"No Lube Groove" Bullets vs. Traditional Cast Bullets

These are some non-scientific notes based on my experience. YMMV.

BLUF: If you have your dies set up to load traditional commercial cast bullets with lube grooves and decide to try the new "no lube groove" versions in the same weight and shape, you may well need to start over to determine how much to expand the case mouth and what the OAL is for your gun(s). Ditto if you use these loads in competition and have a tendency to crowd the power factor.

I wanted to load some .45 ACP 230-grain RNL because I was getting a bit low. Brazos Precision had some in stock but they were the new style "no lube groove" style so I ordered some. The last batch I ordered from them had been the traditional style with a lube groove (which they no longer offer). Both versions were coated.

They're very different bullets. The old style has a very generous bevel at the base; the new style's base has a much smaller bevel, so it's like loading a flat-based bullet and requires more belling. The bearing surface on the old style is obvious and well-defined and permits loading to standard hardball length in most guns. The bearing surface on the new style is much longer and the nose is shorter, so you may need to seat the bullet deeper if you have a short leade. I have four .45 ACP pistols - two M&Ps with factory barrels, a Commander with a Bar-Sto barrel and a Gubmint Model with a GI National Match barrel. The barrels on the M&Ps and 5" 1911 are easy to get along with, but that Bar-Sto has super-tight dimensions so I use it to determine OAL and crimp. With the old-style bullet, I could only have the tiniest sliver of bearing surface outside the case and OAL was 1.25". With the new style, I had to seat the bullet deeper to pass the plunk test so the OAL was 1.22".

You'd think that, with the deeper seating, velocity would be higher, but it was actually lower with the same powder charge. Using the mid-size M&P (4" barrel), 5.9 grains of BE-86 gave 812 fps with the old style but 799 fps with the new style. For context, standard velocity 230-grain HST went 869 fps from that gun when I tried it. It's not a big difference, but it's there.

I've got some "no lube groove" 9x19 124-grain bullets from them to load when I'm done with .45. My dies are set up for hardball so I don't think I'll have to mess with the belling adjustment, but I'll probably have to play with the OAL.

I'm thinking about buying another set of dies. One for FMJ and one for lead. I would like to use only FMJ but there seems to be a serious shortage these days.

A few years ago I gave away all of my uncoated lead and moved to coated. Then I decided to go exclusively to FMJ. I didn't buy enough and never thought there would be a bullet shortage. Big mistake. When this shortage is over I'm going to buy enough bullets to last a very long time.

Lead bullets are cheaper but problematic. I've found some seriously undersized bullets form one mfg. Never had that problem with FMJ.

Coating bullets adds at least .001 to the diameter. Regardless of coated or not, buyer should verify diameter before ordering. Seating problems are easily rectified by using proper expander. NOE sells inserts that replace a part of the Lee universal expander die. One of these solves problems. Regular dies are designed to load jacketed bullets. Problem is with expander die which is not suited for lead bullets. Lyman M die will solve these problems too. No need to buy separate die set.
You may or may not get what you want. Instead buy the correct expander die. The L. M die is an expander die. Works great for all bullets.

You mean...different bullets are...different? :)

Sarcasm aside, I always kind of assumed that for coated lead, no lube groove was the future, because a longer bearing surface should in theory work better, and given the lack of lube, there is no need for a lube groove. I imagine that as coated bullets have increased in popularity and as old lube groove bullet molds wear out, we'll see less and less lube groove bullets available. Presumably many manufacturers simply replace the lube groove molds with no lube groove molds when that happens.

Last note - a velocity difference of ~15 fps could easily be accounted for by variations in temperature and pressure between the different times the two loads were chronographed, different lots of powder, etc., so I wouldn't necessarily call the new bullets definitively "slower" based on those numbers.

When I went to coated 9mm, I bought from a caster who provided conventional bullets with (unused) lube grooves and a pronounced shoulder between bearing surface and ogive. I like them because that long sub-bore diameter nose lets me keep the OAL up for good feeding in my guns. But then one day a box of ungrooved bullets showed up. As in the OP, they were blunter and had to be seated shorter.

They fed in the guns so that was OK, but I inquired why.
The vendor said he needed new molds and the mold maker said the "NLG" were more accurate, and sure enough they were in the shop's test gun. (A gunzine article said that was not necessarily the case in all pistols.)

I figured, OK, I had the seating die adjusted and I would carry on.
But then my next order was back to the old grooved design, as was the next batch. He was very busy by then and did not take time to comment when I asked.


I think the ungrooved bullets are the wave of the future, they have (minutely) less surface area to coat and more importantly, drop free from the molds better due to fewer corners.