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Are Non-Lead Pellets Bad For Your Barrel?

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Seems that the pellet would have to be as hard, if not harder, than the barrel to do any damage. Not certain myself but I highly doubt that they can damage a barrel.
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Well, I've polished steel with a magic eraser so.... My take is that you'd need to fire a ALOT of non lead pellets pellets to create any wear. And part 2 is that there are few people that have claimed accuracy with non-lead pellets past relatively short distances so that, in my opinion, would make it even more unlikely that you'd shoot enough to do any harm. I'm not talking a few hundred, Im thinking more in the many 10,000's range. 
 
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Our local airgun range is alloy only and many thousands of pellets are fired in there every Winter. I have never heard of anybody loosing accuracy from those alloy pellets. The alloy pellets are wearing the barrels much more than lead, it just doesn't show in the accuracy, or pellet fit.

I know there is more wear because I used GTO's in a brand new Crossman break barrel that came out of the box shooting shotgun patterns. One tin of lead didn't improve it much. After shooting 600 GTO's, it has shot very small clover leafs at 25 yards, even with some cheap pellets, ever since. Another 3000 alloys later there has been no change.

I don't have a bore scope, but I do have a half-baked theory that the tin being twice as hard is polishing off the nicks and scratches and may be opening a choke that is too tight a little. It could be that the tin is friction welding into the nicks and scratches and the following shots polish the filled area and solvents that would softer and remove lead while cleaning, don't remove tin. So a tin of alloy will always be my go to for new Chinese break barrels. I still don't shoot alloy in my HW95 , other than a couple to verify that HW .177 barrels hate alloy pellets.
 
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It seems awfully presumptive to say you "know there is more wear" after stating "I have never heard of anybody loosing accuracy from these allow pellets". You assume more wear is the case, and you might be correct. But you might also be incorrect. It seems that if indeed there was more wear then accuracy loss should be seen at some point, at least in some barrels that were marginal to begin with. But, your opinion is as valid as any other until empirical evidence becomes available, if it ever does.
 
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Yes, without a magnified bore scope it is impossible to say for sure if the rifling is wearing smooth or the tin is filling the scratches or a bit of both.

Having no loss of accuracy I believe to be a fact or very close to it. Before I started shooting alloy in by PCP, I asked at least 20 of the regulars at the range if they had any loss of accuracy and all said no. I'm not just talking about the mid-range rifles I shoot, but some good brands that stack pellets in the same hole. A well tuned FX, Daystate or AA would show a noticeable difference if there was one. Several old timers shoot AA T200's with GTO's every week with no changes. If there was a loss it would show in those after 10,000+ pellets.
 
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Yes, without a magnified bore scope it is impossible to say for sure if the rifling is wearing smooth or the tin is filling the scratches or a bit of both.

Having no loss of accuracy I believe to be a fact or very close to it. Before I started shooting alloy in by PCP, I asked at least 20 of the regulars at the range if they had any loss of accuracy and all said no. I'm not just talking about the mid-range rifles I shoot, but some good brands that stack pellets in the same hole. A well tuned FX, Daystate or AA would show a noticeable difference if there was one. Several old timers shoot AA T200's with GTO's every week with no changes. If there was a loss it would show in those after 10,000+ pellets.
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This seems to be logical. Still, it seems the "no loss of accuracy" reported would suggest that rifling wear isn't happening. Either that or that worn rifling isn't necessarily bad for accuracy. Possibly at some point there will be before and after pictures of specific bores that shot alloy extensively. 
 
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