to diameter a jacketed bullet, the lead gets squished down, but the jacket then springs back. Granted, the spring is perhaps a ten-thousandth of an inch, but it is there. So, the lead core gets re-swaged back out to the jacket interior walls.
Under more-or-less normal use, the two stay together. However, when jhps actually expand, it isn’t unusual for the lead core and the jacket to separate, which is bad for terminal performance.
On the lead round nose, note the cylindrical bearing surface, and the rounded nose above. A good design (which this is) has them as separate components. Older designs had the round nose blending smoothly into the cylinder, and typically they didn’t shoot as well as this one does.
Cast lead bullets can also have a gas check. The gas check works like a set of copper galoshes, keeping the base of the bullet protected from the powder gases.
The truncated cone. The TC was the original 9mm Parabellum design, back in 1904. It suddenly became vogue in the U.S. with the adoption of the 40 S&W, in 1990.
Bonded bullets are those which essentially (each maker has their own proprietary process) the lead core is soldered to the copper/ brass jacket. They can’t separate. No matter how you peel back the jacket, the lead core will stay bonded to it. And the lead, being quite malleable, will stay attached to itself. Bonded bullets have a stellar record of expanding while remaining intact, even after penetrating intervening obstacles like windows, sheet metal and heavy clothing. But the process of bonding adds cost.
* jhp = jacketed hollow points; fmj = full metal jacket
PLATED
Plated bullets are made to offer the best of both worlds – lead and jacketed. The soon-to-be-plated bullet core is typically swaged to shape. Then, the bullet cores are dunked in a chemical solution, and while in the solution an electrical charge electroplates them with copper. The trick is to plate the bullets as individual bullets, and not just plate the whole pile of them into a copper-encased blob. How do they do it? I don’t know. They won’t say, and I don’t blame them.
The double-base wadcutter is a simple cylinder, and can be loaded in either direction.
The hollow-base wadcutter. The bullet is loaded base-down, and it acts exactly like a minié ball. The skirt expands to grab the rifling, and the nose-heavy design keeps it going straight. And yes, they travel a lot further than 50 yards.
One thing that I do know is that plated bullets can be very good, but they can have some quirks. The soft core has a soft plating, and the thickness of the plating makes a big difference in the final product. Thicker is better. Also, the plating process, since it has to use some method of keeping the bullets apart, ends up with bullets that aren’t as “crisp” as jacketed ones. However, that can be solved to a certain extent. One method of making plated bullets even better is a secondary swaging operation, often called a “double-strike.” There, the plated bullets are individually swaged to final dimension, and the swaging cleans up some of the vagueness of the bullet dimensions. You can recognize such plated bullets by the impact mark on the base, a circular pressed area.
The plated bullet is not a jacketed bullet, it is a compromise. It is meant to deliver many of the benefits of a jacketed bullet, at something closer to the cost of a cast lead bullet. The hardness/durability of the plated bullet depends on the alloy of plating, the thickness plated and the pressure used to double-strike the finished product.
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