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Thread: Gates Extreme Meplat Bullets

  1. #61
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    Thank you for your kind words indeed....but I would like to stress that the learning curve, compared to the knowledge about jacketed bullets, is short.
    Elmer (and a few others that did not write a book) started the cast bullet thing big. They had very little to fall back on. Then Veral picked up the ball. However there where many company fellows feeding out what they were seeing....I have mentioned few like Ted Curtis and Bob Evans. It is a fact that many of the company boys findings (and it still happens) ended up under someone else's name......but we have all profitted from it. If, 10 or 15 years ago someone would have said the even the ammo factories would be selling hard cast designs....people would laugh. I found some very interesting things that the Brits did years ago that was forgotten when smokless powder and Jacketed bullets came to the fore front. That really applies to hard cast in the big bores. You can rest assured that there is still ongoing research done on a daily basis with cast bullet design. The reloader has the advantage over the ammo makers, who can not alter their products to meet every situation. The ammo maker must decide on certain designs that will have to go unchanged to the market place....and, friends, that's a real challenge indeed. There are lots of ideas out there, but will sell? I lean toward the reloaders because most of the successful designs do come from that sector.
    Just some thoughts.....James
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  2. #62
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bullshop View Post
    I am not sure without going to look but I think those are catalog items from NEI. No?
    They dont carry the name in the catalog.
    To get to name them you have to pay for the cherry too. Quite a bit more expensive to do that. All a them ogival wadcutters look like Verals design to me. He is the real Papa to all of um.
    BIC/BS
    All Veral did is take the old B+M designs and sharpen the leading edge of the metplat. Nothing new there. What Veral did have was Ross Seyfrid (sp) writing about his moulds at the height of his popularity. Like Jack O'Connor with his 270, all those words equaled sales. I take nothing away from Verals knowledge, although his judgment in tax matters is suspect. But as other here have noted, there ground work was all done decades earlier. I have a B+M mould from the 20's or 30's that would be a dead ringer for a WFN if the corner of the metplat was a wee bit sharper. If you do a little historical research you'll find most of what we think of as cutting edge today has an ancestor or 3 from the turn of the century or earlier.

    I think, in the historical aspect, a lot of us miss the most important thing Elmer did- he went for a specific SIZE. If you read the old tomes you find lots of research on shape, but not too much on size. Elmer didn't have the whole thing down, anymore than we do, but he was the first guy I've found to talk size. With BP it didn't matter so much, but with smokeless it became important and he designed his boolits to a size as much as a shape and he spoke of it in his books. There were others no doubt that covered the same ground, but like Seyfreid boosting Veral, Elmer boosted size. I think that was a big step forward.
    Last edited by Bret4207; 03-12-2009 at 07:57 AM.

  3. #63
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    Well, I agree to a certain point. At the time Elmer was getting press, Boser had a design (#429360) in place for the 44 Special that might have been older.
    The point I would like to make is none (today or then) have/had all the answers. The cast bullet designs have evolved and will continue as long as we keep an open mind.
    The main difference I see today is that various designs are being studied to see what application thay have to the various game animals. That was not done in the past to the extent it is being done today.
    We are now studying whether a hollow point design is better/worse that a large Meplat Area...and to what extent. If the shooter/hunter/bullet designer is hung up on one design....no progress is made.
    I think we all agree that Meplat Area is important in jacketed bullets and cast bullets. The questioins arise as to which is the most consistant?
    We know that for a hollowpoint to work it must expand, but not fragmate.
    This means velocity and proper alloy. An expanded bullet loses Sectional Density ergo Penetration. There is a well defined velocity envelope that it works under. That is fine for thin skin game like deer, but undesired in an animal like a full grown wild boar hog....so we are back to relating the design to the hunting situation indeed!
    Those that advocate the heat treated bullet with a large Maplat Area say....it is already pre-expanded and does not lose Sectional Density....very important for penetration. So...we start seeing the flaw of designers of the past that seem to state that their cast bulet design works for all game. It is unfortunate that some are still hung up on one design today.
    These discussions are not plowing the same old ground! Some of us live this thing day in a day out. Maybe a discussion of large Meplat Area vs Hollowpoint should be another thread?
    Regards. James
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  4. #64
    Boolit Master BABore's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bullshop View Post
    BA bore
    I have a customer from Texas that is using the Old Lyman 462somethingorother HP on nilgi or something like that. I understand they are quite large. I cast his orders in acww and as I said the mold is HP. The HP pin goes the full length of the nose which must be about a third of the boolits length. I wish I had gotten more details when he called to tell me how well they worked. From what I remember he is using a single shot, I dont know the velocity but he is shooting smokless. No other details on terminal performance accept that the few he has shot have dropped to the shot without running. I seem to remember him saying that is very unusual for those animals. If you are not familier with that old Lyman design it is a bore rider with about 1/3 the boolit in bore ride nose. It has a large meplate with some radious at the juncture of the ogive and meplate.
    It is a very blunt (550gn in ww) long and heavy for caliber. He says he has shot with good accuracy out to 400 yards even though the profile looks rather inefficiant. There must be something to the slight radious at the edge of the meplate that is aiding to stability at longer range along with the weight to dampen any wobble.
    BIC/BS

    You must be talking about the Lyman 462560 boolit. That's a loooooong nose on that thing. With ACWW alloy and that deep of HP cavity it must have been a good expander. If he was driving them real fast, out of something like a Lott, it would have been a bomb. At max 45-70 smokeless velocity, it would have been around 1,500 fps or so. Would have been real nice moderate expansion with plenty of tail for penetration. For what I've heard, a Nilgia is one tough mother to put down.

    I mainly shoot 45-70's and a 450 Marlin for big bores. Maybe, someday I'll get a Lott (don't know why). So, I'm always restricted on nose length. Sticking all that boolit in the case really takes a bite out of powder room. I've found that a 420ish grain boolit seems to have the most bang for the buck. Good velocity at 1,700 to 1,800 fps and enough mass. Before I took up casting I was getting cast from Beartooth, Cast Performance, and JB Young. JB has a nice heavy for leverguns that goes 550 grs. It's called the "Crater". I believe the mold is from Ballisticast. I was getting 1,550 out of my guide gun with it. Super penetrator and good smack down. Beartooth has a similar boolit at 525 grains. Cast Performance has a 458-460 gr GC that is a real sleeper. It's super accurate. It has a nose that's real similar to the boolit your talking about, although a tad shorter.

    I had a 450 Marlin GG load that pushed that 460 gr boolit to about 1,700 fps using H322. Very accurate even at 300 yards. I only killed one critter with that boolit and was very impressed. Opening day of deer season, I was sitting on the edge of a hay field in a portable blind. It was pretty warm out and the deer weren't moving much. Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement, close, real close. I slowly turned my head and nearly jumped out of the blind. At 20 yards stood the most mangy coyote I've ever seen. Almost totally hairless except for a sparse strip right down the spine that was standing up like a mohawk. The skin was all grey and wrinkled. Looked just like the puppet/critter from "Tales from the Crypt". It started angling towards me as I brought the gun up. I put the crosshairs of the 1.75x scout scope behind the shoulder and let it rip. The impact must have tossed that yote a good 6 feet. The entrance hole was 1 1/4" as was the exit. Being only about 5 inches thick, there sure wasn't much resistance there. That boolit tore an intermittent furough of about 25 feet in semi-frozen field before zinging skyward to parts unknown.

    Although I don't really have the need, one of these days I'm going to make a cherry for a similar 460 grain boolit so I can make a HP version. Maybe even one of them 550 gr craters.

  5. #65
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    Babore, to show how stupid I have been! I sized a few of your boolits today for the 45-70 BFR and found they came out .458". I checked my boolits I have been shooting and they are .458" also. Lee die of course! They dropped through my cylinder throats so I lapped the die. I thought I slugged my throats at .4595". I lapped the die a tad too much and wound up with .4595", then found my throats are .4592". No problem because a thumb pop pushes them through.
    I never measured a boolit after sizing, just depended on what the die was supposed to be. SURPRISE to me. I have not done this with other guns, how I let this one slip by is news to me, maybe because it shoots so good.
    This gun has been shooting around 1" at 100 with boolits that were too small, yet groove size at .458".
    Now to see what it does with a better fit.

  6. #66
    Boolit Master BABore's Avatar
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    All's I can say to that is;

    Bwaaaaahahahahahahahahahah!

  7. #67
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    OK, OK, just so everyone else doesn't jump on the bandwagon too!

  8. #68
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    I have to admit when I was working loads I used a .459" (Lapped.) die in my lube sizer. Strange that after going to the Lee die, accuracy did not change and there is no leading either.
    Of course my .44 will shoot anything from .430" to .432" so really, how important is boolit diameter?
    Do we stress fit too much without more stress on the brass which is more important anyway?
    Measuring seating pressure with the smaller boolits and then again with larger boolits does not show any change because the brass is expanding to fit either boolit. I get the same readings.
    I have 5 of your boolits sized .458" and will compare groups with .4595" boolits when I get back from hunting. I leave in a half hour.
    Wish me luck on a piggy! I am taking the .475.

  9. #69
    Boolit Master BABore's Avatar
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    Don't forget to heat treat them first. They are as cast and 10 bhn. Unless of course that's your plan.

    Size is important when the gun or boolit dimensions (i.e. fit) are bad. Velocity also makes a difference. When everything is perfect you can get away with alot.

  10. #70
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    After hearing from the Texas hunter I thought I would try some of the big HP's myself.
    I did not test them in game but shot them into a bermed up snow pile at 100 yards.
    This test media is quite plentiful and afordable here most of the year.
    Anyways using Elmers old faithful 45 Sharps velocity of 1550 fps with a 550gn boolit each shot yealded the same results.
    About 1/3 of the way through the penitration would be found the nose in three very nearly equal weight pieces of about 80gn, then the shank of about 300gn alone at the end of the chanel. This was so consistant it was predictable. This was using the same acww alloy I was shipping to Texas. I dont know if you would call that a boolit failier or not but he says it was sure dropping them big critters.
    I remember once having to take a texas heart shot (no offence ment to Texans) at a small fork horn moose with ol B00 loaded with the RCBS 525 at BHN-8 to Elmers choice 1550 fps. The shot was about 70 yards at the last possible second as he was slipping out of sight into the timber. The shot went center at about the vent. He did not go down but was so sick I could walk up to finish him as he stood with his head down in sad condition.
    When I gutted him I found the first shot with about 2/3 its length expanded to larger then a nickle. It was at the diafram but did not go through it. It had completely penitrated the paunch which is basicly a bail of wet chopped hay.
    If the boolit had be say the 425 version in the RCBS series and expanded to the same degree it would not have made it that far. If non expanding likely equal or better. If the 550 had been a non expanding I think it would have exited the front of the moose.
    Here is another to ponder.
    I was working as a caribou guide and had a customer shoot a nice bull with a 7mm mag making several hits in the guts. The bull was sick but not out. As I got very near the bull ,about 30 feet he stood and began walking straight away. He was too sick to run but still on his feet leaving. Since I was returning to the site of a kill to previous day and would be packing meat I was armed only with a Ruger bisley 45 colt. The load was pushing a 330gn wfn at between 1000 and 1100 fps. I looked back to the client who was paying no attention but saw my packer watching with bino's.
    At about maybe 30 yards now I touched the shot and the bull crumpled. The hit was about the same as the small moose at about the vent and on through the paunch.
    When my packer came over I asked if he saw the shot and he said yes he saw the chest swell with a puff of hair as the boolit exited. That bull cariboe was not quite as large as the small moose but not much smaller. All things to think about when trying to match the boolit to the game or the average conditions it will be used in.
    In defence of the expanding 550 RCBS I shot a griz with the same load at about 25 yards straight on with the bear standing on hind feet. The shot went center in the chest but for some reason made two exit holes both on one side of the spine missing it.
    The bear went down but did make a terrible sounding racket for about 30 seconds and it was over. That shot was from ol B00 who has been and old faithfull and never let me donw in several scrapes with beasts that were intent on hurting me.
    Wow quite the ramble! Fellas I really go to go to work. I have several orders need cast up.
    Blessings
    BIC/BS

  11. #71
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    Interesting and informative! When I see a hollowpoint break up it meana to me that the alloy wad too hard....but I have also seen solids break up. To me pure WW seem a little brittle.
    I got a calll years ago asking to bring my blood dogd to trail up a big tusker bore that had been shot many times with a sjotgun loaded with soft Foster slug. I loaded my tyger dog and a Remington 870 with a Hasting barrel...loade with 5 of our Terminator loads. We found the boar and hw was dragging a hind leg. When he was hit with one of the .730"-730 gr slug/bullets he rolled over. He had two Fosters and some buckshot in his shoulder shield!....plus the Foster in his hip. The shoulder shield was over 2 1/2" thick.....so much for soft bullets.
    I still think we need a discussion on hollowpoints vs large Meplat Area
    Regards, James
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails badhog.jpg  
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  12. #72
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    I want to add something here for clarification......I am not in the componenet handgun bullet business, nor do I have any plans to sell handgun bullets.
    I do, on occasion, have our people run some special order 12 and 20 bore bullets that we put in our loaded ammo.
    The handgun bullets and molds I have spoken of are my personal items....although I have given ammo recipes and mold specs to those that have asked.
    I am not competeing we anyone that sells cast bullets indeed.
    Regards, James
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  13. #73
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    i think the rounded edge does add something to a bullets ability to kill.
    i use a rnfp point flat based, with about 65% meplat for my deer load from a lever action in 45 colt.
    i tried several different hollow points on these boolits and could see no appreciable gain.
    the alloy i use is acww's with 20% pure and 1% tin mixed in pushed to 1600 fps. [10 feet out]
    the wound channels seem to be at least twice the diameter of the boolit.
    i think the time in the animal along with the movement of it's insides [as the boolit expands] and the air being moved BEHIND the boolit plays a part in this.
    wound chanell.
    i like two holes in an animal and a flat nose it just seems to just be the better "killer" for me.
    this same boolit also does well when bone is struck as the flat point isn't expending too much energy trying to penetrate the bone. but it does move bone fragments into/or out of the
    animal.
    i have used a smaller version of this same design on smaller animals and have noticed the same movement/tearing of flesh from this design. if shot in the lungs you can see a definate bruising through them as large as a silver dollar in places and as big as a half dollar all the wat through.
    rabbits, sage grouse, etc show this torn flesh from where the boolit strikes and departs.
    i don't have an explanation for what is happening here but violent expansion isn't the answer, as i have not yet found a boolit from an animal as large as a deer.
    nor as small as a grouse shot in the neck or head.

  14. #74
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dixie Slugs View Post
    Well, I agree to a certain point. At the time Elmer was getting press, Boser had a design (#429360) in place for the 44 Special that might have been older.
    The point I would like to make is none (today or then) have/had all the answers. The cast bullet designs have evolved and will continue as long as we keep an open mind.
    The main difference I see today is that various designs are being studied to see what application thay have to the various game animals. That was not done in the past to the extent it is being done today.
    We are now studying whether a hollow point design is better/worse that a large Meplat Area...and to what extent. If the shooter/hunter/bullet designer is hung up on one design....no progress is made.
    I think we all agree that Meplat Area is important in jacketed bullets and cast bullets. The questioins arise as to which is the most consistant?
    We know that for a hollowpoint to work it must expand, but not fragmate.
    This means velocity and proper alloy. An expanded bullet loses Sectional Density ergo Penetration. There is a well defined velocity envelope that it works under. That is fine for thin skin game like deer, but undesired in an animal like a full grown wild boar hog....so we are back to relating the design to the hunting situation indeed!
    Those that advocate the heat treated bullet with a large Maplat Area say....it is already pre-expanded and does not lose Sectional Density....very important for penetration. So...we start seeing the flaw of designers of the past that seem to state that their cast bulet design works for all game. It is unfortunate that some are still hung up on one design today.
    These discussions are not plowing the same old ground! Some of us live this thing day in a day out. Maybe a discussion of large Meplat Area vs Hollowpoint should be another thread?
    Regards. James
    I'm not sure when Gordon Boslers design came out. There were other designs along about the same time as Keiths first 358429 that were similar. Keith just took things further on size. Phil Sharpe had a boolit similar the Keiths too that was used on developing the 357, so I imagine there were probably a few we don;t even know about. If you look at some of Keith's early designs they have the B+M look about them, and suffered from the same problem as some of the other WFN designs- instability at long range. Nothing new there.

    As for the metplat vs. HP idea, I'm not sure you can lay down any hard and fast "this is better than that" rules. Alloys vary, temp varies, velocity varies, animals vary. In a perfect world I want through and through penetration, massive damage to internal organs and minimal meat loss. The largest animal I'm likely to hunt is a Whitetail, the largest I'm likely to shoot a cow or bull. What might work well on a WT may not work so good on a mad bull.

    Overall, I think it's going to be hard to say metplat or HP kill better across the board.

  15. #75
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    I also think a discussion of Hollowpoint vs a large Meplat Area woulfd be tricky indeed. I am not sure one could tell must difference in thin skin game. The reason I like the Meplat Area design is it is consistant., whereas the expansion on a hollowpoint depends on many things such as impact velocity, alloy, etc. And I think that hollowpoint, in order to expand, must be softer than a heat treated solid and will not break up big green bones as well. Of course here we at back to the hunting situation.
    All the way back in '72 we tested all the hollowpoint designs in handgun bullets that were available at the time. Many looked good, but just did not expand. Remington sent a fellow, I think named Chuck Byers, who collected all our tests. Al Hancock owned a jacketed bullet outfit and was trying to get Jacketed bullets off the ground. The main cartridge everyone was working on was the 9mm at that time. As the years went by, great advances were made on expanding bullets.....but mainly toward shooting humans instead of game. There are some great jacketed handgun bullets today.....but today, the same problem exists with either over-expansion or under-expansion. That can also be carried over to cast hollowpoint designs. So...I lean toward the large Meplat Area designs when used within the hunting distance they are designed for.
    Just some thoughts.....James
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  16. #76
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    Even though Seyfried gets alot of credit for promoting Verals stuff, (and promote it he did), I can remember an article he wrote on I belive an old British sporting round. It was loaded with a RF design, and apparently had been since the 1800's.

    Seyfried even made the comment that "no Veral didn't invent the wide flat design". I'm sure I butchered the quote, but you get the point. Not much is new, just variation. Some may be improvements, some just that, variations on a theme.

  17. #77
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    I well agree with that to a certain point. If anything is new, it is because we are now just understanding what really happens on cast bullet designs.
    Let's take some early Brit designs for dangerous game. They killed more big game in Africa and India than we will ever see!....and early on it was with lead bullets! They learned that a lead bullet must be hard to break down some of that game. They did a great deal of work on what we call shotgun bores.
    Today, there is a misunderstanding on a great deal of what they did. Many today think most of those shotgun bore ammo was in brass hulls.....where it turned out maybe only 10% were. It now turns out that the land/groove was larger omne the guns designed for brass hulls. The Paradox guns we designe as a combo gun...shot and bullets. The Brits understood what a "squared load" was in both shot design and a bullet design......few today understand. They approached the Paradox design then different than the designs today for rifled barrels. Today the rifled barrels have a fast twist aimed a longer sabot loads. The H&H designs in 1893 differed from the Paradox designs in both that H&H was talking about fully rifled barrels instead of the Paradox designs....and in most cases had a smaller bore/groove design.
    So...the point is...today we are exploring all matter of concepts and should be looking at what served well in the past. Elmer and Veral were looking for improvements in designs (as were unamed others).
    The knowledgeable people here should be doing the same and sharing results! There is still plenty of room for advancing cast bullet designs!
    Just some thoughts...James
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  18. #78
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    James, I don't believe the African hunters were necessarily using hardened bullets to break down the animals. I believe it was more a case of needing the hardness for increased penetration.
    The solid soft lead bullet is undoubtably the best and most satisfactory expanding bullet that has ever been designed. It invariably mushrooms perfectly, and never breaks up. With the metal base that is essential for velocities of 2000 f.s. and upwards to protect the naked base, these metal-based soft lead bullets are splendid.
    John Taylor - "African Rifles and Cartridges"

    Forget everything you know about loading jacketed bullets. This is a whole new ball game!


  19. #79
    Boolit Master Glen's Avatar
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    Historical note

    As a historical note concerning when wide meplat handgun bullets made their appearance, I have attached a photo of a Frankford Arsenal mould of a .38 design very similar to the WFN that I believe dates back to right around World War I (i.e. a little before Elmer Keith was playing around with the blunt-nosed Belding & Mull designs in the mid-1920s).
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails frankfurt arsenal3.jpg  
    Glen

  20. #80
    Boolit Buddy Dixie Slugs's Avatar
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    Interesting isn't it indeed! One wonders why it took so long for the design concept to catch on? Everything that has been done is just a continuing development. I also saw somewhere a British design for a "Dum-Dum" for the early .455's to be used against "uncivilized" warriors.
    Regards, James
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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check