Regarding . > . 'Hollow Points' . < . details

[OS OK]

Just another Q & A Poll to see what the other fellas are thinking and doing...

Some of the questions might provoke a thoughtful response below...even post a picture of your favorite cast HP or Commercial Brand.

The more comments, the more can be gleaned from this thread.

[barrabruce]

I'm having teathing problems with my hp mould but I'm getting better.
Cast 130 today but should have got around 200 or so at least.
Dropping from pins is not it issue after I rubbed a bit of soft pencil graphite over them.

Mainly getting the mold up to a good casting temp has been my problem and sticking bullets in blocks which want to tear or deform the bullet on the opposite side of the pins locating pins.

First brass mould and I may even spin a bullet with polish in it to break up the sharp edges some what.

I can whinge about the trough in the sprue plate which sometimes overflows in to the other cavity but I won't.

It does explode water filled plastic bottles in a dramatic way with a moderate load.

Accuracy is quite good.

Just don't rain bullets out of it like my over moulds.....but it is an entirely different beast.

Maybe I'm not bashing it hard enough.

I have developed early stages of Parkinsons in my mould holding hand from trying to jiggle the bloody bullets out.

No doubt I'll get the hang of it sooner or later.

Ha

[OS OK]

One tip there barrabruce....I received here on the forum . . . When ready to open the mold, tap the hinge bolt of the handles to get the mold to open. When it barely cracks open, leave it like that (very close together) don't manually open the mold just yet...give it a few more whacks.
It seems that the other side of the mold helps to jiggle the cast out of the 'sticking' side. Watch the bases, they will barely show a seperation from both mold halves...open and dump.
As mold and Pb temps rise there will be a sweet spot where all is good in the kingdom...try to note temps and remember your cadence at that magical moment...you will get there.

[44man]

I don't use them even if more accurate since I deer hunt. Splash and mop burger is not fun. I do, however cast a softer nose when needed but never pure lead either. Even that can be nasty. I have lost too much meat to fool with grenades.

[rintinglen]

I use MP Cramer style HP and NOE RG Type molds for about 50 % of my casting these days. In actual side by side testing of an H&G 68 4 cavity clone, HP and solid, I find I get about 10 hollowpoints for every 12 solid nose cast in the same time frame. I have cast Lyman single cavity HP's in the past, but will not do that again. I like large hollowpoints. There is a 22 Short inserted in the hollow of the NOE 45-200 grain 45 ACP boolit on the right. The others are a 314-640 100 grain MP in a 32 S&W long and a in a 327 Federal Magnum.

[44deerslayer]

I love my hp mold it's a custom mold iv shot lots of water jugs and game shoots well out of my trapper 44 mag too

[Forrest r]

Some of us cast our own hp's, swage our own lead hp's, drill our own hp's into cast/swaged/jacketed hp's and swage our own jacketed hp's.

You asked about using jacketed hp's but not about making them in your survey.

I do all four:
Cast hp's
Swage lead hp's
Swage jacketed hp's
Drill hp's in lead/jacketed bullets

I also swage different hp's in 22 rimfires (shorts/lr's & mags) using 2 different die sets/mfg's.

[runfiverun]

this is one of the things me and 44 man fully agree on.

[Elkins45]

I've only shot two deer with a cast HP. One was a 300 grain pure lead 45 with a sabot in a smokeless ML. Lung shot, maybe ran 30 feet. Found a lead nose petal in the back strap when cooking it. Ended that little experiment--the deer didn't die any faster than the ones shot with regular 300 grain lead flat nose bullets.

The other was a big doe shot with a 375 Ruger. The mold is a NOE, maybe 250 grain from COWW at around 1900 fps. Also a lung shot, but higher than I thought I aimed. She ran 40 yards and left a trail of blood and lung tissue you could have followed in the dark. In this case I think the HP made maybe a little bit of a difference--the exit hole wasn't much bigger than the ones left by my 270 but the lung damage was just crazy. I think the nose tore apart and shredded them more effectively than just a hole puncher would.

Maybe this year I will see how a heavy 30 caliber subsonic hollowpoint does on deer. I have never been able to get me AR to shoot this bullet very well, but I've found a load my Ranch Rifle (bolt) likes that is very quiet.

I can tell you that this was overkill:

[OS OK]

Is that a mod you made to the Lee?
Have you found a narrow band of ( FPS/Pb blend ) where it mushrooms & retains it's weight and it fragmenting?
Any comment on successful speed and Pb blend for that design?

[44man]

I have become very touchy about boolits and seen it all with pencil holes to the extreme. Velocity, boolit weight, alloy, HP size and a few other things enter. I am not comfortable telling you what you shoot needs this or that.
Maybe the hardest thing I work on is balance. I see posts that make me cringe when I have been there.
When you get a HP to work perfect under all conditions and any size animal with any caliber, at any range I might sit up straight.

[Elkins45]

Is that a mod you made to the Lee?
Have you found a narrow band of ( FPS/Pb blend ) where it mushrooms & retains it's weight and it fragmenting?
Any comment on successful speed and Pb blend for that design?

Yes. it's a 300 grain 45 caliber Lee. The HP pin is a field point from an arrow. I made a handle by inserting a ferrule into a dowel. After closing he mold I screwed it up tight before pouring.

I didn't do enough testing to really have a good answer to your question. My first test on game was pure lead at around 2000 fps and that's the one where I found parts of the nose in the backstrap. If I ever get around to trying it again, the very least alloy I will try is COWW. My velocity will always be around 2000fps because that's where my sights are regulated for a 300 grain bullet with this rifle.

I made a deep, straight pin for this mold as well, but I don't think it was necessary either. 300 grains of flat pointed pure lead at 2000 fps is all the killing a big whitetail needs.

[OS OK]

I have become very touchy about boolits and seen it all with pencil holes to the extreme. Velocity, boolit weight, alloy, HP size and a few other things enter. I am not comfortable telling you what you shoot needs this or that.
Maybe the hardest thing I work on is balance. I see posts that make me cringe when I have been there.
When you get a HP to work perfect under all conditions and any size animal with any caliber, at any range I might sit up straight. < I don't think there is one HP that will fill the bill here, I think you are talking of many different types and Pb blends...there is no magic HP 'one size/type do-all'.)

Hollow Points, I think present a mystery to many casters...especially after they've tried and failed...

Instead, this is about 'discovery'...what have other casters done, what were the results.
Just trying to build a data-base of what has been tried and make it technical enough to peruse some facts / draw some parallels...figure out relationships between Pb blends / FPS / HP characteristics / etc.

I have no intentions to start any controversy over their intended purposes. I would like to see some members who have given up on their HP molds start again having some inside information and find success...however they individually measure it.

*This is not the pit and I don't want a running argument of conjecture & supposition...just the facts...troubles people have had, even their success to overcome...no arguements!

I'd like to see this thread fill with facts of 'as built HP's' and their pictures of success and failure...in my opinion...that's how we learn together.

[44man]

Therein is the problem. Stuff works here but not there. It can't be defined and I can't say what is best except for me and what I shoot.
With cast we are all not exact.
We will make mistakes and learn but to destroy an animal for a fast kill still will goad me. But a loss is even worse. I did wrong now and then but never tried the same again.
I wish it was easy.

[Elkins45]

Yeah, almost everything works under some conditions, but very few work under all conditions. The question becomes what works under the conditions you are operating under. I'm really hopeful to figure out how to reliably kill deer with a subsonic 300 Blackout bullet.

[OS OK]

Sub sonic sounds like it needs to be heavy and plow through like a freight train.
Trying to use a HP subsonic will be challenged to blow through a deer...possibly some RNFP of a softer Pb blend might mushroom a small amount and help deliver greater shock to the inner organs but...you still need a hole on both sides for bleed out so you can track it.

[44man]

Yeah, almost everything works under some conditions, but very few work under all conditions. The question becomes what works under the conditions you are operating under. I'm really hopeful to figure out how to reliably kill deer with a subsonic 300 Blackout bullet.

It is hard and depends on hits. I really hate the perfect shot stuff because we all can't do it.. It comes down to where we hit an animal. To say I am always perfect means just that but I am not that. Nobody else is either. So many can't shoot a group of 6" will say they hit a spine every time. Head shots every time. Boy I wish I was that good. So get to reality. Each and every boolit might need a different hit on an animal to perform or go bad. Some claim always. I have not met the ghost in the trees yet.

[Traffer]

I am not interested in hollow points, I do not see the advantage of using them in any situation. I am however very interested in HOLLOW BASES. Now with powder coating and the ability to do away with grease grooves, the evidence I have seen for putting hollow bases on semi-auto pistol bullets is very impressive and intriguing. I am planning to make grooveless, hollow based bullets for my 9mm by swaging. Should have had all that done by now but I am stuck working on 22lr reloading.

[44man]

I am not interested in hollow points, I do not see the advantage of using them in any situation. I am however very interested in HOLLOW BASES. Now with powder coating and the ability to do away with grease grooves, the evidence I have seen for putting hollow bases on semi-auto pistol bullets is very impressive and intriguing. I am planning to make grooveless, hollow based bullets for my 9mm by swaging. Should have had all that done by now but I am stuck working on 22lr reloading.

Might be dissapointed too. Expand to fit is a hard thing too.

[Elkins45]

Sub sonic sounds like it needs to be heavy and plow through like a freight train.
Trying to use a HP subsonic will be challenged to blow through a deer...possibly some RNFP of a softer Pb blend might mushroom a small amount and help deliver greater shock to the inner organs but...you still need a hole on both sides for bleed out so you can track it.

I don't think the exit hole would be a problem for a 30 cal 230 grain bullet at 1000 fps. My worry would be that it just makes a pencil hole all the way through. I saw that happen on a big doe I shot with one of those solid copper wonder bullets. She was strolling across an open field on the next hillside and I was shooting from prone. I kept missing her and she just kept strolling...until she stumbled and fell over a few feet from the edge. Turns out I made three pencil holes through her lungs and she didn't even seem to be feeling them until she filled up with blood. She was leaking a bit on the back side but I couldn't see it.

My bullet I'm experimenting with in the Blackout is the NOE 247, but it actually weight about 230 with the hollow point. I tried casting some from pure lead but couldn't get them to group well at all. They shoot OK from 96-2-2 and the ones I have found in the berm mushroom and/or bend their noses. I may shoot some water jugs and see what happens.