[ajaxakita]

Hello,

A friend of mine just bought a 9mm and went out and bought a box of ammo. He said they were TMJ (Total Metal Jacket) which means that the back of the projectile is incased also. What's the point? I understand the back of the FMJ will have lead exposed but is there THAT much difference in the cleanliness of the round? He made it sound like the FMJ were junk and all I should shoot is TMJ......:icon_rolleyes:

 

[45 Forever]

Sounds like someone at his gun store was blowing a lot of smoke up your friends .......... FMJ are just fine.

 

[ajaxakita]

That's what I tried to tell him! But what do I know?

 

[harley 1986]

Right now, just finding ammo at a good price is half the battle!! But I am still not shooting the cheap cased crap that might damage my guns.

 

[Smokewagon]

Nothing wrong with either, but bad guys need a little lead exposure too! A matter of preference.:thumb:

 

[LonestarJake]

You can send me all that harmful FMJ and then buy all TMJ and we will both be happy!

 

[olfarhors]

well I guess if you get right down to it, the exposed lead in the rear of the projectile is where its exposed to the hottest expansion gases from the gun being fired, and so technically i guess the TMJ would be marginally cleaner??
Maybe thats the gun shop where Nancy Pelosi works part time??
but if you get right down to it shooting a gun just ain't clean anyway!
its kind of like the military going to TMJ as if all the blood spurting around and guts draging the ground, and body parts flying about isn't dirty and unclean??
before long Toyota is going to begin producing Prius tanks!!

 

[Ace]

It all depends on what they allow at your range. Some indoor ranges are lead free and you will need a total metal jacketed or total metal bullet because lead dust will be formed from the lead that is exposed after firing the shell. I have not seen any lead free ranges where I live, but I do know that there a law enforcement ranges around me that have been mandated to be lead free due to the perceived threat.

 

[andreew]

Plated bullets have covered bases due to how they're manufactured. I'm not sure if these are what those TMJs are. I believe what Federal sells as FMJ is actually plated.

Edit: stupid autocorrect

 

[olfarhors]

Plated bullets have covered bases due to how they're manufactured. I'm not sure if these are what those TMJs are. I believe what Federal sells as GNU is actually plated.

I am not that familair with TMJ's, but my understanding is that it is an actual jacket, not a plating.
I use to shoot a few tuncated projecties in my big bore magnums at hawgs and they were jacketed all the way up to the very tip, where there was a dot of exposed lead?
Now as for plated projectiles the rifling does eat into the plating a bit and if you recover one that has been shot into something then you can see the lead usually where the softer lead gets out of shape and the plating is missing in places.
OF course this should be different than air borne lead!
Remember that plated bullets are cored from extremely soft lead.
now I don't know how this would compute at the rear of the projectile when being shot???

 

[MadKaw]

**most** of the lead in the air at a range comes from the primers, not the bullets.
Most primers use lead stypnate which is vaprized when set off. There are some new, lead-free primers, such as those in Winchester Super-Clean NT that make a much bigger difference than the bullet jacket.

 

[Ace]

Also depends on what stops the bullets at the other end as well. In indoor ranges you have some traps that are basically glorified gel foam that capture the bullet but has to be replaced, and then you have the deflection traps that use angled plates of steel to slow down the bullet. The problem with angle deflection is that the bullet impacts the plate and is often deformed or disintegrated upon impact and that will create lead dust if it's a plain lead bullet or or if the base is exposed. If you have an enclosed space with poor ventilation and hundreds if not thousands of rounds impacting the plates every day you can imagine the build up of lead. The military switched to tungsten core because their ranges are mostly dirt berms and you can imagine how much lead builds up in a berm at a military rifle range. just replacing those berms and hauling away the old dirt as hazardous waste justified the cost of replacing all their ammo with tungsten and copper jacket. The primers have other nasty chemicals in them besides the lead. They have heavy metals like mercury and sulfur as well Which is why the cost of making a legal indoor range in most municipalities has skyrocketed due to the required ventilation systems and waste disposal plans.

 

[RandyP]

I reload mostly plated because MY local indoor LGS range prohibts bare lead reloads. There is nothing negative I can think of from my using that form of TMJ type bullet. I would not expect there to be any real ballistic difference however between TMJ/plated and FMJ. To the OP's point, I would accept all the free TMJ ammo my friend wanted to give me and happily shoot it rather than the FMJ I was buying with my money.