shot 3 soft nosed cast today

[jhalcott]

Worked on the range today building doors. When we took a break I shot 3 of the 358318's that I made the other day. It was raining softly and the only area open was 50 yards. I used a bale of phone books 10" thick taped together and hung them on the rail at 50 yards. The shots went exactly where I aimed them ! 1st at top right ,2nd in the middle and 3rd in the bottom left of the bale. I got 7 to 8" of penetration with another inch or so of damaged pages. The bullets started to expand at ~1" and continued till they stopped .There was a wound channel of 1 to 1 1/2". I only recovered 2 of the bullets and 1 gas check. Also a LOT of fragments. I have not weighed the recovered bullets yet but expect them to be around 100 grains after starting at 240 before gas check and lubing. The books were DRY, and performance is quite similar to bullets I have flatnosed by hand.
Velocity is 1995 fps. I plan on a little more playing with this bullet and shooting WET phone books for comparison. Merry Christmas!

[DanWalker]

Mr halcot, it is true what they say."Great minds think alike." I also was out shooting phone books with softnose cast boolits.
My setup was a bit different though. I used a water soaked phone book that was about 2" thick, taped to a 1 gallon jug of water, and a 6" thick water soaked phone book taped behind that. My intent wasn't to catch a bullet, but rather to see evidence of it's expansion or lack thereof.
Water soaked phone books have been great, in my experience, for simulating muscle tissue, producing wonderful mushroom in expanding bullets, and also in tracking the penetrating abilities of hard cast boolits. The problem for me is that animals aren't homogeneous. I haven't seen a shot I'd consider ethical on an animal that required me to penetrate 14"to 20" of solid tissue.
What I'm trying to do is simulate a nearly broadside shot, through the lungs, and exiting the offside shoulder. This is my preferred shot. I'm trying to come up with a boolit that acts like a nosler partition. The cast softnoses really seem like they are going to be just the ticket. The soft nose expands rapidly, while the hard shank and base stay intact or deform slightly, and will continue to penetrate, even if the soft nose shears off.
I tried 3 different alloys today. All were 405 gr , cast from a LEE single cavity mould.
The same gun and powder charge was used for all three shots.
The gun was a marlin 1895 in 45/70. The load was 25 grains of 2400. I'm estimating velocity at around 14-1500fps. Targets were 40 yards downrange.
Alloy number one was my control. It was wheelweights air cooled.
Impact was pretty cool, with water geysering out of the jug and the whole shebang scooting back about 2 feet at the shot. There was some slight evidence of expansion, and the exit hole out the back of the phone books was around 1.5"
Alloy number two was a softnose. Nose was cast from a pure lead rounball (.490)melted in a ladle, with a shank and base cast from wheelweights.
This load also hit like a ton of bricks, as well as producing a nice puff of confetti from the rear phone book which it TORE IN HALF when it exited. The entrance wound on the rear phone book looked like the boolit had expanded to around an inch or so in diameter while pentrating the front phone book and the water jug.
The largest wound channel I found prior to the area where the boolit blew the back phone book apart was about 3" in diameter.
The third alloy was pure lead. I tried it last, figuring it might be too soft for my purposes, but it shot fine with no leading. My phone books were all blowed up so I just shot this load into the heap, and it also blew the crap out of them(to use a scientific term).
Not real sure where I'm going to go from here. I'll probably cast some more soft noses as well as some from pure lead, and try them head to head next.
I think I'm on the right track here.

[jhalcott]

Maybe I will get a "TEST TUBE" for Xmas then I can really test these things ! the 2 bullets I found weighed 114+ and 107+ grains there were also 74 grains of fragments stuck between the pages that I found. My bullets were 240 before checking and lube 358 diameter. I got complete penetration of 20" of wet phone books with UNALTERED bullets at 25 yards and 19" with a flatnosed bullet. There was evidence of expansion then. A 100 yard test with FN's produced results similar to the ones today.
The nose of these bullets are pure lead and the bases are linotype. I did NOT weigh the nose metal before shooting them . It is about 1/3 the bullet so should weigh 80 to 100 grains. I need to make a micro ladle that holds about 50 grains and try that. Also a base metal of about 15 BHN should be better and not fragment as much as lino.

[Ricochet]

Dan, I haven't been able to do a lot of expansion testing in simulated tissue media, but what I think will work a lot like a "cast Nosler Partition" in a .45-70 is the old Lyman Gould #457122HP at circa 1500 FPS, of fairly soft alloy. When the hollow nose portion overexpands and blows off, what's left is something like a .44 Magnum wadcutter.