Armaforce Copper Plated Bullets

Flecktarn is an online company specialising in military clothing and accessories. Their range of clothing and essentials, like backpacks, boots and headwear, is extensive, and they carry many smaller accessories too. They also offer a range of components for the reloader, and the pistol calibre ArmaForce bullets are well worth a closer look.

ArmaForce

The Slovenian company, ArmaForce, produces a large range of bullets for most of the popular pistol calibres, and their copper-plated bullets are available in various configurations, including full-wadcutter, hollow point, and semi-wadcutter.

Bullet production

The bullets are produced using a lead core that is swaged, rather than cast. This gives better quality and more consistent weight. The lead core then receives a full copper plating over the entire surface, including the base. One of the advantages of this type of ‘coating’ is that there is absolutely no exposure to lead, either while handling the bullet, or from lead fumes when the bullet is fired. With lead being such a hot topic at the moment, using these bullets on an indoor range will significantly reduce the number of lead particles in the air.

Copper-plated bullets do not exhibit any jacket separation, because it is fully bonded to the core, which ensures better penetration, weight retention, and performance. When compared to lead-alloy bullets, they also leave a cleaner bore after shooting.

After copper-plating the projectile, it is then resized again to ensure that the finished product complies with the tight tolerances required, thus ensuring optimum consistency from bullet to bullet.

Reloading

Some coated bullets can be difficult to seat without damaging the outer surface, and it is often necessary to flare the case mouths significantly to avoid such damage. This is because powder-coated bullets are usually coated after they are sized, and they are not resized again, resulting in an increase in the bullet’s overall diameter. By resizing the bullets after copper-plating, ArmaForce has avoided this issue, meaning the bullets seat without damage.

The projectiles on test all measured .358”. I seated and then pulled a few to find that there was no damage to the plating. Being able to avoid having to flare the cases wider extends the life of your brass.

Shooting

When using the ArmaForce 158-grain RNFP copper-plated bullets, the rounds chambered very smoothly and shot consistently well in a Marlin underlever with an 18” barrel. When cycling the action rapidly, every round fed and fired faultlessly, and the group sizes were decent. When cycling and ejecting unfired rounds fast, the bullets showed no damage.

Conclusion

The copper plating makes these bullets very tough. The TMJ configuration also means that there is no exposure to lead, which is always a good thing. Costing only a small amount more than some plain lead-alloy bullets of the same size and weight, they are definitely a good option for anyone shooting pistol calibres, and a good choice if you want to protect your health too.