Jerry, Thanks for posting that link. I'm one of the many shooters who've been using moly & wax (since 1995), and have tired of the labor-intensive process. Reading Kevin Thomas's article on moly & barrel life in PS a few years ago had raised a good deal of doubt as to whether moly was worth the time & effort, but being a hardheaded farmer, I doggedly kept at it.
David Tubb recently stopped offering his Sierra-made 6mm DTAC 115 bullets with moly coating, instead giving shooters the choice of HBN or bare bullets. Not long after that, I purchased 1lb. of HBN from Momentive Performance Products, and began coating bullets with it. My process involves nothing more complicated than filling clean vitamin bottles with bullets & HBN, taping the lids tight, and putting them in a heavy-duty vibratory tumbler for an hour. In a few cases, bullets coated in this way came out of the jars with a rather lumpy coating of HBN, so I tumbled them in plain corncob media for a minute or two in a RCBS Sidewinder rotary tumbler. That pretty well smoothed them up, though the cosmetics don't compare very well to nicely waxed moly'd bullets. Whatever - they shoot just fine.
So far, I've used HBN-coated bullets in a few Bartlein & Krieger barrels, but until recently, all these barrels had been broken-in & shot extensively with only moly'd bullets. However, I recently finished assembling a DPMS AR10, using a 1:8 Krieger 6.5mm blank that I contoured & chambered for the 6.5x47 Lapua. To date, it's had 63rds. of HBN-coated bullets fired through it, and I'm still seeing the reamer marks on the faces of the lands in the leade. Typically, in the 6 & 6.5mm bbls. I've used, the leade erodes smooth within 40-50rds. in the 6s, shooting moly'd bullets with cartridges such as 6 Dasher, 6x47, & 6XC, and within as few as 20rds. in the 6.5x55 and 6.5x55AI.
Granted, the 6.5x47 has considerably less case capacity than either of the other 6.5s mentioned; another consideration is that I've been shooting lighter bullets (120,123, & 130grs.) than the 139s & 142s used in the 6.5x55 & AI. The only copper fouling I've seen through the Hawkeye was around the gas port during break-in - now that a few tiny burrs & the sharp edges of the port have worn smooth, I've not seen any further copper streaks. Typically, with moly'd bullets, I'll find some copper fouling in the last 3" or so of a 28"-30" bbl., but so far, I'm not finding any copper at the muzzle of the AR10's 28" bbl.
I'm not jumping to any earth-shaking conclusions here - just mentioning a few interesting observations. Since this is the 1st bbl. I've shoot exclusively with HBN, I'm going to keep notes on it and see how it progresses. But from now on, I do think I'll simplify life a bit by using HBN.
