Derek ,,,,,,,
this bullet coating/lubricant this gets all passed around every 10 years or so, like it is something new & exciting, when in fact it has been giving many shooters increased performance for a long time ,,,,,,,,
below are some things that you should understand, prior to diving into it ,,,,,
1 ,,,,,,, I have had most all of the bullets used in the Lazzeroni factory loads, NP3 coated by ROBAR company in Phoenix AZ for more than 16 years ,,,,
2 ,,,,, NP3 coating acts as a very good projectile lubricant, like moly, but without the negatives of moly ,,,
3 ,,,,,, by coating the bullet, and NOT the barrel, you always stay on the safe side of the velocity to pressure curve when you fire multiple shots ,,,,,, as you don't have to worry about barrel applied lubricants wearing off ,,,,,
4 ,,,,, NP3 lubricant does NOT build up in the barrel to any significant degree, and is easily removed when cleaning the barrel with any good copper solvent like Barnes CR10 ,,,,,,
5 ,,,,,, simply applying NP3 lubricant to your bullets does NOT increase velocity, in fact, if everything else stays the same, velocity actually goes down, but SO DOES PRESSURE ,,,,, so that you can then increase your powder charge slightly to bring pressure & velocity back to what they were, prior to bullet lubrication ,,,,,,
6 ,,,,,, where I REALLY see the advantages, ((besides an increase in barrel life)) is the ability to use a faster powder than normal, to achieve the same velocity to pressure ratios, when using a lubricated bullet, as compared to the same bullet not lubricated ,,,,,
7,,,,,, what is happening here is that IF the bullet is able to get down the first few inches of the barrel FASTER and with less friction, than the expansion chamber is growing faster, and if the expansion chamber grows faster as the cartridge is fired, the peak chamber pressure spike will occur when the bullet is farther down the barrel ,,,,,,
8 ,,,, the best example of this is the factory Lazzeroni load for the 168gr NP3 coated Sierra HPBT ,,,,, (please don't roll your eyes now)) ,,,, I use Reloader 19 powder and fed 215M primer ,,,,, and achieve 3,500+ FPS, @ 65,000 PSI pressure ,,, AND my extreme 3-shot spreads of both pressure and velocity are often in the single digits ,,,,, reloader 19 is also less temperature sensitive than the slower burning reloader 25, 33 and IMR-7828 etc ,,,,,,
9,,,,,, and when you are talking about 600-1,000+ yard shots, in the field, wide swings in velocity because of temperature changes or normal shot-to-shot variations, can be the difference between a good hit and a miss ,,,,