WW's Vs Lyman #2 on game

[stobey]

My Marlin 1895 45-70 shoots the Lyman 457193 bullet into one hole. Obviously a very good load and match. With Lyman #2 alloy not so good.

Since the WW load works so well in my rifle I was wondering what happens to that bullet when it hits big game. My fear is that it may shatter. I air cool the bullets by the way so the BHN will be very low.

Thanks

Steve

[cabezaverde]

Air cooled wheel weights will be less likely to shatter than Lyman #2. Welcome to the board also.

[Bret4207]

Use the WW, #2 is too hard IMO.

[Paladin 56]

I've only recovered one cast bullet from an animal. It was a .429 240 grain SWC air cooled WW metal. It was recovered from a frontal shot on a big mule deer doe, hit in the chest and traveling completely through the body cavity guts and all, the left ham, and recovered under the hide. Range was about 60 yards. I didn't think to mic it at the time, but it appeared to have swelled up some on the nose, but other than that and rifling marks, you wouldn't have known it went completely through a deer. No bones were hit.

I concur with Bret4207 and cabazaverde that #2 is too hard and brittle.

[Larry Gibson]

I've only recovered one cast bullet from an animal. It was a .429 240 grain SWC air cooled WW metal. It was recovered from a frontal shot on a big mule deer doe, hit in the chest and traveling completely through the body cavity guts and all, the left ham, and recovered under the hide. Range was about 60 yards. I didn't think to mic it at the time, but it appeared to have swelled up some on the nose, but other than that and rifling marks, you wouldn't have known it went completely through a deer. No bones were hit.

I concur with Bret4207 and cabazaverde that #2 is too hard and brittle.

Classic example of the poor pentration and "bullet failure" of a regular weight SWC in the .44 magnum. Had you been using a real hard cast .44 magnum bullet like a 300+ gr WFN you would have got complete penetration out the back of the ham (that's where the real "killing" starts you know!). Now if that had been a hog then that whimpy 240 gr bullet would probably just have flattened out under the hide against the grissle! Obviously since you never recovered any of the other whimpy 240 gr bullets they obviously failed to kill the deer. Think of the children you could have saved just by using the right bullet.....okay let me throw the race card in here; what if that would have been a black bear!

Yes all that was tongue in cheek and pretty rediculous. So is the claim that only a heavy hard cast bullet will kill deer effectively. Palidin 56's post is a very good example of the truth of the matter.

BTW; to answer the question; ACWWs is a very good alloy for hunting in the 45-70 when PB'd bullets like 457193 are used. I like to add 2% tin just to increase the castability. It seems to make them a little more maleable also.

Larry Gibson

[Gee_Wizz01]

I too have only recovered 1 cast bullet while hunting. My bullet was a .45 ACP 192 gr button nose wadcutter a Lyman 452389 cast from ACWW's. The bullet was fired into a 95 lb wild pig with a quartering shot through the front right shoulder blade, traversed the length of the body through the left rear hindquarter through the hip joint and stopped in the hide in the pigs butt. The bullet punched a neat round hole at the entry and also a nice hole through the shoulder blade. The bullet showed only minor damage, a small gouge from the nose to the base and the bullet lost 1.5 grains on its trip through the hog and the bullet still retained its shape with minimal damage to the nose and rifling engraving was still fairly sharp. The bullets were aged about 7 years.

G

[Paladin 56]

Uh oh.

I didn't know I was supposed to be shooting real hard cast 300+ gr. WFN bullets in my .44 magnum for hunting. Makes me wonder how I killed all those other deer and antelope with those bullets.

Dang Larry. Now I have sell the 265 gr. WFN mold I have and get another mold for the heavier 300+ gr bullet.

To further answer your question Steve, you've answered part of it yourself because of how well the WW bullets shoot.
My Marlin 1895 45-70 shoots the Lyman 457193 bullet into one hole. Obviously a very good load and match.....Since the WW load works so well in my rifle I was wondering what happens to that bullet when it hits big gameWhat happens to the bullet is this: It goes completely through the animal, killing it like the diminutive 240 gr SWC 44 mag bullet, only better.

David

[Slow Elk 45/70]

Yup, the 300 GR boolit will kill em deader than dead !![smilie=1:

[bruce drake]

ummmm.....just how many stages of dead are there?[smilie=1: sure wouldn't want to know the deer I've shot in the past with wheelweight boolits suffered needlessly after their hearts stopped while I butchered them out...Is there something like 7/8ths dead:kidding:

Wheelweights work just fine for both targets and hunting. Lyman #2 is for target practice only in my opinion.

Bruce

[Throwback]

Lyman #2 or something just slightly softer works just fine for hunting in calibers like the .30-06 at velocities of 1,800 or more. And no, it won't shatter unless you go for too much of a good thing and exceed 2,000 to 2,100 fps. But, WW is a better fit for your .45-70. Some .45-70's with rather shallow rifling may require harder bullets but most don't. Softer bullets are also more tollerant of barrel fit than harder alloys, which need to be be sized appropriately to work well.

[Wayne Smith]

A little historical aside, the buffalo hunters used the Sharps 16-1 or the Remington 20-1 mix to kill thousands of buffalo, at times with the bullet passing through two animals broadside. Your acww are similar in hardness to just a bit harder - you could cut it in half with soft lead and still be in the game.

[Bret4207]

I don't know that #2 will shatter, I wonder if that's another wives tale, but I can tell you this based on my experiments shooting a dead cow some years back. Both the RCBS 30-180FN and Bator 35-250 were driven to approx 2000 fps. Both held together and showed mushrooming and were straight WW alloy, not heat treated. Both penetrated in a straight line nearly the length of the carcass and despite striking the carcass at near 2000 fps they retained over 90% of their weight.

I can see #2 or other exotic alloys when you need extreme penetration and a super hard alloy will work fine with a well designed FN boolit, but since most guys never shoot the far side of 2200 fps I see no reason to go to the harder exotic alloy UNLESS a gun demands it.

[GLynn41]

normal use ww will work fine-- if you think you need them harder --then water drop them -- I have soften ww but as the boolit blew through -- i do know what difference it made

[Throwback]

Straight Lino or something nearly as hard, and/or excessive velocity are two things that will make a cast bullet "shatter". This is an advantage for those who shoot varmints with cast. Hard bone is also a contributing factor but this is simply not an issue in deer.

I shot my last deer with a 2,000 fps load and an alloy approaching the hardness of #2, which is usually quoted as 15 BHN. My alloy probably ran about 14. My hardness tester is a SAECO and does not use the same scale. I had complete penetration and damage to the major heart vessels was quite satisfactory.

[GrizzLeeBear]

ummmm.....just how many stages of dead are there?[smilie=1: sure wouldn't want to know the deer I've shot in the past with wheelweight boolits suffered needlessly after their hearts stopped while I butchered them out...Is there something like 7/8ths dead:kidding:

Wheelweights work just fine for both targets and hunting. Lyman #2 is for target practice only in my opinion.

Bruce

Lets see.....

Dead

Real dead

Stone dead

Deader than a door nail

DOA - dead on arrival (of the boolit of course)

DRT - dead right there

Extremely dead

....and for those who drink lots of kool-aid...

Tactical extreme dead :twisted:

:bigsmyl2:

A WW boolit out of 45-70 is gonna be big medicine on just about any critter.

[largom]

I have some 25 yr. old WW that are a little harder than current ones so I mix 2/3 WW and 1/3 lead water dropped. Killed 3 deer this season with this alloy in 45-70, 35 Rem. and 308. Shot all thru shoulder. Bullet passed completely thru. Animals did not run.
A good way to test expansion AND penetration of cast bullets is to line up 4 or 5 one Gal. milk jugs full of water in a row with an old suitcase or cardboard box stuffed full of rags behind the milk jugs. If your boolit passes thru all jugs it will be trapped in the container of rags. If it passes thru everything then your alloy is way too hard. We use about 1 gal. of milk a week so that gives me 50 or so jugs/yr. I keep any plastic jug that is suitable for my testing. Friends and family also save them for me.
Larry

[Slow Elk 45/70]

:lovebooliYup , WW CB's make good hunting fodder in most hunting rifle/pistols, If one needs a little more FPS, water quench or bake em. IMHO.[smilie=1: Other metal mixes are better used for the higher velocity boolits used for other than hunting, and the cost go up & up. If I don't have enough WW's I still try to duplicate this mix for most of my shooting, which is killin cans, pest, predators and hunting wild game.

I agree, Dead,DRT,DOA...Dead is Dead

:redneck:

[Cowboy5780]

Hmmmm punch a big hole thru a heart and it will bleed out i promise ya only thing is until it bleeds out the deer or other prey may go over the river and thru the woods and make it to grammas house and you have drag it a country mile

[missionary5155]

Good morning and WELCOME Stobey !!
Personaly I would not use either mix.... I am a personal fan of "the softer the better" application. For Hunting boolits in my rifles I start with a 50/50 mix of WW+pure lead. If a Gas check model does not give me the THUMP I want I move up to a bigger caliber.
AS you are at a REAL Thumper (45-70) how much more Thumping do you really need than a 400 grainer moving at 1650 fps... This will STOMP Buffs... Grizzly.. I do not expect to see any charging Rhinos where my feet get dusty. Even the old African hunters used a mix of 20-1 as thier "Hardened" boolits to pop elephant.. And it worked rather well it seems-
A TOO hard boolit can be shot lighting fast. It will zip right through game and leave a 45 caliber tunnel that may not leak at all. Pop that same critter with a 50 /50 in the same spot and it will not be going far.
Buffs were shot by the milliom with pure lead at 1150 fps - (Muzzle fps). Faster/harder boolits are not going to be what puts meat in the cold box.
God Bless you

[Throwback]

Soft works better for large bores than for small. Most of the "old hands" use 20-1 in their .45-70's and the reason is that it certainly works very well - especially on target. It leads like an SOB in smallbores though. Even different cases within the same bore size can give vastly different results.

[warf73]

Please bear with me on this as I don't have all the details and this is all from memory. I had a friend that I got into cast that started testing how hard boolits acted being shot out a 270win.

He started with an alloy mix that was about 20brn (if I remember correctly) running in the 2200fps range (I know it wasn't slower than 2k and wasn’t faster 2500 again sorry he had all the notes on this project) We were using ballistic jell at 100 yards (not sure what the mix on it was but was supost to be close to real tissue).

The 20brn had good penetration min bullet deformation. Next was 25brn at same fps with about the same results but with no deformation. The next was close to 32brn but the results were very different. The bullet traveled about 4" or so and shattered into several peaces. With the 32brn boolit it was like shooting a varmint bullet more or less.

After that trail with just ballistic jell we add 1 phone book in front of the jell to represent harder tissue before the soft (was dry). The results were different than above as we expected but with some twists.

The 32brn boolits made a shotgun pattern in the jell as the boolite more or less blew up in the phone book.

The 25brn boolit split into a few peaces and only traveled a little ways into the jell.

The 20brn deformed allot compared the first time but held together and went into the jell quite aways.

I really wish he didn't move away so I could copy all his notes to post it here but this is the best I could do. So please don’t take this as gospel as it’s from memory but its pretty close.

On another note he did allot of research on Harding boolits with different temps and times, and dropping the boolits into different temps of water media (not straight water I do remember that for sure) which is why we/he started the other test mentioned above.


Warf

[Throwback]

That's a good test Warf. Add bone to the mix and you find more shattering and that the 20BHN performs similar to the harder metals. In small bores I shoot for 14-15 BHN. Handguns and big bores usually work better with even softer alloys.