced the cupronickel from then on in match ammo. I imagine it took longer to phase out in the standard M1 cartridges that used the bullets you have. Personally, I'd shoot 'em and not worry about it unless I saw a problem. Bet some of the new bore cleaners work well on that stuff, as they do on copper. Another thought: Moly?

Cupronickel and Moly...
Hadn`t even thought of that one. I have a large quanity of those "pulled" bullets I got from a friend awhile back.
Reading Hatcher`s Notebook about them afterwards was pretty interesting. Now they may seem to be a plausible test for one of my 1903`s, not for 1K `tho...primarily for my club range (250yds).

i have shot an awful lot of these bullets in 8x57, 7x57 and 6.5x55. i've never noticed any unusual cleaning required after shooting. since these rounds are surplus, and therefore pretty cheap, it is not uncommon to shoot 100 or more rounds in an afternoon. still......no unusual cleaning required.