Are thy to soft for the velocity, Vid

[JTknives]

Ok, today i went out shooting my 50 RazorBack. I am shooting a .510 cast boolit at 2200-2300fps into water jugs and got full expansion. meaning that the boolit started at 1" long and then expanded to about 1" with not much of a base left. So it shed off alot of its lead when it expanded. Im paper patching these boolits as i cut this mould to drop at .5 and i paper patch to .511 because its a 50 bmg barrel. so im wondering if the velocity is to fast for just air cooled WW. maybe water dropped or heat treated WW will be ok. i want expansion with 100% weight retention. what you think here is a vid of me testing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgmRlvwMEH8

[Doc Highwall]

I don't think you need much expansion with the bullet being .510" starting out. What is the weight of the bullet before and after shooting?

[JTknives]

its a 500gr boolit to start. i bet its half that now. i will go weigh it

[geargnasher]

I wouldn't stand in front of it! Too soft, maybe, but for what? Does it do what you need it to do?

Gear

[JTknives]

it goes boom and makes water jugs disapear lol
but i need a good hunting round.

i measured the 500gr boolti after shooting and its about 265grs. the jacketed boolit next to it in this pic is a 750gr hornady amax i shot into a log. the jacket stripped off and thats all i could find. but the jacket weighs 250gr lol.

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/253454_2111684278692_1443189422_32508021_7028334_n .jpg

[Bass Ackward]

Remember the old hair commercials for women? "Only your hair dresser knows for sure."

Well here it is only "your" gun knows for sure.

[303Guy]

I would say your alloy is too hard.

This the difference between a hard and a soft alloy fired into sand.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-481F.jpg
The boolit on the right has about 98% weight retention while the harder one is less than 50%.

This one is also soft and was fired into sand. It has turned inside out but has retained 98% weight.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/PIGGUN004-1.jpg

Looking at it from the other end.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/PIGGUN003.jpg

These soft alloys are essentially scrap lead drain pipe with a little tin and copper added.

At higher speeds, these boolits start to 'splash' in sand but they don't fracture.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/BSAMAR220942gr.jpg

Hope that helps in some way.

[Echo]

So what alloy were you using?

[JTknives]

as stated in my first post thy are air cooled WW.

[thx997303]

I would suggest adding tin to your alloy.

[geargnasher]

I'd say water-quench the next batch you cast right out of the mould, cast fast with a hot mould so the boolits are lightly frosted all over, cut the sprues while firm but still soft enough to cut by hand without a mallet (they will leave little puckered craters in the bases that look like a goat's hoohoo, that's how you know they are leaving the mould hot enough for a good quench-harden), wait at least a full week before loading them so they can age-harden, and try that. They should be well over 20 bhn by a week. If that's too hard and they shatter or disintegrate upon impact, or don't mushroom at all, try diluting the WW metal by mixing it half and half with pure lead and water-quenching that. It will be harder than your air-cooled metal by 5-ish points, but more malleable than air-cooled straight wheel-weight metal. You might just cast a bunch of each water-quenched, let them harden, and try them side-by-side so see how the gun likes them, how they group, and finally how many water bottles they eat!

Gear

[tomme boy]

Shoot it at 100yds and try to find the bullet. That was just way too close to give a good idea on how this bullet is going to work. I could see a handgun bullet shooting this close, but not a rifle. If you can't do it at 100 then try at 50 or 75. I would want to try it at the ranges that I am going to be shooting game at.

[1Shirt]

Will never again look at the base of a cast blt without thinking about Gear's goats yoohoo!
1Shirt!:coffeecom

[303Guy]

:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

I've long gone off boolits that can and do frost and sprue cut-offs that go yoohoo on you! I did have an alloy that partially frosted at the nose section and not at the base section and these were definately two-hardness boolits. I've long forgotten what the alloy comprised of.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-226F.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-010F-1.jpg