Hexagonal Boron Nitride...HBN review...

[LongRange]

You still need more neck tension. Toss the Lee collet die and use a full length sizer.

im going to toss the HBN because im scared if i add more tension ill split the seating stem on my redding...but i will try more tension next time out with uncoated bullets...thanks.


Well there is an answer, it just depends wether its worth the effort to find it. It sounds as though it could be as simple as aceing the treatment.
At least i never heard these type stories about moly coating which im of the opinion does pretty much the same thing.
But im curious about the distances you shoot. Is there a normal distance you shoot regularly, and then on occaision really attempt airing it out?
Or are you really attempting to air it out every time you shoot?

from everything ive read today there are none of these issues with molly and most prefer it over HBN.

i mostly shoot 330 420 550 and 650 but every few weeks ill send a few out long just to keep skills up so to speak.

[yobuck]

Notice how few poor groups you see on these sites? Theres a reason for that. Most people never show any bad groups, only the best they ever shot. lol
Ill tell you another story along the same lines about hunting. There is a young guy who is by all accounts a very good gunsmith for building long range guns.
He and a few others have a camp very close to ours. This guy also does videoing of their hunts and airs them on some of these sites. We can see one of the
lookouts they use which is about a mile away from our camp near the top of one of the ridges. One day about 5 years ago several of us were glassing from
our front yard when i heard a shot i knew came from that lookout. I swung my glasses around to see a lefty shooter next to a bench shooting. There was a
total of 22 shots fired all by the same guy. I frankly thought he was filling doe tags for the whole crew, but later learned that wasent the case at all. He was
just missing the deer and had even shot both horns off. About 2 weeks later the video showed up on the l r h site and needless to say it had been (slightly)
edited to show a total of 3 shots. No mention of the horns being shot off either which were actually found. When i questioned it the responce was well
i wasent there but i heard about it. But if id built the gun it wouldnt have taken that many shots, meaning 3 not the 22 it actually took. Total B S, he was there and he was the one doing the video.
So happens i know the shooter who still laughs over the incident when ever i bring it up.

[LongRange]

Im not sure what happened but those same loads shot very well yesterday. Im sure i was part of it but i felt good about most of those shots so something else is going on as well so ill just get back to what i know works. And im not affraid to show the bad with the good lol....as a matter of fact the last varmint match of last year i shot an 11 out of 40...the next day shot the same load in a 600yd F-class match and shot a 567....the 11 was ALL shooter error.

[LongRange]

this is the thread i found on the hide...i just copied and pasted the guys thoughts on the HBN not the link to the whole thread...these are the exact issues i had but didnt pay attention if i had deformed bullets...when the bullets where seated to deep i had the exact same issues when pulling them up a little to reseat them...almost like pulling bullets on factory crimped ammo.

************************************************** ************************************************** *********************

Ok first I will say I am not LEO or Military sniper so my shooting applications are different. I shoot NRA across the course, mid/long range prone, along with just the regular range shooting, etc. I started shooting in 2007. In late 2008 I came on to hBN after a friend of mine who is a LEO firearms insstructor who also shoots NRA matches talked about it. So for the 2009, and 2010 seasons I shot hBN in all my match firearms (.308, .30-06, .260, .280, .243) along with using it for my vintage firearms. In 2011 I quit using it and this year I have gone to molly. I just wanted to share my observations and what my thoughts are on hBN, versus naked bulelts, versus Molly. Being a physics/chemistry teacher I usually like to have numerical data to support my findings/feelings but in this case I don't have that and just going on my observations.

Feel: I can not definitely say that hBN feels slicker than naked. Before I used molly I thought they did however after having molly coated bulelts I'm not sure there is any difference. However not as slick as molly.

Seating force: I have noticed that while they feel slightly slicker hBN bullets seem to seat a little harder than naked or moly coated bullets. I have many .260 bullets 123 SMK and 142 SMK where the seating die deformed the nose of the bullet. Using the same die seating depth and brass the naked bullets slide in easier and the molly bullets even easier. The deforming wasn't noticed on the .22cal, 7mm, or .30 cal bullets. This observation leads me to think that hBN isn't reducing friction such as molly .

Pulling bullets: I have noticed that bullets that have been seated with hBN require more force to pull than naked or molly coated bullets. I was pulling some 175SMKs out of .30-40 Krag loads and the amount of force it took was substantially more. These loads had been sitting around since 2008. To just test I seated a naked 175 SMK and a moly coated 175 SMK and just like seating preasure hBN required the most to pull followed by naked and then molly.

Preasure and velocity in loaded ammo: When going to molly vs. naked I experienced the usual need to increase the powder due to the preasure decreasing because of the lower amount of friction on the bullet/barrel. If I shoot the same charge with molly as naked the chrono numbers are slower and I need more elevation. This WAS NOT observed with hBN versus naked. My zero's and my velocities remaned the same, and in some cases teh velocities may have increased. I can't substantiate this but do remember having numbers that were higher at times with hBN vs. naked but at that time I attributed it to increased temperature, although if it was we are only talking 5 degrees 10 at the most. From this observation Molly does decrease preasure however hBN seems to have no effect if not increasing it possibly due to possible higher friction.

Cleaning: Naked I do get guilding metal in the barrel and you do have to work to get it out. However the guns shoot well and I have gone awhile with leaving it in there. With hBN I didn't have much copper but I had the gray residue from the hBN cleaned out fairly simple. Molly I just have left my barrels go as it takes 10 rounds or so to settle them in from clean. The sulfuric acid fear from talking to several people who shoot it is unfounded and one person who lives in Georgia where you have high humidity says he has never had barrels ate away because of it. Overall my philosohpy on cleaning has become if it is still shooting good just let it go. After a couple of matches then I will clean it.

All of the evidence together for hBN: With all of my observations I tend to think that hBN is actually increasing friction due to what I've noticed with no velocity to slightly higher velocity readings vs. naked. Bullet deformation when seating and increased force when pulling. The barrels weren't as dirty, but if teh friction is increased then every bullet is essentially lapping the metal causing increased barrel wear and reduced life. Evidence for this is a Hart .243 barrel I had where the throat moved out to where I couldn't touch it after 700 rounds or so of mainly hBN coated bullets.

Becasue of this evidence I'm removing the hBN from all my bullets that are still coated.

Take this for what it is worth as I am not trying to pass it off as an offical scientific test, but merely trying to give what I've noticed over the past 4 years shooting and loading many 1000s of rounds of ammo.

[upSLIDEdown]

Haven't read all of this, I'll go back later and read, but wanted to say this.

I full length size every time. Bumping the shoulder one thousandth. I've never just neck sized. And the only thing I use a crimp die on is my 300BLK AR.

I very well be confused, but are you just using a Lee FCD to "neck size"?

[LongRange]

Haven't read all of this, I'll go back later and read, but wanted to say this.

I full length size every time. Bumping the shoulder one thousandth. I've never just neck sized. And the only thing I use a crimp die on is my 300BLK AR.

I very well be confused, but are you just using a Lee FCD to "neck size"?

No im using the lee collet neck sizing die and i dont crimp or full length size as i dont like the idea of the expander ball dragging back through the neck...just a personal thing. I bump the shoulders ever 3rd firing and anneal but i think im going to run the brass through the body die, anneal and tumble every firing with my match brass this year just to keep things more consistent...lm also going to play with barrel cleaning this year as well...ill start at cleaning every 200 rounds and keep tight notes on how it shoots and either clean more or less depending on how it shoots...i have to clean it now to get the HBN out so ill start my cleaning notes next weekend.

[upSLIDEdown]

Ahhhh, ok. Makes much more sense now. Lol

[LongRange]

One last thing about my experience with HBN....i cleaned my barrel tonight to start fresh with naked bullets and the HBN did nothing to help with copper or carbon...as a matter of fact it made both worse. I only shot 80 rounds of the HBN coated bullets and it was harder to clean than when i let it go 400 rounds once...i had to short stroke the first 4-6" to get the carbon out and the copper was pretty bad as well...after shooting 50 naked bullets 2 or 3 patches and carbon/soot is gone ive never had to scrub it out....and copper takes about 8 patches to get 80-90% out...i had to bore foam the barrel tonight to get to lite blue patches.

Like i said HBN may work great for others but did nothing for me and my advice to anyone wanting to try it would be to only coat 25-50 bullets and see how seating goes then shoot them and then clean you barrel and then make your decision.

[LongRange]

i have to eat a little humble pie and take back part of my last post...HBN DID reduce friction by quite a bit...i shot uncoated bullets today with everything exactly the same and gained 60-70FPS with 42g of 100V and 90-100FPS with 43g 100V but the 90-100FPS came with a price...slightly(very slightly)hard bolt lift and flat primers...load was pretty accurate at 55deg but what happens at 95-100degs. i still dont think HBN or any coatings are worth all the extra steps in a 6.5 264 as barrel life is about 3000 to 4000 rounds(in a stainless barrel)if not over heating the barrel and not damaged by cleaning.