Okay- I took a look at the barrel with an eye to leading…
I was surprised to find some in the recessed crown of the barrel. Generally when I clean this gun (every 700 rds or so), the carbon on the recessed crown can be rubbed off with some solvent on a patch, and sometimes a toothpick.
I admittedly did not look at the crown on the last cleaning (which was immediately after the lot of keyholing bullets), but 254 rds after that cleaning, this is what the crown looked like:
Attachment 77870
I’ve never seen leading like that on this gun before.
I cleaned the barrel with solvent, a brass bore brush, and patches, then used a dental pick to scrape the lead from the barrel crown.
Now it looks like this:
Attachment 77871
I can’t really see much evidence of leading in the bore, but, then I’ve never seen leading in a bore before.
What do you guys think?
Attachment 77872
Attachment 77873
Attachment 77874
While I can see a bit of something in the edge of some of the lands (especially in photo A), it doesn’t look like a lot to me.
Questions:
1. If 100 of the last 354 rounds fired from this gun were from a defective lot that was shedding the coating, could that result in the leading on the crown?
2. Do any of you see evidence of significant leading in the bore that would lead to keyholing?
At the moment, my working theory is that the most recent lot of Gallant bullets (the first 100 of the 354 mentioned above) are shedding their coating in the barrel, causing leading of the crown and instability in the 20% of the bullets I saw keyholing in the practice session where I took the photos posted earlier.
What do you see to support or refute that theory?
If I’m doing something wrong, I want to fix it. And I want to be pretty certain before I tell Gallant that they sent me a bad lot of bullets.