Air cool or water cool

[BrianB]

I need some guidance. I hope to deer hunt with cast .357 GC bullets shot out of .360 Dan Wesson cases and a Handi-Rifle. I am using an NOE 360-180 mold. The bullets have a very wide/flat nose. Most of my deer kills are shot through the lungs and low in the chest (I get a blood trail faster that way). I never shoot through the shoulders. Will I get any expansion with the water cooled bullets or should I just air cool them? (check the attached images, if I did it right)

[grouch]

It depends on your alloy. If your alloy contains more antimony than tin and a trace of arsenic, water dropping will harden it. You would be better off air cooling if you're looking for expansion.

[44man]

Air cool them or you will run into the same thing I have with hard boolits from my 45-70 BFR. Mine are too fast for hard but you are going the other way with boolits too small and need some expansion.
I think I would go to 50-50 WW's and pure. Then you might be still able to water drop for accuracy yet still have a ductile boolit.
I can't answer with confidence because I do not use a small revolver. Mr. deer will be the final answer. If you do not destroy the lungs, go back to the drawing board.
You need to look for some expansion without over doing it so you have complete penetration. Don't make the mistake of looking for a quick expanding, explosive boolit or bullet, the boolit does not have enough weight for it to maintain penetration. Getting the nose to .41 to .44 caliber should be enough.

[BrianB]

Ooops. I should have noted that I am using straight wheel weight alloy.

[runfiverun]

i add pure to my 44 mag hunting boolits about 25% is right for me.
i don't water drop them and they are plain based pushed 1600 fps. through my lever action.
since you are using the check i would think you could easily get away with that same recipe.or even softer.
looks like you are using alox?
you might wanna try another lube for this one if you show any leading.
i get complete pass throughs out over 100 yds so i have never recovered a boolit but the deer don't go very far.

[NuJudge]

I like to water drop everything so my bullets don't get dings from banging into each other. I like to add enough Tin that I get good fill out. I cast everything hot, so my bullets are more easily filled out.

If there is Tin and a few percent Antimony, water dropping will get you quite a hard bullet. A harder bullet will Lead less, but still will require a large enough bullet (I like .002" over groove diameter, but can't get a .357 Mag bullet over .359" to chamber) and an adequate lube. A gas check will also delay the onset of Leading.

My cast bullets have not expanded significantly. I have not recovered any bullets, but the hole in the far side of the chest is the same size as the entrance wound.

My experience with jacketed hollowpoint bullets in .44 Magnum handguns and a .45-70 Marlin is that they have not expanded either.

With all of these calibers, I am satisfied with the speed with which the game went down, and I am not troubled that there did not seem to be significant expansion.

[Shiloh]

It depends on your alloy. If your alloy contains more antimony than tin and a trace of arsenic, water dropping will harden it. You would be better off air cooling if you're looking for expansion.

I have a mold that drops a hair under .452. I am going to try this. These are handgun boolits about 800 fps from range lead. Hardness is not an issue. Shoots
'em accurately and no leading.

Shiloh

[Ricochet]

I think he means expansion on impact. I don't think air cooled boolits will end up larger in diameter than the water dropped ones after they've "aged" for a week or two.

[BrianB]

Ricochet,
that's mainly what I'm wondering about. Shot through the lungs, the bullet just isn't meeting much resistance...two ribs, a little meat and maybe a section of heart at the most. I don't know if hardened or air cooled will make a difference. I was just hoping someone had recovered bullets and could tell me. I realize that is a longshot.

[EDK]

Thread in group buy mould results titled "suffering succotash 360180 WFN" or something similar by Blammer. He used water jugs to test expansion.

D*** nice mould...I've got the 5 cavity with 4 PB/1 GC. It sure has shot nice in various VAQUEROS and I need to work up a load for the MARLIN Cowboy rifles soon.

:Fire::cbpour::redneck:

[GabbyM]

Water dropped WW will not expand for you. That's assuming the WW were indeed around 4% antimony. If you do hit something hard enough to upset the bullet it will most likely break. The Lyman cast bullet manual has a page on alloys and expansion.

I'd go with the straight WW air cooled or if you have some pure pb mix it half and half with WW then heat treat. Either should expand at over 1600 fps or so. WW hardness is veritable so If they seam on the hard side air cooled I'd cut it with some pure pb. 25% or so. Until I could scribe a mark with my finger nail. Would be looking for BHN 10 to 12.

Yes Shooting water jugs is always fun.

[runfiverun]

brian the design of your boolit will work for you as well.
i shot a deer last fall with a 30 carbine revolverat 75 yds right through the lungs with a cast boolit and a good meplat the velocity was right around 950 fps probably a bit lower. but the damage to the lungs was out of proportion to the little boolit.
she went 20 feet and droped over,I hit no heart no ribs nothing and a poof of dust behind her
the exit hole was about double the entrance wound.
all i can give are experiences,as i have had the exact same results with a 44 and a 45 but at different distances,30 to 130 yds,the heavier ones are what i mainly use as i have taken some frontal shots and prefer the heavier weight for the trip.
i don't use heavy for caliber either just the nominal weights at real world velocities.
no h-110 loads no big booming loads just a good accurate load at a decent velocity and a good flat nose with a fairly soft alloy.

[BrianB]

Thanks everyone. After the comments, I think I will either mix it down with pure lead or air cool. I just don't think I need a very hard bullet to penetrate a deer's chest cavity at 80 yards or less using a 180 gr. bullet at 1700fps or more. BTW, the Alox has worked very well on my other bullets, no leading at all that I can tell. Same report from a friend I reloaded and cast for recently. Pain in the a**, though.
Runfiverun, what alloy are you using in your bullets?

[runfiverun]

25% lead with ww's and 1% tin. air cooled.
you might wanna hang back to about 1600 fps muzzle velocity...
give the boolit some time to work a bit..
me and 44 man has had a lengthy discussion as to velocity and alloy effects on animals.
i think he is starting to see my way of thinking on the hunting issue.
and he does have me thinking some on the target end of things,especially with the big guns.

[BrianB]

Thanks for the reply RFR.

[44man]

Yes, too hard and too fast from my 45-70 BFR (1632 fps) leaves lungs intact. Just a .45 hole through the chest. Same weight hard boolit at 1160 fps out of a .45 Colt ruins a deer's day quick.
My 45-70 will be using much softer boolits this year.

[crabo]

Yes, too hard and too fast from my 45-70 BFR (1632 fps) leaves lungs intact. Just a .45 hole through the chest. Same weight hard boolit at 1160 fps out of a .45 Colt ruins a deer's day quick.
My 45-70 will be using much softer boolits this year.

I have a new guide gun and I have been wondering why I need to push a 420 grain boolit with a big meplat, at near max for deer and hogs?

It seems like this boolit at about 1400 fps would do all you need to do. Yes, it would shot flatter, with more speed, but if I want a long range gun, I am going to use a different rifle.

If a 250 Kieth will blow through a couple of deer with 10 grains of Unique, why beat yourself to death? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[44man]

I have a new guide gun and I have been wondering why I need to push a 420 grain boolit with a big meplat, at near max for deer and hogs?

It seems like this boolit at about 1400 fps would do all you need to do. Yes, it would shot flatter, with more speed, but if I want a long range gun, I am going to use a different rifle.

If a 250 Kieth will blow through a couple of deer with 10 grains of Unique, why beat yourself to death? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Yes, you are right on the money. My problem is the velocity point where accuracy is with my revolver. I just don't want to lose it.
I went to a heavier boolit with a wider meplat and it did not do any more then the WLN did. Still too fast. I need a cape buf to slow it down! Now if I shot all of my deer at 200 yards it might work fine.

[Bret4207]

Brian, you have a good metplat to start with and enough weight to back it. You're in the 38-40 rifle range and should have no issues with penetration if you insist on a lung shot. My preference is a shoulder shot as they drop right there, but your method will work too.

[stubert]

I hit a deer in the neck last year, I was using 9lb ww mixed wth 1 lb 50/50 solder air cooled, 44 mag, 240 gr. swc. Bullet went in high in front of the shoulder and exited the throat. It traveled 14" through the neck and never hit the spine. looking at the wound channel it did not expand at all and was perfectly strait. I don't think anything other than hollow pointing will cause expansion, these are fairly soft bullets. This was a big deer, dressed at 182 lbs.

[BrianB]

That was a good-sized deer. I started wondering about all this when my cousin showed me a pure lead, flat point muzzle loader bullet that had basically traveled the length of a deer, broke some bones and lodged under the skin. Even with a heavy load of TripleSeven, the air-cooled pure lead bullet did not expand much.

I decided last night that I'm going to use XTP's this year for hunting and do some testing with various WW/pure lead mixes as I get time. What is the best thing to test with? Wet newspaper, water filled milk jugs, any ideas?

[1874Sharps]

BrianB,

All good advice given by other posters. If you are curious and have some time to experiment, you may try some penetration/expansion tests with different alloys and velocities into soaking wet phonebook media. Yes, there is always ballistic lab gel, but it is not cheap and the old phonebook test is probably a realistic test and el cheapo. If I had to choose between penetration and expansion I would take a little more penetration. Your bullet weight, diameter and meplat are certainly reasonable for your purposes.

Crabo,

Ten million buffalo of the 1870s-1880s would testify to the validity of your ideas concerning the efficacy of large bore, heavy, slow-moving bullets! That is not to say that is the only way to get game, but it does work! I must also say that the older I get and the worse the arthritis in the right shoulder gets, the less I enjoy getting pounded by heavy recoil.

[Recluse]

I must also say that the older I get and the worse the arthritis in the right shoulder gets, the less I enjoy getting pounded by heavy recoil.

I hear that.

BruceB has a nice post somewhere around here about pouring Pure Lead into the nose of his mould, then following up with WW or #2 alloy or whatever--all to get good expansion upon impact for purposes of game-hunting.

One of the scribes at Handloading gave him a backhanded remark and referenced "not sure I want to risk warping a mould trying this" in his article. What a schmuck.

But, if you're looking for expansion for your type of preferred kill shot, might be worth checking out.

You'll have to do a little searching for it. I'd try, but I absolutely suck at being able to search for anything on these forums.

:coffee:

[BruceB]

Thanks for the reference.

Just do a search here for "softpoint" and you'll find a week's worth of reading.

Note that I was writing about them as the method was developing, so if yer in a hurry go the most-recent posts to find the distilled knowledge.

The only thing I do much differently from earlier experimenters is that I allow the nose to freeze, and completely cool is better than hot. Once that occurs, the harder alloy for the base is poured in and also allowed to freeze, with a healthy puddle on the sprue plate.

THEN place the mould on top of the melt in the furnace until the bullet liquifies completely, signified by the melting of the sprue. Cool the whole mess on a wet rag until it's all solid, and you will have a SEAMLESS and perfectly filled-out softpoint....no weak joint to break under stress.

I recommend using about 25% of total bullet weight for the pure-lead nose. This can be easily regulated by using lead split-shot sinkers adding up to an appropriate total weight to form the soft nose.

[Recluse]

Thanks for the reference.
The only thing I do much differently from earlier experimenters is that I allow the nose to freeze, and completely cool is better than hot. Once that occurs, the harder alloy for the base is poured in and also allowed to freeze, with a healthy puddle on the sprue plate.

THEN place the mould on top of the melt in the furnace until the bullet liquifies completely, signified by the melting of the sprue. Cool the whole mess on a wet rag until it's all solid, and you will have a SEAMLESS and perfectly filled-out softpoint....no weak joint to break under stress.

Bruce,

Thanks for the update to your trials/experiments.

Think I'm gonna try that on some 170 grain FN .309 boolits for my 30-30, and some 210 gr .429 boolits for my hogleg Model 29. Should be good for punching a wild pig's ticket down here.

:coffee:

[BrianB]

The double pour sounds like an interesting concept.