Hollow point hardness

[klenke.ryan]

I'll start off with I'm very new to casting, but been reloading for several years. I just cast my first hollow points, NOE mold, for my 10mm. When seating, my seating plug squishes down the tip. Just looking for opinions.
1. I used range scrap/SOWW mix so the bullets would expand... But now they're too soft to seat? ---> use COWW
2. Mold drops at .402, PC to .403/.404. I loaded them unsized --->size to .401 prior to seating to reduce case friction?
3. Use a flat seating plug?

When shot at 950 fps from a 40SW, no expansion. When shot at 1450 from a 10mm, blew up 2 gallon jugs, only the base remained, all the expanded petals broke off.

Thoughts?


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[ABJ]

With my 38 special, I have found 20:1 the only alloy that won't shed the nose. Deep wide HP's will expand starting at 860 fps. More shallow points take about the mid 900's. I have never tried in a semi.
Tony

[Wayne Smith]

I think NOE will make you a seating plug with a point that goes into the HP - ask him, anyway. I know he makes one for the lube/sizer.

[klenke.ryan]

I like NOE plug idea. I'll probably harden up the alloy and maybe run them sized before I explore that option. They shoot pretty nice unsized though.

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[cwlongshot]

Hello!

I just ordered a 10MM WFN/HP mold myself. I am yet to receive it but caught your post. Watching with interest!!

I would modify the seater to be more friendly with the profile.

The alloy you choose will be everything in how these bullets preform.

PC allows softer alloys to be used, softer is less brittle. @ 1000 ish you don't need them very hard. Even @ 1400 with PC you will do well with 10/12 BHN. I have shot 14BHN to 2k velocities with no issues and expansion.

Your Bullets look good, is it HF-PC?

Good luck!

CW

[klenke.ryan]

No, it's the powder from Smoke off this forum. I got Carolina blue, red, and black. The blue is awesome, great coverage. Red is decent, and black doesn't work great for me.

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[Boolseye]

Definitely looks like you're in the ballpark. I remember doing a bunch of testing with wet phone books, expansion started around 900 fps using Bhn 8-10 alloy. They do need to be fairly soft or they won't expand. I agree, look into the seating process...are you expanding your cases enough? With a Lyman M-die or NOE expander plug you can get to a point where there isn't so much resistance, and your HPs will stay intact through the seating process.

[Wheelguns 1961]

I have modified seating stems with jb weld with good results

[gwpercle]

Try an alloy of COWW / Lead , 50/50 , air cooled .
Use a flat seating stem or custom fit a stem.
Adjust velocity so petals do not shed completely .

I played around with HP 9mm loads for a long time and the 50/50 blend gave the best results .
Gary

[Conditor22]

I would test your range scrap, depending on what was shot the hardness can really vary jacketed cores are near to pure lead - commercial boolits are 15-16 BHN

The easiest/cheapest way to test lead hardness http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-testing-trick

Yes -- use a flat seating plug (your boolit has a flat nose, don't know why you're using a round seating plug ) or

modify the boolit seating plug.
1) clean nose of the plug with solvent/alcohol
2) lightly lube nose of boolit (you will want to use the non-hollow point version)
3) fill the nose of the plug with hot melt glue and press noes of boolit into the glue
4) after the glue has cured carve off the excess

I've modified several seating plugs this way

[Rattlesnake Charlie]

I found 50/50 range scrap and very soft lead works good with MiHec's 200 gr big HP in .45 ACP. Perfect expansion (a lot), and did not shed any alloy. I do not PC.

I have the molds for .40/10, but have yet to cast any in HP.

[klenke.ryan]

I wasn't able to figure out how to make the glue stay in the seat plug, but I took the idea as an interim fix to make a HP plug that I put in each bullet before seating. Not something I'd want to do for a large batch, and I think the glue would wear out, but worked for now. The red bullet on the left is squished a bit, but it was used for finding my seat depth, so it got worked more.

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[KVO]

NOE 358-135 9mm @ 1050fps shot into Clear Ballistics gel covered with 2 layers of cloth. Left is 20:1, right is range scrap:



Antimony other than a trace amount can cause problems with shedding the nose. I had to shoot a bucket full of bullets into gel to prove it to myself.

NOE 180gr HP (deep pin in the 200gr WFN mold), M&P40 compact, 5.2gr of Unique, cast from 20:1:



Water grossly over expands bullets/boolits in my testing, but it does give you a baseline that is much cheaper than gel. Same .40 boolit as above cast from range scrap with a bunch of extra tin, shot into water filled milk jugs on the left, gel on the right:


My recommendation is binary lead-tin only. Some of my noses get deformed when seating too depending on the seater plug, but it doesn't hurt anything. Think of it as a feeding reliability improvement with a more rounded nose.

[klenke.ryan]

I suppose as long as all the nose deformations are all the same, the bullets should shoot the same. They will all most likely be range ammo, so besides "they don't look as cool" I should probably just load 'em and shoot 'em.

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[fredj338]

Less antimony & a bit of tin will toughen them up. Seating stems are always an issue. You can customize your own with a SWC plug & some JB weld. You will still get a bit of deformation but not as bad as trying to seat with a flat or RN plug. IT is more about hp design than alloy imo. Tested in wetpack.

[BK7saum]

I'd go with a flat seater plug and boolits sized to 0.402 or even 0.401. That should do away with your deformed nose problem. Even a 50/50 boolit will likely deform in a round nose seater plug at 0.003-0.004" over brass ID.

[Boolseye]

I suppose as long as all the nose deformations are all the same, the bullets should shoot the same. They will all most likely be range ammo, so besides "they don't look as cool" I should probably just load 'em and shoot 'em.

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In my experience, boolits still fly straight with a messed up nose (generally). I was once told its the base you gotta watch.

[Forrest r]

Either sizing the bullets down or using a bigger expander ball will stop the deformation of your hp's. The issue is that it's taking so much force to seat the bullet in the case the alloy can't take the pressure and the end result is deformed bullets.

The correct seating stem will help but the correct expander ball would be better. Bullets that are 2/1000+ over and extremely soft tend to like cases that are expanded correctly.

[klenke.ryan]

I ran some with the cup point pins, and I like casting with them much better. Less time to heat up, they cast at 165gr, and I bet they seat better than the super deep HP.

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[mattw]

I think the key will be sizing them closer to the expanded brass diameter. My 10mm's and 40's get expanded to a whisker of .402 and I size to .402 or as close as possible. The couple extra .0001's could cause an increase in pressure if they are not swaged down during seating and could also cause a problem in some chambers and the diameter of the round may be to big. Be sure to plunk test your rounds during the loading process. I love the NOE 10mm moulds, mine are both kinda heavy for daily shooting in a 40.