I believe the cast lead rifle boolit is the most effective projectile in the world.

[Rattus58]

My Accurate Mold 378-275H cast with 50% Clip-on Wheel Weight (COWW) and 50% Lino-type weighs 265 gr ... Shot into shredded rubber mulch ... Took about 26" to stop them! Going aproximately 1550 FPS



I haven't shot any game with it yet.

From reading this thread ... I decided to back out of the MiHec 30 cal HP Hunting boolit group buy, and bought another Accurate Mold a 312-165B ... This is actually for my AK ...



The only disadvantage to slow and soft ... Is, trajectory!

Yeah.... its slow.... you can watch yer bullets in fact.... and they soft.... but one thing slow and soft don't affect is accuracy. Now you'll get some that will argue that, but they aren't arguing accuracy, they are arguing point blank range pretty much, but having a range finder helps if you're shooting ridiculously long ranges... which for me would be from 100 yards or so... but if you know your trajectory, and being hitting what you shoot at is so sexy and all... it gives you time to light up till it gets there..

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Goodsteel,

If you will read my later set of replys under this typic, starting just a few posts back, you will see that I refer to "solids" because of the earlier post a few before mine, speaking of solids.

When I state that my alloy is 50/50 WW/lead, any caster of even short experience will imeadiately know that I do not speak of a "solid" as is spoken of in regards to jacketed solids and that is the reason I used quotes as I refered to "solids".

I in no way say that my bullets are "solid" as in that regard, and in fact refer to my experience with my first cast bullet elk and how the bullet while for the most part retaining much of it's origional form, did in fact shed some of it's weight during it's rough passage through some very hard going. But did it expand as a expanding bullet would do? Not at all. It did not nor is it expected or needed to, expand as would be expected with an "expanding" bullet.

However though minimal, it did shed a bit of weight and is a bit deformed which is something which should not happen with a well designed real life jacketed solid.

However, clearly as evidenced by the wound channel on the hide at point of entry being much larger then the hole left in the hides I have witnessed on my and other critters taken through the many years of "J" bullet hunting with bullets designed to expand, the WFN (wide flat nose) bullet simply does not need to expand to do it's work.

That is the reason for the WFN/LFN design in the first place.

For those who desire expanding cast bullets, fine by me, but I am extreemly delighted with the results I have and unlike yourself and others have no desire to change or a need/desire to experment.

Nothing wrong with expermenting or trying different alloys or mold designs if that is your thing, but I am thankfull for those who have gone before me and see no reason to attempt fixing what isn't broke. For me at least, those folk have got it right.

Likely an Ol'Coot thing, but can not see how I could possibly want results beyond what I already have.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[MBTcustom]

Yeah? well for sure, if it aint broke dont fix it.
I was just saying that little bit of expansion goes a long way even though it might not seem like much. and then I climbed up on my soap box and started to preach LOL!
I am trying to say that the most effective load is a well balanced load. For those who need to know why this is it. The best it can be is what I show in the pictures at the start of this thread. I believe that I pinpointed the combination that gives best performance (although, as has been noted, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.)
So, from where I am at there, I have several options on how to reduce the damage caused, and I can choose which one based on my situation:
I can push slower.
I can make my alloy harder
I can use a smaller meplat

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Yes indeed Tim, reloaders have lots of options and with casting your own, it just opens to a much greater degree.

Probably the reason I take the direction I do, is, for many years I have been one to look at the data, choose what seems from the info to be optimum and the search is over if testing does in fact prove out.

If my first 45/70 hunting boolit choice had proven to be worthy, and it didn't, I would probably not made the change from the WFN 355gr to the WFN 465gr.

But once settled, for me it is pretty much leave it along unless something goes wrong.

Can't even blame it on being an Ol'coot as that is the direction I've pretty much followed for years.

But then, if I was in charge we'd probably still be driving stick shift rigs and using land lines.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[Adam10mm]

Wide Flat Nose or Long Flat Nose (WFN-LFN) speaks to a bullet profile first made popular by Veral Smith of Lead Bullet Technology -LBT- if I recall correctly.

I recall on another forum a member called him out on that and proved he was just regurgitating old designs from the early 19th century. Got pretty ugly and it was removed. Not sure if there was any truth to what was posted, but he seemed to make a good point about LBT reintroducing old designs with modern marketing and fluff.

[MBTcustom]

Physics don't change. An effective boolit is an effective boolit and lead is lead no matter what century or generation you happen to reside in.
Because of this, it's not surprising that someone would bust VS for regurgitating old designs. Do you know how many times I have designed a tool or an accessory that I thought was truely unique, only to find out that there is somebody out there that did it exactly the same 100 years ago? Man that burns me up! If they would just step out of the grave, into this century, Id sue 'em for plagiarism! LOL!
Those kind of discoveries kind of take the wind out of your sails!
For instance, I was asked to make a GC maker for a feller when I first opened my business. I modified a die that I had designed to stamp out freeze plugs for a boat motor mechanic and came up with an awesome little tool.......that is a dead ringer for freechecks
I was messing with shotguns and figured I would design a "shotgun pellet" exactly like the airgun pellets that I grew up on, but huge! I spent hours and hours making this neat mold to do that, only to find out that Lyman already has the same thing, and they sell them on MidwayUSA for $65!
I wasn't stealing any ideas, I came up with them on my own, but nevertheless Someone had already been there and done that till they were sick of it.
However, because I was talking about it and working with it, lots of folks found out about that way of shooting a shotgun pellet, and I dare say Lymans sales went up on a semi stagnant product. That's all Veral Smith was doing.

[runfiverun]

what has changed is velocity.
the jacketed bullet come along right when bottleneck cases and velocity did.
black powder just pressured up when used in a bottle necked case.
so velocity just wasn't used back then.
let me re-state that, they knew velocity was useful and the best way to get it was to make the cases longer and the boolits shorter.
unfortunately for cast projectiles a whole bunch of technology come along in a short period of time.
smokeless powder, better steels, the use of antimony in lead alloys, brown powder, spitzer shapes, boat tails.
there was no actual incentive to make the plain boolit go faster, think about the gas check for a second.
it took a while for it to come along,,,,, why?
because after the velocity game come along it took a home user to make that improvement, the factory's had no need for the lead bullet anymore except in the handgun rounds and the old cartridges they had been making for 50 years.

[popper]

I'm not a hunter, just don't have the opportunity. My SIL and I were shooting at plastic yard signs, with ga. wire frame @20 yds. He was shooting 9mm rem 115 jacketed, I used 40 175TC ACWW. His targets had nice clean holes. Mine were all bent to heck, with holes. I have several boxes of 30 cal FTX, Corelok, Amax sitting on the shelf. If I get a hunting opportunity, I pick the cast. I pick WFN cast cast for HD. Yes, I've seen the comparison tests got cast vs gold dots.

[LuvMy1911]

Glad I read this thread... I had already decided to try my luck hunting with my own cast bullets this deer season.

Many, including my dad, have been tried to tell me that a gas-checked cast bullet will not provide a clean kill on deer. I don't believe that. I intent to prove that this fall... It's off to the casting bench and then to the backyard range for testing!

Thanks for starting this thread Goodsteel!

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Lovmy1911,

I really believe the results seen have a lot to do with the bullet profile.

The Wide Flat Nose (WFN) style is well proven to really put down critters.

My limited experience seems to back that up. 5 deer down where they stood and 2 elk down quickly.

Were the bullet used to have been a round nose or pointed style, I double even with a .45 caliber hole the results would not have been as quick or positive.

The WFN makes a would channel way beyond anything I could believe before I personally experienced the results. Plus it has reliability far beyond the some times good and sometimes bad results seen with cast expanding or hollow point.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[303Guy]

Wow! What a great thread! Thanks, goodsteel.

I've been a bit out of the picture but am trying to get back into things, so this was a great start (although I've only waded halfway through). I only have 303's and am trying to relate what the 358 can do to what a 303 can do. I paper patch so I can drive softer alloys a little faster (I only have one rifle with a bore good enough to shoot cast seriously) but one the boolit is launched, it's the same as a plain cast.

I am finding that stronger alloys are needed for higher velocity due to nose slump and base upset into the entry cone of the chamber resulting in a damaged boolit. I did a test with alloy strength and found a balance between enough upset and not enough. Trouble is, I had to use shotgun powder in the test to get a low enough velocity to capture the boolit intact.



See how the second boolit mid-section upset into the grooves? Even the knurling has been ironed out right up to the ogive. The knurling is there to grip the patch - there is no knurling in the middle because the file doesn't reach there as the boolit changes diameter there. I have a soft alloy in which the nose upset into the bore in front of the patch.

How would that flat nose perform on deer?

[MBTcustom]

Good to see you 303guy!
I would guess that using your alloy, If you are pushing anywhere close to 2000fps, you would probably get the same effect that I did.

The top boolit in the picture is just nuts! Very interesting picture. I love how you used a file to show the diameter changes. What caused the nose to swell up? Was it the impact in the test tube, or do you think it happened inside the barrel?

[303Guy]

That's nose upset from impacting the ground rubber. The diameter change is from the sizer. I was thinking it was the flat nose.



Picture the middle boolit with a flat nose - that's the flat nose I was thinking. That one started out life as a very large hollow nose on top of a 245gr shank. The hollow nose was for small critters like rabbit and turkey. Never did bag a rabbit with one but I did shoot a couple of turkeys and the boolit concept worked. The long and heavy shank was for pigs, the idea being the hollow nose rim would peel away leaving a mean flat nose. Never got to try one on pig. I changed to a lighter boolit with a conical hollow nose. Still no pig! Muzzle velocity is expected to be around 1700 fps although I did clock one load at 2000fps. Not bad for a 194gr pill from a 15½ inch barrel. That was with H4350 too. Perhaps I'll go back to the heavier boolit with lower velocity. The 245gr hollow nose was quite a bit slower.

[jhalcott]

I loaded some RN cast bulletsup and went to the range with a buddy who thought cast bullets were a joke.I hung a water filled gallon jug at 100 yards, then shot it with a RN bullet. There was a small hole THRU the jug. I took another round and cut the RN of to make it a FN. When I shot the jug with THAT round,it exploded. The cap went 30 feet in the air and the jug was split into pieces. There was enough "shock" to break the cord holding it up. I have seen this same reaction on animals, the FN is always better. A paper patch can allow for greater velocity with softer alloys too!

[MBTcustom]

Excellent experiment! Bravo!

[303Guy]

I didn't realize a flat nose was that effective. Good to know since I'm moving toward harder alloys.

[MBTcustom]

I didn't realize a flat nose was that effective. Good to know since I'm moving toward harder alloys.

Harder being the key. Like a little harder. Inch your way forward with hardness. I believe there is a sweet spot there where speed, boolit weight, boolit hardness, and % of meplat, are all holding hands and dancing in a circle.

Were I you, I would start with doing like you proposed and turn that big HP into a FN. Test the difference.

Look at me, telling you what I would do if I were in your shoes LOL! (303guy was my first mentor here on castboolits)

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

303guy, Guess what those of us singing the praises of the Wide Flat Nose (WFN) have been trying to say.

In your journey, go to the Lead Bullet Technology (LBT) web site or better yet buy a copy of Veral's book and read what his tests have shown.

Your results with making a flat nose out of a round nose are old hat to the WFN bullet people.

Oh ---------- and as Goodsteel indicates, do that increase in hardness very slowly as you could quickly get to the point, especially at closer ranges or higher velocity where the bullet shatters. My 50/50 - Wheel Weights/lead alloy, quenched as it drops from the mold is fantastic in the 45/70 and that even with quenching is not really a hard bullet.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[jhalcott]

MY bullets were cast from clip on wheel weights from a 30-06 that time. I tried many alloys from 50/50 WW /Lead to straight Lino. Some softer when I was Paper patching them. I'd test them with wet pack, phone books and/or newspaper soaked pretty good. Plain old water seems to be a HARD medium for testing cast bullets. Once in a while I'd get large bones from the butcher. I'd insert these at various depths in the wetpack to get results more similar to game. It's a whole book on the results. From richochets off the bone to shattering both bone and bullet. Depth of penetration AFTER bone impact was very different than no bone impact. REdirecting path of bullet also occurred many times. I've considered trying these tests with J word bullets but have never really got in to that.

[MBTcustom]

Jhalcott, my big question is what size were these bones you got from the butcher, and were they at all close to the size of deer bones?
I have found that the only bone with any thickness on a deer is the front leg bone as it crosses the belly line. Other than that, you have the backbone, and the ribs. Most deer ribs are very thin and flat which would have little effect on boolit performance.
I know that hitting a heavy bone will throw a boolit off course and almost anything can happen at that point, but what bone would that be?
Usually I drill 'em right behind the front shoulder when the leg is forward, which has a most predictable effect on the intended. True, I can't controll where the leg is on the far side, but who cares what happens at that point? The boolit has done its job at that point.
The only exception to this scenario in my experiance, is a deer that my buddy shot from a high tree stand. 30-30 Remington core-locked right through the backbone. The deer dropped right there, but we found pieces of that bullet all over in that deer, including in the rump.