Can you guys do an autopsy on my fired HP bullet from today?

[Ole]

I used JiminPHX's HP tool to hollow-point some 250 grain Kieth bullets I made Thursday night. ACWW was the alloy. Maybe .5% tin added at the most.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/Ole1830/IMG_5447.jpg

Load was 23.0 grains of H110. Velocity (est) was 1200fps. As far as expansion, the bullet behaved about as expected. I was surprised the relatively soft bullet held up to a full power charge though. No evidence of leading at all in the pistol.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/Ole1830/Bullet%20making/IMG_5449.jpg

Pretend the bullet on the right has a hollow point. It's there for comparison purpose only. Fired bullet completely penetrated 12 of water in a bucket and stopped in a second bucket of water. Nose section went bye-bye and the first bucket was full of lead shavings. Recovered bullet weighs 197 grains. 251-252 was the weight when the bullet was fired.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/Ole1830/Bullet%20making/IMG_5450.jpg

Zero evidence of gas cutting at the base (at least not what I can see). Relatively soft bullet holds up well w/o a gas check I guess.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/Ole1830/Bullet%20making/IMG_5451.jpg

Another picture of the fired bullet. Pretty cool you can see the lube groove got squished and the rifling marks from the barrel.

Any thoughts/comments from the experts here? Does this look OK for a fired HP boolit without enough tin?

[GabbyM]

Air cooled wheel weight bullets at high velocity will blow the nose off every time. Try cutting the WW by half with pure pb then heat treating if you need the hardness.

[HammerMTB]

It looks to me like you have some skidding in the rifling. The rifling looks wider near the nose and narrows near the base, telling me the boolit hardness is low enough not to take right away. This doesn't surprise me as I had similar results in my Super Redhawk. Difference is, I have 9.5" of bbl to work with, while you have 2" or maybe a bit more.
The tough part is you need harder alloy to grab the rifling, but softer to retain the HP nose. Or maybe a GC would let you use soft alloy and drive by the base.
My experience is a .44 hole in the target- whatever that target may be- is enough and I don't fuss with HPs for lead. If I think a HP is needed, I use a condom'd bullet.
I have some 300 Gr XTPs for that.
I think I'd run a few of those loads over a chrono too, to see if they really are getting 1200FPS. That short tube hurts slow powders.

[USSR]

Air cooled wheel weight bullets at high velocity will blow the nose off every time.

+1. Actually, even low velocity loads will blow off the nose with an alloy such as that. Too much antimony and not enough tin. Keep your antimony to less than 2% by cutting your WW's to 50/50 with pure lead as previously suggested, and then add at least 2% tin to the alloy.

Don

[Ole]

I'm sort of just playing around with these.

Do you guys think a 10/1 alloy would work well with this powder charge/power level? What about 16/1 (an old Elmer favorite)?

Tin is expensive, but it's not like i'm shooting boxes and boxes of HP boolits.

[williamwaco]

This looks like normal performance for a hard hollow point. I used to load an equivalent .357 magnum hollow point - cast very hard with wheel weights ( bnh about 15) - over a maximum charge of 2400. I used it for varmits. At 75 to 100 yards it would make a jack rabbit look like he had been hit with a .22-250.

It could also happen with a too soft bullet. The cavity in your hollow point is very large in diameter leaving a relatively thin wall to the "hollow". My hollows had a thicker wall.

Did you find the missing pieces? Were they in small hard fragments like the point fragmented, or did you see longer softer curved pieces like the point opened up, peeled back, and peeled off the body of the bullet?

In a three inch barrel, I used a softer alloy with the same bullet and got very nice mushroom. Obviously, the velocity was much less and the terminal performance was much less even at much closer ranges. I don't think I ever got a varmit at more than 20 yards with that 3" barrel.

HammerMTB has the right idea. The whole purpose of using a .44 or .45 is that they are already "expanded".

[BulletFactory]

it ran into something, while moving quite fast.

[Ole]

Did you find the missing pieces? Were they in small hard fragments like the point fragmented, or did you see longer softer curved pieces like the point opened up, peeled back, and peeled off the body of the bullet?

I found 3 very small fragments in the first bucket. No bigger than flake sized.

Do you guys think a Lyman #2 alloy would hold together better?

[white eagle]

I believe you are on the rite track with 16/1
Elmer liked it like you said
I have some made but have not tested them yet

[geargnasher]

I don't think you'll get 16:1 to do what you want, it's only 11 bhn and that's a LOT of H110. The boolit is already skidding the rifling all the way up to the very last (base) driving band, if it skidded any more at all it would surely gas cut and lead like the dickens. H110/296 does have the nice side effect of becoming it's own filler and buffer as it lights off, often not achieving full burn until the boolit is socked firmly in the rifling. This helps the reduction of gas cutting immensely.

My solution would be similar to the ones mentioned regarding 50/50 WW/pure as a good alloy. If you make it something like 2% Sb/2%Sn/96%Pb with hopefully a dash of arsenic from the WW parent metal you should be in the 9-10 bhn range air-cooled and aged a month or two. But don't stop at air-cooled. Oven heat-treat it to 15-18 bhn (not as hard as it will go, but close) and see how that does. The point here is you can have the best of both worlds with the 50/50 alloy: The expansion characteristics of a soft, malleable alloy yet the toughness of a much harder alloy that will hold the rifling and the pressures of a full-house magnum load. You can experiment with the heat-treat temps to get the expansion you desire and still have most of the nose left.

Gear

[fredj338]

I'm sort of just playing around with these.

Do you guys think a 10/1 alloy would work well with this powder charge/power level? What about 16/1 (an old Elmer favorite)?

Tin is expensive, but it's not like i'm shooting boxes and boxes of HP boolits.
IMO, go 20-1 lead/tin for best results @ higher vel. You can try 50/50 ww/lead, see if that reduces the fragmentation. These were fired into wetpack, they make nice thru & thru holes in deer too. These are 25-1, but vel aren't that high. HP shape has a lot to do with it. I find a cup point ebtter for high vel impacts as there is more metal to support expansion. Large/deep HP will almost always frag over 1000fps. In the snub, I get better results w/ 2400 than H110. You only give up maybe 30fps but less blast & wider load range.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/fredj338/44-272.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/fredj338/452-268-1K.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/fredj338/9mm-136-1200.jpg

[Dennis Eugene]

yep, softer alloy is what I'd try. Twice you referred to WW alloy with maybe .5% tin added as relatively soft. I don't really believe that it is relatively soft, at least as far as Hollow point alloy is concerned. I would use nothing less than WW/dead soft lead 50/50 and add just about 1% tin to aid fill out. And try that at different velocity to see what you get for expansion. Dennis

[geargnasher]

Here's more like what the famous 16:1 shooter was using for boolits (except for the round lube groove). These are in fact 50/50 plus 1.5% tin, water-quenched and aged to about 16 bhn, fired at 1340 average FPS into my sand traps they mushroom nicely. I didn't save any, unfortunately. The spud was missing when I got the mould and Beagle was kind enough to give me some OE dimensions for the long, skinny spud so I could cobble one up out of brass. 16:1 works extremely well, too, but not above 1200 fps IME.

I'm thinking that those bigger hp cavities might blow up no matter what if pushed too hard, since they are a lot deeper than the ones FredJ developed for his high-velocity trials. The HP cavity design needs to be matched to the alloy and velocity too.

Gear

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=15701&d=1252306757

[Ole]

I can always make the bullets with shallower HP's if you think that would help.

[leadman]

You can try the 16 to 1 alloy and invert a gas check in the mouth of the case and let the boolit push it in. This will help prevent leading and the softer alloy may expand better. You should restart working up your load as if it is a gas checked boolit.

When I read Elmer's article he did note that his loads would lead slightly. I also like 2400 in the shorter barreled revolvers especially.

[303Guy]

Here's 'medium' softness alloy boolit fired from a rifle into sand.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-607F.jpg 95%~98% weight retention.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-610F.jpg Fired & unfired.

The alloy is scrap lead drainpipe with a chunk of the plumbers solder plus a tiny amount of copper dissolved in. No heat treatment.

[Piedmont]

Blowing the nose off isn't always bad. That would be devastating on any kind of varmint.

[CWME]

:hijack:

Man that Ruger is one solid piece of equipment...

[44man]

That boolit is too soft for accuracy and too hard for a hollow point!
The skid and slump is bad and you don't want the nose to be lost for hunting.
Going to oven hardened 50-50 will help the hollow point but then you NEED a GC. They will still slump and change the boolit you loaded.
The base is not melted but the powder has sandblasted it because of the soft lead. If you soften it more, the base band will skid too far and gas will blow past it and lead the bore.
You need a soft nose and a hard base.
Now for the truth, you do NOT need a hollow point for hunting with the .44. They are super for blowing up jugs of water but you might lose deer because of reduced penetration.
Inverting a GC does NOTHING for accuracy because it needs to be on the boolit to stop skid but it might stop gas leakage.
Slump is an enemy to avoid.
That boolit can be HARD with water dropped WW metal, no hollow point, accuracy and it will kill deer like crazy. The .44 is perfect at it's velocity to impart maximum internal damage with full penetration.
Save the hollow points for woodchucks or those nasty chipmunks.

[BABore]

That boolit is too soft for accuracy and too hard for a hollow point!
The skid and slump is bad and you don't want the nose to be lost for hunting.
Going to oven hardened 50-50 will help the hollow point but then you NEED a GC. They will still slump and change the boolit you loaded.
The base is not melted but the powder has sandblasted it because of the soft lead. If you soften it more, the base band will skid too far and gas will blow past it and lead the bore.
You need a soft nose and a hard base.
Now for the truth, you do NOT need a hollow point for hunting with the .44. They are super for blowing up jugs of water but you might lose deer because of reduced penetration.
Inverting a GC does NOTHING for accuracy because it needs to be on the boolit to stop skid but it might stop gas leakage.
Slump is an enemy to avoid.
That boolit can be HARD with water dropped WW metal, no hollow point, accuracy and it will kill deer like crazy. The .44 is perfect at it's velocity to impart maximum internal damage with full penetration.
Save the hollow points for woodchucks or those nasty chipmunks.

Yo Jim!

Did you notice the poster never mentioned the intended target. Or that it was a 2 inch belly gun. You really think this is all about hard boolits, pinhole accuracy, and complete penetration in a deer.[smilie=1:

50/50 WW-Pb water dropped will do what you want. Blowing the nose is not a bad thing on a soft target. The key is how much you blow off so you leave enough shank for penetration.

[runfiverun]

i am wondering if the skidding occured entering or exiting the bbl.....
if it's a defensive gun v.s hunting application, then the scenario changes.
less hollowpoint or less velocity will change the picture.
i'd try both first, then manipulate the alloy by adding more lead to the mix and possibly more tin.
shedding weight isn't a bad thing especially if theree's a wall with others behind it.

[44man]

Yo Jim!

Did you notice the poster never mentioned the intended target. Or that it was a 2 inch belly gun. You really think this is all about hard boolits, pinhole accuracy, and complete penetration in a deer.[smilie=1:

50/50 WW-Pb water dropped will do what you want. Blowing the nose is not a bad thing on a soft target. The key is how much you blow off so you leave enough shank for penetration.
How right you are, perfect for carry where you need minimum penetration and explosive boolits.
Being a hunter I never know what a guy needs for self protection unless they state it.
Good call.

[white eagle]

do you think he is getting 1200fps
out of that gun ??

[Ole]

do you think he is getting 1200fps
out of that gun ??

I chronographed my H110 loads with the RD 265 grain bullet and was getting over 1200 fps with one less grain of powder.

It only loses about 200 fps comnpared to my 7 1/2" Redhawk.

[BABore]

I'd bet up close n personal that the muzzle flash would eliminate most of the target's hair down to the follicle. :-P

[white eagle]

wow !

[fredj338]

I chronographed my H110 loads with the RD 265 grain bullet and was getting over 1200 fps with one less grain of powder.

It only loses about 200 fps comnpared to my 7 1/2" Redhawk.
For a 1200fps impact vel, I would just make the HP smaller if possible, then try the 50/50 lead/ww alloy. If you get a bit of leding, not a big deal except for practice sessions. A gc does help w/ softer alloys.

[pls1911]

Everything in moderation somewhat, but
Go Big, Go Hard, or Go Home.

Boolits which are hard, gas checked, sized right, and .44 cal or bigger don't need hollow points OR mega velocity to perform with great lethality. Unless you're extreme in the pressure and/or velocity range, you shouldn't need the gas check either.

Plain ol' 250 though 280 grain Keith SWC or similar FP at about 1000 fps has enough slap factor and penetration to kill anything you should need to hunt with it and reasonable and responsible range (NOT Elmer's).
My preference is a heat treated 255 grain SWC, 10 grains Unique, 45 colt, 7.5 " Blackhawk with real grippy grips.
At about 1000 fps, this combination has never failed to fully penetrate deer or pigs and put 'em down quickly.... and it's easy on the gun and the shooter.