Idaho Silver 9mm 130 Round Nose (Read Full Description Before Ordering!)

Description

Idaho Silver 9mm 130 grain Round Nose (Same dimensions as the 135 Grain RN) Use load data for a 135 grain bullet.

Unfortunately, these aren’t actually silver bullets.  These jackets are made with a zinc and copper alloy (very high % of zinc and low % of copper). They look absolutely beautiful and they shoot really really well.  They are jacketed to the same thickness as our copper jacketed bullets.  They are also made to the same dimensions as our copper jacketed bullets.  However, zinc has some differences that you will want to be aware of if you are going to buy and load these.  First, zinc is lighter and softer than copper.  That is why these are less weight than our other copper jacketed bullets even though they are the exact same dimensions.  We recommend that when loading these you use load data for the heavier bullet that has the same dimensions.

Furthermore, zinc is about half as hard as copper.  Being a softer material, it requires some special care when reloading.  First, you will not want to overcrimp these at all.  Zinc does not have the elasticity of copper so whatever you crimp into it, it will go down to. Crimping too hard will result in an undersized and inaccurate bullets.  Secondly, we recommend that you load these in brass cases or nickel coated brass.  We tested these in aluminum cases and because both zinc and aluminum don’t have much elasticity, we experienced some excessive bullet setback.  This wasn’t entirely unexpected since the companies selling aluminum ammo load only copper jacketed bullets for that exact reason.  Aluminum cases are can be temperamental.  We haven’t had a chance to test them in steel cases but I assume they will probably have similar issues as the aluminum.  If you decide to try it in anything other than brass, do it at your own risk.  We’ve tested thousands and thousands from brass cases and they load and shoot very similar to the copper jacketed ones.

We did notice that in some guns the fouling was variable.  It doesn’t foul quite like copper does.  In some guns we found little to no fouling at all. In other guns it left little flakes of the jacket that look like fine glitter when you pull a bore snake through.  e gWhat fouling is left, looks very similar to copper fouling (maybe a little more).  In our experience, the barrel will foul to a certain point and then stop.  It appears as though whatever fouling occurs either lubes the barrel for subsequent rounds or it blows out old fouling while it deposits new fouling. We tested the Montana Xtreme Copper Killer and Butch’s Bore Shine solvent on the fouling and it seemed to work really really well on the zinc. We followed the directions on the bottle and let it soak for about an hour or two and 100% of the zinc came out.  No scrubbing or elbow grease required.  Because of the variable fouling from gun to gun, we recommend that you run a bore snake through the barrel every couple hundred rounds or as needed.  Also, if you experience heavy fouling we have found that running a magazine of copper jacketed bullets after a session shooting these gets most of the fouling out.  Slower powders seem to help with the amount of fouling experienced.  Lastly,  we received a couple of reports that polygonal barrels will foul to the point that accuracy suffers.

Tarnish is a concern with zinc.  We use a car wash wax on all our bullets to help prevent oxidation, but if you leave these in a wet or humid environment they will tarnish rather quickly but so will copper.  Like with all ammo components, store these in the driest conditions possible.

So, why zinc?  Well, it’s much cheaper than copper and we are so sick of inflation that we just felt that if there was a way we could make the price go DOWN instead of up, then we had done our duty to mankind.  Anyway, if you buy these please come back and leave a review after you’ve received and tested them.  This could be a real game changer.

Oh, and if you have a question about barrel wear, we shot about 7000 of these through a single firearm and saw no noticeable wear. Zinc is much softer than copper and it is supposed to be slicker as well.  If you buy enough of these to wear out your barrel, I would love to know how many it took to wear it out.  One major positive thing about these bullets is the natural lubrication properties of zinc mean they are easier to get to high velocity with lower pressures.