Real Gel Tests: 357 Magnum Carbine

[curioushooter]

This is the 170 grain MiHec 359 Hammer bullet, which is basically a wide flat nose design with a big grease groove and a gas check. Bullet is also in hollow point. This test is with the flat nose pin inserted.
Alloy is 91pb-6sn-3sb, an alloy I prefer. I suspect the high tin/low antimony content is key to the excellent weight retention.
Gel is 9:2 water to unflavored gelatin (by VOLUME) calibrated bare with a 17 caliber steel bb shot at 580 FPS which penetrated 3.5" This is within FBI spec (which is based on pork). 4 layers of lightweight denim was used in front of gelatin (if somebody can give me some hair-on buckskin I will use that instead).
Rifle is Remlin 1894c 357 Magnum Carbine with 18" barrel. Velocity is 1800 FPS with 17 grains of 300MP using this bullet with no pressure signs. This should be just under 35kPSI MAP. Lubricant is Carnuba Blue. Gas check Hornady.
Penetration 16". Expansion 0.68" Weight retention 99%+.







This to me proves my theory that if the velocity is adequate, and the alloy appropriate, hollowpoint bullets are not necessary for excellent expansion.

[versa-06]

KILLER!!! Now what's the target gonna be?

[curioushooter]

Deer I hope?

[hc18flyer]

That is very close to what I plan to use in my Henry 357 Maximum. Alloy and velocity, 180 grain Larsen rnfp. hc18flyer

[curioushooter]

I use a 180 grain Hornady XTP and 21.5 grains of Lil'Gun in my 357 Max Contender pistol. It goes about 1800 FPS as well. I may very well test it with this bullet as well.

[bmortell]

tin is definitely good for mushrooms, I could tell a difference between alloys with 2-1 ratio sb-sn and 1-1 definitely didn't want to fragment as bad, I need to work on getting some tin so I can try high tin 30-06. im assuming they cast nice and easy too

[curioushooter]

Tin is easy for me to come by, though expensive. Cincinnati metro area scrapyards are abundant in it because pure tin tubing was used for years by industrial breweries. I think they may use stainless now. I suspect any city with a significant industrial brewing background (Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc.) may have this kind of tin, which is PURE. It is $10/lb, so in my alloy the tin costs more than the lead, which I also buy from scrap yards (it is about 60cents/lb), usually roofing lead, which is fairly pure and good for muzzloaders. I use Rotometal's superhard as a source of antimony. I also drop in a few magnum shot balls into each pot to contribute the tiny amount of arsenic needed for the antimony to harden properly. I stopped using wheelweights years ago because of all the trouble involved (being stood up by mechanics, etc.) and the inconsistency in performance. Sometimes I got water quenched wheelweight metal to harden up to a consistent 12 BHN (by Lee lead hardness tester), but the next batch could be completely different. In fact the most accurate bullets I ever cast was an big batch of Lee's 358-158 Tumble Lube SWC bullet in water quenched wheelweights, which I tumbled in straight LLA. I made thousands of these with that 6-holer and gave them to friends and family. They make the most accurate 38 SPL bullet I've found to date being pushed by 3 grains of Tightgroup. But my attention has focused on hunting deer for a while now.

Wheelwhights have way, way too much anitmony to make good alloy for hunting. The metal is about the least expensive part of casting, and since I recycle nearly 100% of my alloy (I shoot into a sandbox in an artificial berm I built, since the land where I live is nearly flat), I don't really care that tin is so expensive. If it weren't for the fact that tin just can't get the alloy hard enough to NOT FOUL the rifle's barrel, I would not even use antimony.

I want to try getting copper to dissolve into the tin-lead alloy as I understand that it toughens the alloy. Is there a superthread on that process? Searches haven't yielded good results. I'm probably using lousy keywords.

[bmortell]

what do you mean wheel weights have way way to much antimony, the have 3%, same as your stated alloy for your hunting bullet

[curioushooter]

They seem to have more like 6% in my experience. Part of the problem is that one simply doesn't know. People state the composition of WW like gospel. The fact is that it could be anything. Increasingly I find ones made of zinc and iron.
It is my opinion that WW waste more time than they are worth. If one values ones time and jacketed bullet performance, work with known metal. If all you want to do is whack steel or put holes in a target then WW may work--like I stated that's what I used for years. I also think that a whole lot more attention needs to be paid to recovering the bullet metal. It really isn't that hard to build a sand trap for the bullets. If you only shoot pretty large bore stuff (like 30 cal up) then 1/4 hardware cloth makes a great screen. Shovel out the sand box every couple years and recover nearly all your metal. The only metal I lose is to hunting or when I go to a public range/competition.

[rking22]

I use reclaimed shot for base metal to make Lyman #2 ish, then cut that 50:50 with plain lead at the pot. The shot contains a decent amount of copper as well as the arsenic. Might be an easy way to add the copper you want, it’s already in solution. Reclaim shot is a pain to work with, but once every few years makes all I need and is only a couple hrs of aggravation.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Beautiful results.

I haven't really played with alloys and expansion as much as I would like to but without having a rifle season in MA I don't have much motivation to do so.

Have you tried Hi-Tek coating? I use it in 357 with zero leading. I wonder if I would be able to drop down the Sb to say 1.5% and the Sn to say 3% and still get the same results. Or if accuracy would suffer not eh softer alloy?

I have a block of clear ballistic gel in the oven right now. I might have to cast up some bullets to try out like this. I just wish my 1873 liked the lee 358-158RF

[curioushooter]

I have looked into painted bullets and really don't like how there is no good way to size them. I used to paper jacket my bullets and that worked very well, but a lot of work.
Carnuba Blue is a good lubricant. It seems there is just a slight amount of leading deposited in the barrel, which is basically new still and not really broken in. I was surprised to see that the bullet still has lubricant in the groove and the check still on its butt. I used to think the reason why I got leading towards the muzzle was because the lube ran out in the long barrel. I would use card wads and loob cookies to add lube. That hypothesis seems in jeapordy now.

Part of the reason why I did this is to demobstate that cast boolits can be truly effective, humane projectiles. Shooting water, mud, and wet newsprint are a lousy sub for the real gel. And if it's not real gel, calibrated, I don't want to hear it. You don't know what something does until it is tested. I've tested some jacketed bullets too. They seriously underperformed. I would say that 170 grains should be aminimum weight for 357 mag carbines on deer based on this.

[Michael J. Spangler]

I have looked into painted bullets and really don't like how there is no good way to size them. I used to paper jacket my bullets and that worked very well, but a lot of work.
Carnuba Blue is a good lubricant. It seems there is just a slight amount of leading deposited in the barrel, which is basically new still and not really broken in. I was surprised to see that the bullet still has lubricant in the groove and the check still on its butt. I used to think the reason why I got leading towards the muzzle was because the lube ran out in the long barrel. I would use card wads and loob cookies to add lube. That hypothesis seems in jeapordy now.

What do you mean by no good way to size them?
Yeah I’ve been amazed at lube and lube grooves at times. It amazes me how a Lyman 358156 can hold enough lube to not lead an 18” barrel. The lube groove is smaller than some crimp grooves.

[megasupermagnum]

I too have found bullets with Canaruba Red still on them. About the only thing that will fling all of it is in full magnum loads with very soft alloy. Your load struck me as being quite strong, but a quick search shows a max of 17.5 with a jacketed 170 grain with a short OAL. I didn't realize 300-MP was that much slower than H110. You likely aren't running tip top pressures, and the harder alloy keeps the grooves from collapsing. I've tried both Canaruba red and Canaruba blue. I'll go against the grain and say I can't tell one iota of difference between them besides the color. I could not lube with blue without heat. Both feel identical in my hands, smell the same, perform the same. They really stick in the groove, which is great for storage, not as great for shooting. Both are great lubes for strong handgun loads. After trying half a dozen lubes, the only one that impressed me more than the CR/CB is Randy Rat's Tac1.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The guy at Mountain Molds has some real interesting posts on his forum about using the 357 magnum in a rifle. He loves his heat treated bullets, so they are hard as can be. One that stuck out to me was I believe a Moose he shot that stood up from it's bed. Don't quote me, but at least one shot he took was a frontal shot that did not pass through, and recovered. The amazing thing was that even with his super hard 30ish BHN bullets, they showed some, although minimal, expansion.

Edit: A quick search found it. http://www.mountainmolds.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=70

While even I will admit a moose is getting to be a rather wide target for the 357 magnum, it performed adequately in this instance, even with less than stellar shot placement. Whitetail are thin and easy to kill. I rarely use rifles, but from a handgun, similar results can be had with solid bullets with soft alloy like 20-1 or 30-1 if the velocity is high enough. Personally I like my hollow points, they are not as fussy as some like to believe. At 1800 fps, you have a lot more choices.

[curioushooter]

Mtn mold's 35 bullet seems to have hardly expanded...not really impressed. The bullet I shot nearly doubled it's diameter, a 360% increase in frontal area!

Yes, my load of 300MP is probably running under 35kPSI map as I stated. I don't run 357 Mag over pressure event though I know a Marlin could take that. I've got J and K frame magnums in the stable...Now with 357 Maximum I am more adventurous.

The next step here is going to be to reduce the velocity down until it doesn't expand impressively. That is when I will know to use a hollowpoint. That is part of this exercise, for me at least. It has always been obvious to me that rifle and hanguns behave very differently on target. It's why a 30-30 is a respected deer cartridge while I've never met anyone who proclaimed the 32-20 or a 32 H&R as a good deer cartridge. My 357 mag load is approaching low-end 30-30 in terms of muzzle energy (looking at Lyman's 4th casting handbook it actually exceeds most 30-30 loads with cast boolits). The magnum carbine is in a different place though--not as fast as a true rifle, not as slow as a handgun.

How do you size a powdercoated bullet without it being a waste of time? If you pick up a raw casting, put it into a sizer, size it, then remove it, I sure don't want to go through ANOTHER step of having to paint the bullet afterwards. It's why I think the Lee push-through system is silly. It does ONE THING. Not two (lube and size) or three (lube, size, seat seat gas check).

Besides my wife only has so much patience for me in her kitchen. If I started putting bullets in the oven it may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back?! I've already shot one of her cookie sheets and she doesn't like this big block of gel living in the fridge on a permanent basis.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Mtn mold's 35 bullet seems to have hardly expanded...not really impressed. The bullet I shot nearly doubled it's diameter, a 360% increase in frontal area!

Yes, my load of 300MP is probably running under 35kPSI map as I stated. I don't run 357 Mag over pressure event though I know a Marlin could take that. I've got J and K frame magnums in the stable...Now with 357 Maximum I am more adventurous.

The next step here is going to be to reduce the velocity down until it doesn't expand impressively. That is when I will know to use a hollowpoint. That is part of this exercise, for me at least. It has always been obvious to me that rifle and hanguns behave very differently on target. It's why a 30-30 is a respected deer cartridge while I've never met anyone who proclaimed the 32-20 or a 32 H&R as a good deer cartridge. My 357 mag load is approaching low-end 30-30 in terms of muzzle energy (looking at Lyman's 4th casting handbook it actually exceeds most 30-30 loads with cast boolits). The magnum carbine is in a different place though--not as fast as a true rifle, not as slow as a handgun.

How do you size a powdercoated bullet without it being a waste of time? If you pick up a raw casting, put it into a sizer, size it, then remove it, I sure don't want to go through ANOTHER step of having to paint the bullet afterwards. It's why I think the Lee push-through system is silly. It does ONE THING. Not two (lube and size) or three (lube, size, seat seat gas check).

Besides my wife only has so much patience for me in her kitchen. If I started putting bullets in the oven it may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back?! I've already shot one of her cookie sheets and she doesn't like this big block of gel living in the fridge on a permanent basis.

The bullets get bulk coated and baked then you push the coated bullet through the sizer when it’s all done.

[BrutalAB]

.78" at widest, penetrated 14 inches.

Shot out of a 6" revolver into gel I made. 1 pound per gallon. Have not bothered doing any kind of calbration.

Its a 357 mag load, 9.3 grains of accurate #9 187 grain hollow point.

Its 50/50 stick on/clip on with some tin that I failed to take note of how much I was adding.

Same alloy and load out of my carbine shed the expansion petals.

Boolit is http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/product...oducts_id=1394

Picked it because it seemed pretty similar to the rcbs 200 rf that I love but had a massively deep hollow point.
Boolit was designed for 38 s&w apparently.

[curioushooter]

Have not bothered doing any kind of calbration.

So this information is worth little. I could not go out and duplicate your work and expect the same result. And 14" is pretty shallow. I feel like 16" isn't enough to reliably pass through large deer. If you make a good lung shot it will--lung tissue is not very dense compared to gel or muscle--but if you don't, like when you get a quartering shot, I doubt it would reliably pass through. I would gladly sacrifice some expansion for 2 feet of penetration.

Velocity of projectile, barrier (like did you use 4 layers of denim or buckskin?), hardness of alloy (or precise composition), retained weight of projectile, calibration figures of the gel...this is necessary for comparison purposes or really to draw any sort of meaningful conclusions.

I can tell from the pictures that the fracturing occurring indicates too brittle of alloy. Faster or with a hollowpoint and if it hit bone and you would get fracturing. I don't like bits of toxic metal in my food.

Another issue with hollowpoints that I've learned through experimentation is that if the angle of impact is much off perpendicular, large hollow points collapse and don't behave as they should. That NOE mold you reference, like the Lyman 358439, have that deep cavity with thin straightish walls that collapses easily.

The 359 Hammer bullet with the large HP pin does this too. In fact it did it so badly that I was not able to recover any bullets because they didn't expand and passed through the gel. I am going to try the smaller pin and see what it does.

[curioushooter]

The bullets get bulk coated and baked then you push the coated bullet through the sizer when it’s all done.

So two steps instead of one, like I said. At least one step is a batch process. But if you are going to put a bullet, ONE AT A TIME, through a sizer, I'd prefer it to do more than just size.

[dverna]

Nice performance!