How is this leading?

[302w]

I'm new to casting. I don't know if this is horrible leading or run of the mill. This is after a few hundred rounds in a 9mm shield.

H&G 9mm, COWW, sized to 358, lubed with TacX over 4.1 grains of bullseye. I may try speeding them up since this is light.

[sigep1764]

it would be easier to see if there was any leading if you removed the barrel, shined a lightlight at one end and took a pic from the opposite end. hard to tell from these pics.

[Scharfschuetze]

Looks like some serious leading to me. It also looks like some antimony wash at the crown. Perhaps a little tin to the alloy? COWW in the past 20 years or so have less and less tin in them and it seems like more antimony to make them hard. .358" diameter is what I size my 9mm boolits to so I'm guessing that shouldn't be your problem, although you can quickly slug the barrel to find out for sure.

I don't know what H&G boolit weight you're using, but 4.2 grains of BE is max for a 120 grain truncated cone cast boolit in the latest Lyman #49 edition reloading book, so I'd probably research upping that load a little more.

[shoot-n-lead]

Run a patch through it and see what is left.

Then, run some powder coated bullets through it...patch it and see what is left.

[GhostHawk]

Fit is king, everything else comes after that.

First know what your grooves are at, size boolits 2-3 thousandths above that.
So if your barrel is .356 I would be looking to see boolits average .358.

With the 9mm headspacing on the mouth that can make life a bit interesting.

Myself, after I have verified that fit is ok, I prefer to look at alloy next, hard enough to take the abuse I'm giving it, but not too hard. The harder/faster your pushing that boolit the harder it will have to be to take it. Then lube, then charge, one change at a time, cast some, load, fire. And I would be more inclined to lower charge not raise it. But it will depend on your load.

Keep things consistent, if you test with 20 rounds for one variable, test them all with 20. Learn what works.
But fit first.

Hard to tell with those photo's but I don't think I would consider that severe. You can see rifling, clearly.
When accuracy starts dropping, time to clean it.

[302w]

I actually loaded some 4.6 BE over the 124s. Per my Lyman it's safe (max 4.8) but I prefer to be safe so I may dump them. I hate pulling bullets.

My fit may be an issue. I slugged my bore at 357 IIRC, and my boolits are about that. A few of them get sized to 358 on the mold line while the rest of the boolit is 3575 as cast.

[reddog81]

Based on those pictures I can't tell if the grooves are full of lead or if there's any lead at all. In my opinion even a little leading means something is wrong.

When I was using Lee Liquid Alox I couldn't get more than 20 bullets down the barrel with out leading. Since switching to powder coat I haven't had a single problem. If you've shot hundreds of rounds since cleaning it I would t be surprised if the grooves were completely full of lead.

[philzilla]

Powder coat is the way to go no leading even with softer lead