Much Ado About Moly Herb Brusman
used moly (molybdenum disulfi de) for about 12 years. I have read many articles on moly, both pro and con. In this article I will present some
Between my shooting friend Joyce Jordan and me, we have
observances about moly I have not seen in print before. Since we are not scien- tists, we just make an educated guess as to the reasons. The rest is a recapitula- tion of opinions and facts. First of all , what is moly? It is a
fi ne black powder, a high temperature lubricant for temperatures ranging from 662 degrees F to 1,324 degrees F. There are many grades of moly, but only fi ve are available commercially, and of these, only the top two are of much use as far as we are concerned. The fi nest grade is “Super-fi ne,” with an average particle size of 1.5 microns, and as can be imagined, very expensive. Next is “Technical-fi ne,” with a particle size of about 6 microns. The fi ner, the better, within reason. NECO, the fi rst company to come
out with a moly-coating kit, uses “Tech- nical-fi ne.” Most other companies can’t or won't inform you what grade of moly they are selling and the grade of moly defi nitely makes a difference. Bullets are fi rst cleaned in alcohol
or tumbled in corncob medium. Then they are transferred to another drum containing the moly-treated shot. I fi nd that about 2-2½ hours of vibrating is suffi cient to embed the moly so that little or none rubs off. They also provide a carnauba
wax coating (applied on treated shot) to be used after the shot “moly plat- ing” process. They recommend about two minutes of tumbling/vibrating. I personally vibrate bullets about three minutes for a uniform, shiny surface. Wax does two things: provides better throat lubrication and keeps moly from rubbing off. I have used two other moly prod-
ucts: Midway’s moly coating and MS. Moly sprays. The NECO kit is by far the best. Some thoughts on why: (A) I know what grade of moly I am using (Technical-fi ne). (B) I get a more uniform
coating and believe that when bullets are embedded with moly, there is an apparent increase in the ballistic coef- fi cient, especially at longer distances. (C) The coating from the sprays is not uniform and we both believe this can affect accuracy. Besides, it’s messy! CLEANING
As far as we have been able to
discern, a moly-treated barrel does not have to be cleaned until shots are grouping haphazardly. Many times our ground squirrel and rockchuck rifl es are not cleaned until the season is over (500-600 rounds). Depending on how erratic your groups are, you can clean one of two ways. Berger method: One dry patch, tight on a jag; two wet patches saturated with Kroil; one dry patch; one to two patches with JB Bore cleaner; two patches with Kroil; two dry patches. This process does not remove the moly, only excess copper and pow- der. Conventional method: If the barrel has been used with non-moly bullets or is just plain erratic, then a thorough cleaning down to bare metal is in order. Start with a good quality general bore cleaner to get rid of powder residue. Dry patch. Follow up with a thorough scrubbing (short-stroking) with Sweets 7.62 until there is no blue or green (cop- per) residue. Follow with dry patch and fi nally a patch with light oil to stop cor- rosion or rusting. All cleaning should be done using the appropriate bore guide, so that the barrel is not scratched. A good quality, solid, coated rod also is a necessity. MOLY TREATING A BARREL Two methods are acceptable. Once
the barrel is cleaned to bare metal, take a patch soaked with either Midway Moly Treatment or NECO Moly-Slide™. Swab the barrel 15-20 times. When you are fi nished take a large swab and clean any moly residue from the chamber. This should decrease the number of shots needed to “settle in” a barrel so it’s shooting well again. However, much to our dismay, we found that using a moly treatment after the Berger cleaning method may be an overkill. We have noticed on three different rifl es after do-
ing the above it has taken 40-50 shots as opposed to 10-15 shots to “settle in” the barrel. We are not sure what causes this. We opine that there must be such a thing as too much moly and it fi lls the grooves to such an extent that the bullet slides down the barrel with very little contact (friction) and eccentric groups become the norm. We would be interested in hearing from any of your readers who have experienced this phenomenon. But I digress. Turning to the
second method of just shooting moly bullets until the barrel “settles in” and groups are uniform takes about 10-15 rounds, depending on the rifl e. EFFECT ON ACCURACY AND BARREL LIFE
Most benchrest shooters, notably
Walt Berger, use moly bullets with ex- cellent success. They have been known to shoot an entire match without clean- ing and still maintaining the utmost in accuracy. You can't argue with success. We have noticed an overall in-
crease in accuracy in the majority of our rifl es. I have shrunk groups of large caliber rifl es (.300 Win. Mag, .300 Ultra, .338 W.) by half. Another plus is that the fi rst cold shot is not outside the group in most cases. I have not found this to be true shooting non-moly bullets in a non-moly barrel. Usually the fi rst shot defi nitely is not a part of the overall group.
Since we have used moly bullets,
we have not had to rebarrel any of our rifl es. I have a .22 CHeetah MK II that had approximately 600 non-moly rounds through it before switching to moly. There was very little throat ero- sion when I started with moly bullets. Since then I have fi red another 600-plus rounds with no noticeable change in throat erosion. Most other CHeetahs have to be set back or rebarreled well before this. Joyce had to replace sev- eral barrels on .220 Swifts and .22-250s before using moly and has fi red many more rounds and not replaced another. When we fi rst started using moly
there were quite a few detractors – I think more out of ignorance than any- thing. As time marched on, the believers
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