Coated X Metal Bullets

Ganderite

Ganderite

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Farm south of North Bay
I bought 6 boxes of 40 cal bullets in an auction.
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My plan is to load them as plinkers in 40S&W and 10mm.
They are coated with something.
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Anyone have any experience with this type of bullet? Accuracy? Leading problems?
 
They're coated with Hi-Tek Supercoat. I use them for .38 special. No leading in my barrels (.358 worked for me) but you need to be a little gentle with them when loading. Add a little more flare than usual and don't crimp through the coating.

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Used their 100gr swc .38 for bullseye very accurate but they are nowhere to be found lately. You will notice they are clean no greyish sheen on the pistol after shooting a match
 
Standardvel said:
Used their 100gr swc .38 for bullseye very accurate but they are nowhere to be found lately. You will notice they are clean no greyish sheen on the pistol after shooting a match
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X-Metal got out of the bullet game a couple of years ago, not sure but the target business might be gone now too. PPC shooter Roly Miles actually bought the mold for X-Metal to use for the .38 100gr SWCs, so when they decided to stop making bullets he took it over to JTT Projectiles. So they're literally the same bullet, same Hi Tek coating, just a different colour.
 
I'm afraid that my experience with them has turned me off of not only X-Metal bullets specifically, but coated bullets of any kind.

I was struggling with a pistol with feeding problems, and bought these because of their shape, in hopes that they would feed better. .40 cal 180 gr. and they looked and felt slick. These were inexpensive (I think the dealer was clearing them out, because shortly after I bought these, they were off the market).

Problems started at reloading; the coating was not bonded to the lead on many bullets and would slip and peel off, sometimes even some lead would shave along with the skin. I measured the bullets (I had read about their "great quality control") after I ran into issues none were undersized, all were at least 0.003 oversized with quite a few 0.012 over. Naturally, a bit of peel or roll infront of the case woud result in poor chambering. Yes, I tried belling the case mouths wider but with oversized bullets it did no good; the case would stretch to where it would not go in the chamber.

I gave them to a guy who said he likley could load them; he ended up remelting them and casting .357 bullets with them after he burnt the coating off.

BTW, the few that I actually could fire, when shot, the coating really stank. No one at the range liked the aroma.

I'm back to either copper plated or cast lubricated uncoated lead.

Interestingly there was a surge in interest in making bullets and coating them with a veritible rain-bow of colours and now we hear very little about coating. If it was so good, everyone would be doing it.

Now that being said, these are a different shape, and I wish good friend Ganderite every success; but I hope he got them cheap.



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Meroh said:
BTW, the few that I actually could fire, when shot, the coating really stank. No one at the range liked the aroma.

I'm back to either copper plated or cast lubricated uncoated lead.

Interestingly there was a surge in interest in making bullets and coating them with a veritible rain-bow of colours and now we hear very little about coating. If it was so good, everyone would be doing it.

Now that being said, these are a different shape, and I wish good friend Ganderite every success; but I hope he got them cheap.



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I did notice a burning Vinyl smell in the 1000 rnd box of 9mm I used up. They were steel target only so I never put them on paper too see.
My own powder coated Boolits dont have the same issue.
Ended up using the last 300 up as subsonic loads when I still had a PCC worked great for that as well.
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4n2t0 said:
They are...

https://www.ssusa.org/content/top-loads-at-the-2021-uspsa-nationals/

P.S. I remember trying to help you load those bullets. In my opinion, you lacked the necessary reloading experience/knowledge to make them work.
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You sir, are full of s***; do you have shares in the company?? You treated me like a moron back then and you are back to your old tricks it seems. Since then I have reloaded thousands of rounds in many calibers, rifle and pistol. and between my frineds and I have fired thousands; I am still reloading, and getting along just fine. Life is too short to f*** around with crap.

This was as dealers were clearing their products out, and I think it was likely due to poor quality control. I'm pretty sure they were following the old industrial addage; "Ship s***, don't short ship". BTW, no one can size over-sized bullets by seating in correctly sized brass. There was also a weight variation of about -0 +6 gr. I stand by what I experienced, poor quality control on the coating (too thick), not bonded evenly to the lead, and they stank.
 
Back in July 2019 there were reports of squibs in the factory reloads X-Metal was making. The owner apparently was told this and did not care. So not surprising that there would be QC issues with the bullets.
 
I do most of my handguning outside, so the coating stink made not be too bad.

I will load most of them in 40 cases for either the 40S&W (200gr) or the 10mm (220gr). I use the 40 cases because they use small primers, and I have more of those than the Large, which the 100mm case requires.

I will report back how they do for accuracy. Inaccurate ammo is of no interest to me.
 
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