shooting phonebooks with 45/70

[corvette8n]

I can get a quantity of phonebooks at my job, and wan't to test some of my .460 425gr fngc that I cast from my Ranchdog molds. What is best to use wet or dry.
I want to see how my ww mix holds up under shooting conditions. Not sure how this will translate to game hogs,deer etc.

[monadnock#5]

Damp. Soak them, but then let the water run off until you reach the damp/soggy phase. This experiment won't tell you anything about how your boolit will react on gristle and bone. It will let you compare wound channels for various boolits and loads.

Ken

[DeanoBeanCounter]

If it helps here is a web sight on the subject. Let us know the results.

http://www.theboxotruth.com/

Deano:coffee:

[frank505]

Look at this website and read the first page regarding deer vs wet paper.
www.seahook.com/bestbullet
After five years of shooting and digging bullets fired into wet paper and bone at the Linebaugh seminar I can say you will learn something. One shot really proves nothing for starters but who wants to repeat it 20 times?
At www.Handloads.com there is four years of tests to learn from. Have fun!!!

[Lloyd Smale]

frank your link to seehook wont open for me is there something wrong with the link or is the web sight down

[frank505]

We always soaked the paper overnight so it was wet all the way through. Do not bundle the paper as it will double in thickness. I started idea of the 4 inches of wet paper, a cow knuckle and the wet paper, otherwise you get the idea a hard bullet is better, usually a hard(2-6-92 or lino) bullet will turn to gravel on the bone. Oven heated WW bullets shot through, like 45 Colt 310 keith at 1228 fps went 38 inches total.
I wish all the bullets shot in the tests had the alloy listed as well. And wear nitrile gloves so the ink doesn't stain your hands.

[frank505]

I just opened it to get the web address. It is vey informative, at least for 30 cal "J" word bullets. maybe I can print it and send it via mail. Hows Al and you????

[Bent Ramrod]

I put each phone book into one of those clear plastic produce bags you get at the grocery store. Prop it vertical somehow, fill with water and let stand overnight. In the morning, the water will have soaked and swollen the phone book throughout and there will be relatively little left in the bag. I just haul them out, bags and all, and line them up.

[Lloyd Smale]

Were alive and kicking pal. I tried to open it again and get a guide service and dont see anything about bullet testing there.
I just opened it to get the web address. It is vey informative, at least for 30 cal "J" word bullets. maybe I can print it and send it via mail. Hows Al and you????

[Lloyd Smale]

we do it like frank but when we cant get bones to use we use a 1 inch oak board to simulate the bone and it gives pretty simular results.
We always soaked the paper overnight so it was wet all the way through. Do not bundle the paper as it will double in thickness. I started idea of the 4 inches of wet paper, a cow knuckle and the wet paper, otherwise you get the idea a hard bullet is better, usually a hard(2-6-92 or lino) bullet will turn to gravel on the bone. Oven heated WW bullets shot through, like 45 Colt 310 keith at 1228 fps went 38 inches total.
I wish all the bullets shot in the tests had the alloy listed as well. And wear nitrile gloves so the ink doesn't stain your hands.

[jhalcott]

Some body on another site said Lino bullets do NOT blow apart! I don't know why he said it was only an old wives tale retold by people who NEVER shot the stuff. I have had lots of lino bullets break down into slivers when shot from rifles. And wet news paper or Phone books were the targets. As far as holding a bullet path/wound channel ,Wet is the way to go. I've set bundles up at 25 and 100 yards and results are easily seen.

[leftiye]

We've got a couple of guys on this board who think it is their divine mission to relieve all of us poor dumb guys of our "old wives tales" also. They sound just like your guy. I know that while I may be perfect (Not), and only made one or two mistakes in sixty plus years (LOL), I'm still not smart enough to play that game. Ironically, they are wrong (as your guy was) quite a large proportion of the time, but they know too much to ever notice it!

[35remington]

I hope you have a lot of wet phone books to stop the bullet. Depending upon bullet weight, velocity, how far you are from the muzzle (close range shots often have some early flight stability issues that affect penetration) you may need four or five feet plus to stop one of those bullets.

Done that thing myself in the past with 400 to nearly 500 grain bullets in .45-70 from blackpowder velocities to around 2000 fps. It can shoot through quite a few wet yellow pages.

The best, lowest hassle way I've found is to dump the books in a large plastic garbage can, top off with water, and leave overnight. The garbage can is in the back of the pickup if I'm going to the range. If I'm using a .45-70 I'll need so many books it's best to get an early start on the book soaking, and 2 plastic garbage cans rather than one, with more books on reserve. You'll need them if you have more than a few bullets to test. Also needed-a five foot flat board and a few wood blocks to level the books and keep them off the ground and upright against each other. Stacked wet books want to slump, so use something to keep them upright.

To measure penetration, unstack the bullets from the back rather than searching from the front-much easier to measure penetration accurately that way. Once the books have been unstacked, reusing them or restacking them introduces a variable to the test that screws up the results. Use the books up before disassembling the stack.

[trk]

I much prefer to use the old phone books to start the fire in the wood stove and to leave the shooting to that of shooting the phone itself! :))

[jhalcott]

trk, are you shooting at that TINY cell phone at any distance?? I've had 250 grain rn.35 cal bullets go almost 30 inches thru wet phone books and only get 19to 20" in dry at 25 yards. those were LINO bullets.

[robertbank]

Tell us when you get the load dialed in.

Sorry guys I just couldn't resist. Been a long winter.

Take Care

Bob

[Lloyd Smale]

Frank is a good freind of mine but my results in testing differ from his in that ive never seen a straight lineotype bullet fracture at handgun velocities and a have seen quite a few water dropped bullets fail. Could be different testing procedures or different testing media but thats my experience. Rifles and lead arent my deal so i wont comment on lineotype in them.

[jhalcott]

I have tested Linotype in cattle bodies,deliberately aiming for the upper leg bones. I had to make a cradle to hold them upright for the shot. The bullets that hit the bones shattered as a rule. Penetration was shorter and the wounds were larger in diameter. Quite shallow really. When shots were aimed to just miss the legbone ,penetration was VERY deep.Often exiting the off side. The same loads fired into wet news paper would only penetrate about 25 to 30 inches,often breaking up. velocities were in the 1900 to 2100 fps range. Shots were only about 50 yards.Calibers were .30 to .45 caliber RIFLES,bullets were gas checked with Hornady,lube was NRA formula. I took 2 showers after each days shooting.

[leftiye]

JH, did you try any softer lead boolits in meat areas without large bones?

[Bass Ackward]

Good testing JHA. Did you draw any conclusions about meplat size and bullet diameter in your testing or was it strictly focused on lino? This is why I advocate personal testing. You learn so much that you may not even consider until some point in the future.

Big question. Are you sure what you had was .... really "lino"? On another thread, guys are debating the loss of tin again. Some guys believe that it can't leave a mix. And there in lies "the" problem with lino or any high tin mix. I have some lino downstairs that at one time was lino, but so much tin is gone from it now that bullets have the grey hue of lead instead of shiny tin. BHN is down to 18 from 22. Normally, you would think 18 would be tougher than 22. Wrong!

It's still in the shape of a lino bar and came from our local newspaper office when they changed over, but it's not really lino anymore as the tin percentage is down. It is MUCH more brittle to impact at 18 BHN than .... real lino at 22 BHN. So as shooters / reloaders/ casters, are we talking the same language when we say lino? Can a junk yard test for tin percentage? Would they tell you true? Do you trust the tester?

When I quote that I use WW + 2% tin, that is only because that is what I started with. I learn to trust my hardness tester because my mix measures 14. My ACWW measured 12 before adding anything. So as long as I stay a solid 13+, I am OK with it.

When you are using any mix that has high concentrations of antimony, the less tin content, the more brittle the bullet. And the more margin for error in impact testing. Real lino is not as brittle as most people believe, especially at handgun velocities, and this is another reason you get such different results between guys impact testing lino.

[44man]

We must get 10 calls a day with nobody on the other end, plus a bunch from charities. I am going to shoot the phones and leave the books alone.
Besides, that sounds like an awful amount of work and heavy lifting. I do love to blow up gallon jugs of water though.

[jhalcott]

Definetly linotype, fresh from the maker,not old and used. As far as Meplats are concerned, they DO affect the wound channel size and depth of penetration. Up to a point ,They will go from a caliber sized hole to several inch cavity.Complete penetration to less than halfway thru on broadside hits,MAYBE hitting a rib on the way in. There were only six bodies available so testing was limited. A dept of Natural resources officer got me a couple of road kill deer . I tried some WW and a slightly softer alloy on these. A shot angled from the rear of the ribcage exited the opposite shoulder. The bullet was a 311291 at ~2100 fps at a range of 50yards. The exit was about 1 1/2" The softer alloy did NOT exit and had expanded to about 1/2".This surprised me as it is a round nosed bullet.

[jhalcott]

I was using a POINTED 45 cal,405gc mold for some of the tests. Lino bullets would go clear thru from nearly any REASONABLE angle. Exit hole were not much larger than entrance holes. IF you hit a large bone,the wound channel went every where, bone and bullet fragments were found as far as 10-12 inches from impact. A 405rfn gc bullet of ww or softer alloy would turn and chew up a few inches to a foot before stopping. One of these bullets penetrated the leg bone AND exited the far ribcage. Leaving a 2" exit hole in the cows side. The pointed bullets left a small wound channel. One actually appeared SMALLER than the bullet. This was thru the lung tissue. Like the bullet drilled thru and the hole closed in behind it. This was ONLY a visual comparison though.

[Bass Ackward]

How fast were the 45s running?

[Lloyd Smale]

What has to be kept in mind here is the differnce between handgun and rifles shooting cast. A handgun shooting at 1400fps is a completely differnt animal then a rifle shooting at 2000. Ive yet to see a handgun bullet cast from linotype fail in penetration testing. I have seen water dropped ww bullets fail ( fracture) One year at the linebaugh seminar there were some fracturing of swcs at handgun velocity and they were all tracked to the same manufacture and he was water dropping bullets. Most comercial casters will routinely water drop just to save the bullets pouring out of the auto casters from being damaged falling on each other. This seems prevelent especially in bullets with sharp shoulders like swcs. I have repeated it in testing with my own water dropped bullets. Anymore i wont water drop for that reason and the simple fact is ive had better luck with accuracy with air cooled bullets cast at a proper alloy for the gun. I allways attributed it to the fact that when water droping out of a mold its tough to keep temps consistant and it causes to much variatioins in hardness. Ive done very little testing on oven treated bullets because its just to much bother but they seem to shoot a little better the water dropped in the testing i did. There seems to be a majic spot at about 15-1600 fps where cast bullets take on a different personality. At higher velocitys theres a fine line between a bullet that is to soft and deforms on impact and one that is to hard and fractures. Either way when a cast bullet deforms in anyway, and it doesnt take much, penetration suffers drasticaly. We did some testing on the 500 line. and 50 alaskan after my best friend shot a red stag with a 450 lfngc out of his alaskan at about 2000 fps. We shook our heads when we found the bullet under the skin on the far side of the stag. It had broken both shoulders but we figured it should have cut through like butter as weve both taken multiple shots on larger bison with the same bullet out of the linebaughs. The bullets in the 50 ak were cast out of 5050 ww/lyno and showed some signs of mushrooming when recovered. We then did some extensive testing with 50s out of both and the linebaugh at 1200 would consistantly out penetrate the 50 alaskan at any velocity over 1600 fps and no matter what alloy we used wed find the bullets somewhat deformed out of the alaskan and pretty much all of the linebaugh bullets were undamaged. Then we took Kelly Shlepps brass punch bullets and loaded them up to test and got the opposite results. It seemed the faster they were pushed the better they penetrated but i never saw one that couldnt have been reloaded and shot again and as a matter of fact we even did that and surprisingly accuracy was very close to unfired bullets. IMO for what its worth pushing cast over 1500 fps in anything is a waste if you want penetration. Its find for someone looking for upset in there bullets but dont fool yourself into thinking your going to get better penetration. IF i had to load for altimate penetration in a cast bullet id load the heaviest practical flat nosed bullet design typical of the caliber cast it out of 5050 ly./ ww or even straight lyno. and push it about 1300 fps and in all honesty theres not much difference between 1100 and 1300. This is what works in handguns and im sure it would about be mirrored in a rifle. Hell just about the whole wild buffalo herd in the US was wiped out by loads just like that just using softer lead. Ps if anyone wants quality cast bullets that are not water dropped and casted with alloys proper for the purpose. Try Mt. Baldy Bullets. Frank is an old school caster that takes pride in his bullets and doesnt believe in gimics like water dropping or hard lubes.

[Bass Ackward]

Lloyd,

True. It's interesting to see what others find in their testing because it will drive Mr Alcott's focus on how he will do things for years to come. And others who read it and are .... less than happy with what they are doing. That is up until he / we have an event that yields results contradictory to expectations. It can ALWAYS happen with lead. Then we formulate new opinions and off we go possibly in another direction. And that is why we get the differences in opinions we do. And that's how we justify the use of lead on game that let's us sleep at night.

Anytime you harden lead, you will make it more brittle at some velocity or meplat size. Period. Question is, where is that point? The wider your meplat upon entrance, the greater the shear strength on the nose will be. And velocity and the angle of impact are just too varied to predict. I have had hard noses shear what I guess to be a wedge because the hole was not visible from the exit side and only a slit through the hide was found. Problem is no form of manual testing that I have seen or found can predict well enough to trust.

Since your lead can only be so hard, (even hard lead is soft above 2000) either velocity or meplat size should be compromised. Or you will need to limit your shots to avoid large bone, which is entirely effective and logical. Or you can go up in bore diameter until you gain the strength from a larger diameter shank and additional mass. After all, that is why solid copper came about. More reliable control of expansion just wasn't predictable enough with a lead core to offer any guarantee.

Not that hard and wide is wrong, I simply have had zero failures with soft(er) lead. Soft being defined as lead that will continue to expand at the velocities working INSIDE the animal. So even if my meplat shape is compromised upon impact or contact with bone, the nose will heal itself and deform again into a working shape to continue to do the job. Rifle here of coarse.

The trade off, I need enough weight (or hardness to a point) or low enough velocity in handguns to ensure that it can still penetrate during this process. And that limit is about Lyman #2 or 15 BHN. Aerodynamics and shear strength of lead is why I personally limit my meplats to 60%. 50% once I reach 45 caliber. Why? Because you only need so big of a hole and that's all you need. A 50%er on a 45 is almost an 75% on a 30. 645 on a 35 caliber. And at 45 and up. I want the focus to clearly be penetration cause that's as big as I got.

Excluding BP and 22LR and pure, I have never recovered any soft lead bullet in any of the game animals I have shot from any caliber. At any angle to include Texas hearts. Never. I had some pieces of a 45 caliber I hollow .... cavitied break off that weighted about 150 grains, but everything else left the area. Rifle or handgun. And this is a fairly substantial number with lead. I have several jacketed XTPs in handguns and rifles that I have recovered. Too soft for the velocity.

The biggest aid I have found is that no matter how hard you want to go, tin content matching the antimony percentage will cover a lot of sins making the toughest bullet possible without adding extras that affect the casting process, like copper. With my .... technique, it simply hasn't been necessary. And I do push some velocity from rifles. I usually limit myself to 1100 fps and go real soft for wheelers and thin skinned game but I would harden it if a handgun was mandatory. But let one fail for the first time, and I will evolve a new strategy. Just not sure what's left to try.

[Lloyd Smale]

you bring up some good points. I totaly agree on metplats. I dont care for extreamly larger ones either. Ill take my most disliked bullet the wfn and wlfn. There poor sectional densities not only effect long range flight but also to a point penetration. The same can be said of the non keith designed swcs. Some shoot some dont and about 99 percent of the time the bigger the metplat the harder it is to get to shoot. The shorter the nose the harder it is to get to shoot. You can about look at a swc and tell if its going to be a shooter. Long narrow nose bullets are what usually work. I also agree on you tin theroy. I hear all the time that all a guy needs is 2 percent tin in a mix max. Well that may make a serviceable bullet i find when tin gets to around 5 percent plus the casting is not only better but like you said it covers other inpurities that hamper casting like copper and zinc and the biggest plus is it makes for a more ductable bullet that wont tend to fracture. If you wanted me to pick the best all around alloy for casting bullets that hold up in penetration at handgun velocitys it would be 50/50 ww/lyno with about 3 percent tin added. Its an expensive alloy to make but it works. #2 as lyman mixes it is another good one. Both are high tin content mixes. Like i allways say i dont have that much expereince with rifles but id bet that straight lineotype with enough tin added to about equal the antimony would be a much better alloy then straight linotype and would do alot toward lineotype rifle bullets fracturing. Typical water dropped wws have given me poor luck. Looking at it it makes sense though as they have a high antimony to tin ratio and then your tempering them to boot causing them to be more brittle. What there good for is getting an alloy thats hard enough to prevent leading at high velocities for someone that doesnt have access to tin and antimony or lineotype and in my opinion again for what its worth not much else. Personaly if all i had was wws id hunt with them air cooled for about any game animal and never look back. Matched to the dimentions of a good gun and lubed with a good lube they are able to be shot at suprising velocities and I guess whats the differnce if they deform when hit or if you water drop them and take a chance there going to fracture.