Molybdenum disulfide (moly) was touted to be the answer for copper fouling, increased velocity, tighter groups, easier cleaning, increased barrel life and male pattern baldness. Most shooters have discovered by now that most, if not all, of the above claims are just not supportable. Such is the law of TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)

 

Moly use on bullets was originally intended as a safety measure to help keep pressures down when using some of the new breed of premium bullets with extremely long bearing surfaces or exceptionally hard jacket material. Unfortunately, as happens with most advertising campaigns, in order to get the shooting public to accept these black bullets more and more claims were made.

 

Copper fouling might have been reduced in some cases but only to be replaced with moly-fouling. Moly-fouling is much worse to get rid of than copper fouling! Even worse, moly residue also turns out to be hygroscopic (a moisture attractant) and can cause severely rusted bores.

 

Velocities can sometimes be increased, but the slickness of the bore/bullet combinations also mean that the bullets can slide around in the bore so accuracy gain is not a consistent quantity. Additionally, moly in the bore can make non-moly bullets perform in bizarre ways.

 

I have also had reports of excellent initial accuracy that slowly turned bad as a result of moly "clumping" in the bore. Once moly creates deposits that are "ironed" into the bore by subsequent shooting, it becomes quite difficult to remove.

 

Starting with just bore treatment, I carefully followed the directions on a widely advertised product to "condition and coat" the bore. The results were terrible. Accuracy with proven loads went from well under .5" @ 100 yards to over 2". Trying different loads just made things worse. Thinking that maybe I had done something wrong in the initial application, I removed all traces of the moly and started over....with no change in performance.

 

With the moly coating still in the bore, I next tried various loads using both factory-coated and home applied moly-bullets. The groups now averaged over 4". To be fair, I next removed all traces of the moly in the bore and tried moly-coated bullet loads through a squeaky clean bore. Results? 2" groups at best.

 

With all of the hype surrounding moly, I figured that something was wrong. Switching to one of my .223s, I started all over; with similar results. 22/250s, .280 Remington and .44 Magnums followed. In no instance did accuracy increase and, in all but one of the .44s, accuracy actually deteriorated. Running each of the loads over my chronograph showed that velocity did not increase, but actually DECREASED. (Actually to be fair, velocities of moly bullets should be less when using the same powder/weight combinations. Friction builds pressure, which builds velocity. To equal original velocities, it is usually necessary to carefully increase your powder charge when using moly bullets.....thus increasing the cost of reloading, not to mention the additional cost of the moly!)

 

I finally gave up and decided that moly was just this generation's version of the old "snake-oil" salesman's claims. The big problem is that I now had a fairly large quantity of moly-coated bullets that I didn't want. Thankfully, there is a relatively easy way to get rid of moly on bullets: Acetone. The non-ballistic tipped bullets got dumped into a coffee can of acetone for about 5 minutes and then "shuffle" dried in an old Turkish towel. Ballistic tipped bullets were wiped with a paper towel moistened with acetone and any traces left behind were buffed away with 0000 steel wool. (I was concerned that the acetone might eat the plastic that formed the ballistic tips if they were soaked).

 

The moly in the bores was also removed with acetone followed by a couple passes of JB Bore Paste and ending with a good bore cleaner and oil. Build-up in bores from shooting moly bullets can be removed with either acetone or a product known as Moly Magic.

 

I realize that some bench rest shooters swear by moly bores and bullets. I am pretty sure that at least an equal number swear at them. It must be remembered that the bench rest crowd lives in a different world: A world where rifles get re-barreled sometimes on a weekly basis, 40% of any given lot of bullets are discarded as not being "perfect" enough and where if there was a hope of a rain dance causing smaller groups in competition, you would see an awfully lot of gyrations at the shooting line.

 

Final analysis: If you just have to try it, by all means do so. If you have good luck, count your blessings. Of far more value, in my opinion, is proper cleaning and correctly lapped bores.