By Duane Thomas
These days plated bullets are very popular for handloading, for a couple of reasons: They can be driven to higher velocities than soft bare lead bullets without leading the barrel, but they cost less than true jacketed bullets. Thus, many people see them as a nice middle ground between lead and jacketed.
The way plated bullets are made starts out similar to jacketed bullets. To begin, lead billets are hydraulically extruded into soft lead wire. The wire is cut into sections, which are then swaged into the shape of bullets. These bullets purposely come out slightly undersized.
Here’s where things get different: The bare lead bullets are then dropped into an electrolytic (a term meaning to pass an electric charge from two electrodes through something in-between, such as a liquid or gas, to complete the circuit) bath. One electric lead is given a positive charge, this is the diode; the other is given a negative charge, this is the cathode. Suspended in the liquid bath, along with the bullets, are copper particles. The electric current causes the copper to ionize (in other words, its atoms acquire an electrical charge) and dissolve into the liquid bath. The lead bullets attract the suspended, electrically charged particles, and begin to plate themselves with a layer of copper. A specific time later, after which the bullets have the desired thickness of copper plating, they’re removed from the plating tank.
Then the bullets are “re-struck,” i.e. resized to ensure uniform size and shape. When all is said and done, you have a hard but thin copper shell, or plate, around a soft lead bullet. An easy way to think of this is as candy with a soft center inside a hard outer shell.
Bullet plating is much thinner than a true bullet jacket. Typical thickness for a handgun bullet jacket is .011” to 012”. For a plated bullet it goes typically .003” to .004”. In other words, about one-third the thickness of jacketed. We also have what are called “double-plated” bullets, where the thickness of the plating is about two-thirds that of jacketed.
Plated bullets tend to be much more fragile than jacketed bullets. Both because the plating is thinner than a jacket, and because, since the great selling point of plated bullets is their affordability, in order to keep costs down they use dead-soft lead wire. Thus, plated bullets require more care, and attention to adjusting case mouth mouth flare, and crimp, than jacketed bullets to avoid cutting through the plating and into the underlying lead. Do that, and not only will your accuracy suck, it’s quite possible, when the gun is fired, the rear portion of the plating from the crimp backward will separate from the bullet and be left in the chamber or bore.
Plated bullets are hugely popular with serious shooters, and with proper care, and attention to detail, in the handloading process, can give fine accuracy and reliability.
