There are basically four types of bullets, re what actually touches the firearm’s rifled barrel, we might choose to handload: bare lead, jacketed, plated or coated.
Bare lead is the oldest approach. The great positive for handloading bare lead bullets is they tend to be the least-expensive option, even if you’re buying the bullets, let alone if casting your own. Unfortunately, lead is poisonous (wearing synthetic rubber gloves while handloading bare lead bullets is recommended, and if not, washing your hands immediately thereafter is a must), produces huge quantities of smoke when being fired (also poisonous), many bare lead bullets are so soft that, over time, melted lead coating the bore (hole through the center of the barrel) can actually become a problem from a standpoint of increased pressures and decreased accuracy, and the lube on many lead bullets can smear off and clog up dies which will then have to be cleaned-out.
The next major approach was jacketed bullets, in which a thin (typically .011” to .012”) sheath of metal was placed around the bullet. There are different types of jacketed bullets (full metal jacket, full metal case, semi-jacketed, etc.), however that’s beyond the scope of this article. The great positive of jacketed bullets is they reduce leading to zero. The negative is they’re the most expensive sort of bullet. Many people handloading do so to save money, so keeping component costs down is a priority.
Next came plated bullets, in which an even thinner (.003” to .007”) coating of metal was electrochemically bonded to the exterior of the bullet. While bullet plating is only around a third as thick as a true bullet jacket, still it’s a lot better, re keeping your bore clean, than bare lead bullets. The great advantage of plated bullets is they cost considerably less than jacketed. Negative is the actual bullets, again as a way to cost-cut, tend to be made from very soft lead wire, so care must be taken when handloading to not deform the bullets.
The most recent development is polymer-coated bullets. The great advantage of coated bullets is they tend to cost even less than plated. On the negative end of the scale, in my experience coated bullets require case mouths be flared considerably more than with any other type of bullet, otherwise the case mouth will “smear” polymer up and over the case mouth when the bullet is being forced into the casing at the bullet seating station, leading to a round oversized in its overall shape, which will not feed into the chamber. Also, since, like plated bullets, coated bullets exist to be inexpensive, the actual lead tends to quite soft; the amount of care that must be taken during handloading to avoid deforming bullets is equivalent to plated.
Then are variables to all these bullet types, subtleties to handloading them successfully. You makes your choice, and you pays your money.
