How much MEPLAT is enough

[TCLouis]

Caliber

Rifle
30 Ranch dog 165 in front of 21.5 grains of WC820 (Medium) will vaporize an orange at 50 yards. After much searching I found one piece of skin about 1/2" square.

32
I am most concerned about 8X57 because the 325 175 GB boolit has a pretty small meplat. 0.180"

33

35

Pistol
26

28

30

35

40

44

45

[runfiverun]

65% is a number tossed around a lot.
i think you can get away with less, much less as velocity goes up.

[Boerrancher]

I can tell you from experience that you don't need any meplat if your lead is soft enough and you are pushing it fast enough. Out of my custom built 308win I push a Lee 309-180-RN cast from a 50% pure 50% wheel weight at between 2400 and 2500 fps. It penetrates about 4 inches before the nose is pealed back past the gas check. Inside of 100 yards it will not shoot through a whitetail on a perfect broadside rib shot. The first time it happened I thought it was a fluke a bad boolit. Nope not the case, works that way every time.

Best wishes,

Joe

[RobS]

I go 75% with the larger calibers (40 and up) and then 60-65% on the smaller calibers.........generally speaking.

[303Guy]

I'm glad this question was raised - I want to know too.
I'm wanting to toughen my boolits with copper and to rely on the meplat to do the work.
I'm also wanting to compare different boolit diameters with the same meplat diameter. I'm thinking of how the meplat affects drag as well, like how would a fatter 40cal with a 30cal meplat compare to a 35cal boolit with a 30cal meplat given the same boolit weight. Similarly with the performance on game.
This is for rifle.

[303Guy]

I go 75% with the larger calibers (40 and up) and then 65% on the smaller calibers.........generally speaking.What is the reasoning here? Are you thinking of the smaller calibers being faster?

[Ben]

This may be " a little much ", but this NOE , 180 gr. .360" gas check is a REAL KILLER !

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/013-21.jpg

[35remington]

Maximum meplat applies to slow bullets. At rifle type speeds meplat becomes much less important, as even a hard alloy will see its meplat become essentially 100%. Soft alloys that expand at rifle speed mean meplat matters not at all.

Obsessing over it with rifle velocities is an utter waste of time.

[RobS]

What is the reasoning here? Are you thinking of the smaller calibers being faster?

Yes and in addition the possible use of a HP in the smaller calibers.

[303Guy]

Thanks, RobS.
For me I need to make a decision on which caliber to select for my new pig gun and also to select a boolit mold for my existing pig gun in the meantime. My first boolit was a 230gr with a wide, shallow 'cup' nose for the purposes of hunting turkey, rabbit and pig with muzzle velocity of 1500fps and still have enough boolit left with a wide meplat after the cup has blown of for pig. That boolit worked very well on turkey but was too long for magazine feed so a flat nose 208gr became the choice. But just how flat is my question. True - the boolit is now faster. So it's about making an informed decision that's all. But beside that, there is wanting to know aspect - curiosity.

[Irascible]

Depends on velocity and distance. LBTs WFN have a hugh meplat and have to be driven real hard to be accurate, at least in my experience. To me it looks like anything over 70% looses accuracy at long distance.

[btroj]

Too dependent on velocity, alloy, and caliber to say ONE number is "right".

Faster it goes the smaller the meplat can be. Softer allows that allow expansion also allow smaller meplats.

I will stick with "it depends".

[303Guy]

To me it looks like anything over 70% looses accuracy at long distance.Thanks.
But how does meplat percentage correlate with sectional density? I read somewhere that wadcutters were intrinsically unstable and lost accuracy with distance, hence the advent of semi-wadcutters. That would tend to support the above observation and in a way it does seem intuitively correct.

[runfiverun]

air resistance and how fast they slow down.
plus they have a hard time breaking through the sound barrier in both directions because of the nose.
keep them above or below the sound barrier all the way to the target.
sometimes the added weight alone makes that one harder to do.

[TXGunNut]

Just to complicate things it seems too wide a meplat will cause feeding issues in certain leverguns. I think a big 60-70% meplat makes sense for my big, slow boolits but would like to see something scientific to back up my preference.

[XTR]

I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but for my 45-70 I spec'd a .30 meplat for a 400gr PP mold from Accurate. I figure it'll do the job of letting the liquids out and the air in.

[nanuk]

This may be " a little much ", but this NOE , 180 gr. .360" gas check is a REAL KILLER !

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/013-21.jpg


I am interested in trying that one PP'd in my 9.3x62 and x57(when I get it built)

[mkf350]

I like the looks of that boolit!

[303Guy]

That boolit should have a very poor BC. Some artillery shells have a windshield over their horrible noses to overcome that. I'm thinking of a wide but shallow hollow nose and running it through a sizer that closes it down to make it more streamlined. Might work.

[TXGunNut]

That boolit should have a very poor BC. Some artillery shells have a windshield over their horrible noses to overcome that. I'm thinking of a wide but shallow hollow nose and running it through a sizer that closes it down to make it more streamlined. Might work.


Interesting idea. A swaged/cast hollow cavity boolit.

[jhalcott]

I've used pointy cast bullets in 30, 35 and 45 caliber to take deer. I've also used flat nosed ones. The BEST ones in my opinion, are the 2 part soft nose variety. There is no doubt the flat nose kills quicker than pointy bullets. They do not fly as well as the pointy ones though. The 2 part, soft nose, hard base fly like pointy bullets and loose the point on contact. This leaves a flat nosed peg to drive thru the critter. I have had good success with the 311041 and the 311466 and 467 also. I had to do a bit of tracking with the 466 and 467 bullets while the 041 dropped the deer much quicker. Soft pointed, the 467 works like the 041 in my guns and experience.
Depending on the DISTANCE TO TARGET a large meplat might be a problem. You COULD get a pointy mold like the 311284 or 311467. Cast a few, then file or lathe turn the nose flat. Do this till you get the meplat that works best in your gun. Shoot into wet pack at 200 yards to test the accuracy and performance at each size meplat.

[pls1911]

Your concerns are mostly solved with Ranch Dog's designs, now prooduced by Mihec, I think.
Michael spent a lot of effort balancing meplate, ogive, center of mass, center of gravity and who knows what other factors.
Though maximized for lever actions, his designs work well in all guns at reasonable cast bullet ranges.

[Indio]

I was reading some stuff on the Garrett Cartridge site about this recently.... full article is here (http://www.garrettcartridges.com/meplats.html)


....Interestingly, our 540-grain Hammerhead for the 45-70 produces penetration channels or wound channels that appear to be fully twice the diameter of our 420-grain Hammerhead for the 45-70, yet the difference between the bullets' meplat diameters is only .030-inch. Our 420-grainer sports a meplat diameter of .330-inch and our 540-grainer sports a meplat diameter of .360-inch. What is also clear is that our 420-grainer with its .330-inch meplat produces wound channels substantially larger than those produced by the .300-inch meplat that is all to common to the caliber, and characterized our early efforts in 45-70.

[Southern Shooter]

Because I knew this 362 grain .454 Casull bullet would not be traveling faster than about 1,050 FPS at most, and, more likely will be kept around 1,000 FPS for my woods defense gun when in bear areas, I kept the meplat rather large. I am open to any input on it and if you think it is not a good design.
58668

[GLynn41]

I like it - has it been made yet? I have a .331 meplat in a .41 and have taken deer and a boar and been pleased

[Southern Shooter]

Yes, it has already been made. It is an Accurate Mold and he has it listed as 45-360C.

There is also a checked version that Tom made for me, 45-360D.
58682

[Marlin Junky]

Wound channel volume is also dependent on sectional density since a high sectional density boolit will not decelerate as quickly as a comparably shorter one.

MJ

[GLynn41]

for fun go to beartooh -to the ballistian area and play with the wound channel predictor-- it is fun and seems close to wet paper or the deer and boar I have taken

[TXGunNut]

Because I knew this 362 grain .454 Casull bullet would not be traveling faster than about 1,050 FPS at most, and, more likely will be kept around 1,000 FPS for my woods defense gun when in bear areas, I kept the meplat rather large. I am open to any input on it and if you think it is not a good design.
58668

I like it too. I'm wondering if it would make a good 45 Colt "Thumper" load in my RBH. Possibly a bit long & heavy for 45 Colt but looks ideal for a 454.

[superior]

The more it resembles a soup can, the better I like it! For woods work under a hundred yards, It seems to penetrate deeper and straighter.
After testing with milk jugs , I settled on the LEE 452-300-rf for the 45colt out of the Rossi carbine.

[odicoilius]

Why worry, use a hollow point! The rumors of hollow point premature break-up are just that, rumors. If the hollow point is not too deep and a reasonable alloy is used( slightly softer than lyman #2) the bullet mushrooms just fine. Have killed 3 of our northern Whitetails with a Lee 200r and a drilled hollow point (1/8" diameter 3/16" deep) in my .308.
Complete penetration and a quarter-sized exit hole, all three deer made it less than 50 yards, one a good-sized buck at almost 150 yards. Muzzle velocity 1960+- ft./sec.

[pls1911]

Sooooo much chatter.
Load up and shoot a pig... He doesn't care what the relative me plate sie is... He's dead...
Lyman, RanchDog, NOE, NEI, SAECO,RCBS... Any of these maker's standard lever gun designs will do fine.. Cast soft. Heat treat hard..

[leftiye]

It's about the HOLE. Figger out what you think is enough damage for the reliability in killing you want. Figger out how much kinetic energy (not speed per se, but dependent upon speed with given mass) ie. speed you must have to have enough power to make that much damage with the caliber you want to use.. Shoot enough of the game animal you want to hunt to prove that your load makes that hole. Voila'

Errr, don't change boolit weight or meplat you'll have to do it all over again. But if you make THAT hole in THAT part of THAT animal, he'll drop like a rock, maybe.

oH, USE THE MEPLAT YOU WANT TO USE.

[augercreek]

I'm new here,but have been casting bullets for fifty+ years and have never heard the term meplat,what's it mean?
Your brother in Christ Jerry

[Bomberman]

I'm new here,but have been casting bullets for fifty+ years and have never heard the term meplat,what's it mean?
Your brother in Christ Jerry

It refers to the flatness of the nose of the boolit.

[Ramslammer]

Sooooo much chatter.
Load up and shoot a pig... He doesn't care what the relative me plate sie is... He's dead...
Lyman, RanchDog, NOE, NEI, SAECO,RCBS... Any of these maker's standard lever gun designs will do fine.. Cast soft. Heat treat hard..
Say's it all. Go out and shoot something then when it's dead try to work out if a bigger meplat, hollow point (or not), RN, FN, ETC,ETC would of killed it twice. Mind you could be fun if it doesn't kill that angry bear once lol.
Juddy

[pls1911]

Ram slammer.... Why is it you Aussie's crack me up?
Always intelligent comments with a twist of wry humor.
Thanks for making a Texans day.

[Hyphenated]

Seems like a lot of us gun guys like to over think things. Probably because we like to tinker...always looking for something better. I think 35remington nailed it though, the major brand name mold makers have already figured it out for us.

[Lefty SRH]

Maximum meplat applies to slow bullets. At rifle type speeds meplat becomes much less important, as even a hard alloy will see its meplat become essentially 100%. Soft alloys that expand at rifle speed mean meplat matters not at all.

Obsessing over it with rifle velocities is an utter waste of time.

What would you say the minimum "rifle type speed" needs to be? I have a particular 7x57 I want to hunt with but my chosen boolit only has a .140"-ish diameter meplat.

[jsteed]

I'm new and ignorant, so tell me what MEPLAT means ??? Thanks

[Marlin Junky]

I'm new and ignorant, so tell me what MEPLAT means ??? Thanks

Reference the drawing in posts #24, 26 or 29.

The meplat is the .37" dimension parallel to the boolit's base; i.e., the flat part of the nose, sometimes referred to as the leading edge (unless one is careless enough to seat a boolit backwards).

MJ

P.S. Meplat is usually specified in terms of percent boolit shank diameter (or % groove diameter).

[jsteed]

Thank you MJ

[Adam10mm]

My .358 185gr WFN has a .280 meplat calculated as 78.2% of diameter. The people I had to field test this bullet reported great penetration and quick kills. Cast with foundry alloy at 15 BHN, 183gr as it drops from the mould.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/357185WFNrawextremeclose.jpg

[jmort]

Beautiful bullet. What brand is the mold? For sure that is a good sized meplat.

[Adam10mm]

NEI 4 cavity mould, but I've teamed up with a larger commercial bullet caster to begin production runs on their Magma Mark 8 machine so I can get back into mail order sales and keep up with demand.

[outdoorfan]

I don't suppose that you might have any particular info as to velocity of those loads that your customers used or if any used it in a rifle platform?



My .358 185gr WFN has a .280 meplat calculated as 78.2% of diameter. The people I had to field test this bullet reported great penetration and quick kills. Cast with foundry alloy at 15 BHN, 183gr as it drops from the mould.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/357185WFNrawextremeclose.jpg

[Adam10mm]

I don't suppose that you might have any particular info as to velocity of those loads that your customers used or if any used it in a rifle platform?
Sure do. I loaded the bullets into ammunition and distributed it to them for testing with instruction to keep all shots inside 150y. The load generates 1400fps from a 6 inch Ruger GP100 and 1750fps from a Marlin 1894C (velocities 600ft above sea level, measured 3ft from the muzzle, rounded to nearest 5fps).

[Lefty SRH]

Sure do. I loaded the bullets into ammunition and distributed it to them for testing with instruction to keep all shots inside 150y. The load generates 1400fps from a 6 inch Ruger GP100 and 1750fps from a Marlin 1894C (velocities 600ft above sea level, measured 3ft from the muzzle, rounded to nearest 5fps).

WOW, I'd like to see the load data for the 6" GP100. I have a similar boolit but I'm not quite comfortable pushing it that hard in my GP. I stopped at 1250fps.

[Adam10mm]

14.5gr LilGun

[outdoorfan]

WOW, I'd like to see the load data for the 6" GP100. I have a similar boolit but I'm not quite comfortable pushing it that hard in my GP. I stopped at 1250fps.

LilGun sure gets the velocity up, but I'm rather scared to try it with all the talk of throat erosion and such. Otherwise, I do have some of it left over from some experimenting I did several years ago, and it would go nicely with my 686 and Rossi 92 357. Just concerned about excessive heat and throat erosion.

Edit: For the occasional "hunting scenario" shot I'm not concerned, but for practice where my shots are fired in strings I can see the possibility of the need for a different combination.

[Adam10mm]

Not enough experimentation has gone into figuring out how realistic the issue really is. Lot of people cite the guy from Freedom Arms, but that's FA's alloy at FA's pressures and not comparable to other production firearms and pressures.

My load is also a hunting load and I don't expect customers to shoot thousands of these rounds per year.

[Lefty SRH]

According to my chart LilGun burns similar to H110. I used H110 in developing my 1250fps load in my GP.
How does LilGun compare to H110? Do you need a magnum primer for LilGun?

[Adam10mm]

LG is slower than H110/W296, is more stable with lower charges (no 3% less than max rule), and higher velocity. You don't need a magnum primer, but that's usually what I have around anyway. LG is easier to ignite than H110/W296.

[Lefty SRH]

LG is slower than H110/W296, is more stable with lower charges (no 3% less than max rule), and higher velocity. You don't need a magnum primer, but that's usually what I have around anyway. LG is easier to ignite than H110/W296.

Thanks thats good news.

[BAGTIC]

Meplat size has absolutely nothing to do with sectional density, unless the nose expands to larger than bullet caliber.

A soft bullet at high enough velocity will create its own meplat as its nose deforms upon impact. The problem is that as the velocity decreases with range the meplat formed will become progressively smaller. A pre-formed meplat will maintain the same size all the way to impact regardless of the range.

[Blammer]

This here is MIGHT be enough meplat. :) 44 cal
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/blammer8mm/Cast%20boolits/DSCN7432.jpg

[taco650]

This here is MIGHT be enough meplat. :) 44 cal
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/blammer8mm/Cast%20boolits/DSCN7432.jpg

DANG!!!! That's more like a long wadcutter!

[leftiye]

Nah. Anything less than 12 ga. (72 cal) is for sissies. Won't even kill tree rats. (P.S. It is a wadcutter.)

[shootrj2003]

Like other terms these terms have come about from some other world's language and just stuck,boolit in American is bullet and I have seen it expand into other sites until I believe some gun people actually believe it is the correct American word,Meplat also came from somewhere strange but everybody uses it now it's American translation is " my bullets flat nose" ,it is shorter but oddly I find it odd to say,it does not roll off the tongue nicely,like " my bullets flat nose measures .360". When you use " Meplat" it leaves a clunky disturbance in the air and off your tongue,and even in my mind! I keep this to myself in mixed company however...oops!

[fouronesix]

For hard, non-deforming solids like monolithic copper and brass, a meplat diameter somewhere between 60 and 70% of shank diameter has proven by testing and verification to yield maximum bullet track stability and penetration. For cast lead- who knows? Chances are pretty good even hard cast at moderate impact velocity will deform somewhat beginning at impact. IF it starts out at 65% it will likely not remain pristine for long after entry- especially so if bone is hit. Then it becomes a subjective balancing act between amount of trauma due to bullet nose expansion and depth of penetration. Or if a deformable bullet hits hard bone, especially at an acute angle, all bets are off as to line of track and penetration. Of course and obviously the above points are purely academic and moot if discussing a 400-500 gr 45 cal cast bullet hitting a 150 lb whitetail. Then effectiveness becomes purely a matter of placement. If on the other hand it is a 170 gr 30 cal hitting a moose or elk or larger African PG, straight line penetration and depth of penetration are most assuredly neither academic nor moot. :)

[Good Cheer]

Oh my.
You tailor the boolit to the gun and what you intend to do with it.
A pure soft lead paper patched spitzer will work fine... if it is going fast enough when it hits whatever the intended kill is. Or maybe you need a bit of a flat point to get expansion going at the intended range. Or maybe you are shooting close in and want a big flat point. Or maybe you want a little bit of a flat point to create a shock wave that the larger diameter boolit flies behind, like as with a Lyman #375296 (ah ha, surprised some with that idea). It all depends upon how fast, how soft, how accurate.
http://i.imgur.com/3qoptkf.jpg (https://imgur.com/3qoptkf)