Lonewolf barrel in Gen 3 Glock 20

It is no secret I am a huge fan of the 10mm Auto and have carried a Glock 20 in rotation for a few years now. I am a firm believer in practicing with your carry gun often.  10mm Auto is not so bad if you reload but if you run through 200-300 rounds per match or practice session it still can cut into your beer fund.

I began casting lead bullets about a decade ago to help cut costs. I placed a call to Lyman and ordered mold number 401638, which is a 175gr truncated cone bullet. I also ordered a .401″ sizing die and #43 top punch. The mold review will be forthcoming

Knowing you should not shoot lead bullets in a factory Glock barrel I called the good folks at Lonewolf and ordered one of their barrels for my G20. The mold and barrel came about the same time. The Lonewolf barrel looked to be of high quality and as speced dropped right in and functioned with factory rounds as well as 200gr reloads with varying powder charges. Informal target shooting showed the Lonewolf barrel at least as accurate as the Glock barrel.

I ordered mine blind marked

A shot of the muzzle

Fit at the ejection port and lug was excellent.

The bottom of the slide, as you can see fit here was also excellent.

No bind or drag on the slide.

With freshly cast 175gr bullets, lubed with Lyman Alox, sized to .401″, and loaded with 7.7gr of IMR 800X, I was ready for a test run. The bullets were measured to a hardness of 19 on the Brinnell scale. I loaded a couple of hundred rounds in once-fired cases. After loaded I noticed about 25% of the rounds would not drop freely into the Lonewolf chamber but would drop freely into the Glock barrel. I realize the Lonewolf chamber is tighter than the factory chamber and I had a feeling .401″ may of been a bit large for the new chamber. I then ordered a .400″ sizing die from Lyman to see if that would help.

You can read about the Lyman mold I used here.

I took the rounds I had loaded out and the ones that passed the plunk test into the Lonewolf barrel shot great, function was flawless and accuracy was excellent. Not wanting to waste the ones that did not pass the plunk test I fired the remaining rounds from the factory Glock barrel. After ten rounds I would pull the barrel and looked for leading. I shot better than a hundred rounds from the Lonewolf barrel with no signs of leading and little fouling. One pass with a bore brush and the Lonewolf barrel’s bore looked brand new. After about 40 rounds in the Glock barrel leading was evident. I ran a bore brush through the Glock barrel several times but still just a hint of lead was left behind.

Shot of the bore after a few hundred lead rounds.

Comparing the Lonewolf barrel to the factory Glock barrel you can see the external dimensions are similar.

It was not long before the .400″ sizing die showed up and I put it right to work. After sizing a hundred bullets to .400″ I loaded them up this time using 8gr of IMR 800X. I also added a little more flare to the case mouth for the bevel based bullet. Just enough crimp to iron out the slight flare, as the 10mm Auto headspaces off the case mouth.

These rounds did better dropping into the Lonewolf barrel. Using the same drill as last time with the Lonewolf barrel and factory Glock barrel I got about the same results.

I also noticed that when resizing the cases shot through the Lonewolf barrel it took less effort than when resizing cases shot through the Glock barrel.

I then put the Lonewolf barrel to the accuracy test against the factory barrel. Using a known accurate round, the Georgia Arms 155gr Speer Gold Dot . Stepping off to twenty-five yards and shooting from a rest I was able to get an average 2 inch, 3 shot group using the factory barrel. With the same set up I was able to get an average 1 inch group using the Lonewolf barrel.  Not a huge difference but a noticeable and consistent improvement in accuracy.

As I have said before the 10mm Auto round is hugely underrated and that deeply saddens me. Along with the Lyman mold review I have also updated the 10mm Auto ballistics test. Both articles will be published very soon.

A special thank you to Allison Cartright for helping out with the Lonewolf and 10mm Auto ballistic test.

The Lonewolf barrel I used was the stock 4.6″ but the barrels are available in several lengths. The stock barrel retails for $109.95 and they go up from there depending on length and options. The Lonewolf barrel has 1 in 16 twist broach cut rifling and is made of 416 stainless steel.  The test barrel was blind marked, as you can see the 10 on by the lower lug on the barrel. They can be ordered that way but it is a little extra.

Lonewolf also makes conversion barrels for Glocks to change calibers, such as you can order a .40 Smith and Wesson Lonewolf barrel, drop it in your Glock 20 and now it will shoot .40 S&W with the same magazine. There are many conversion barrels for many models of Glocks. The Lonewolf website, hyper linked at the beginning of the article is updated on what is available and what is in stock.