Are my bullets too hard?

[David LaPell]

I got out to test some of my #358156 Hollowpoints today. These are loaded up in my .38-44 behind 12.5 grains of 2400 and have been chronographed at about 1,250 fps out of the 6 1/2 inch barrel. These were cast from straight wheelweights and I checked the BHN and it is about 14. They penetrated 12 inches of weight newspaper and the one on the left and the right started off at 150 grains and ended up exactly at 125 grains each. The one in the middle ended up at 146 grains. Are these too hard, do I need a softer bullet or to back off the velocity?

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[MarcusT]

Adding some tin would probably help them to be less brittle.

[runfiverun]

some tin and some soft lead would help.
try adding 25% soft and about .5 % tin to the total.
your bhn should drop to about 10-12 you can add more soft to the mix till you are happy.
you'll find a balance of poured diameter,skidding,accuracy,and boolit performance.

you can cut the alloy up to half or more soft and waterdrop to gain back the bhn but keep the alloys properties if you want to keep experimenting.

[BABore]

It's quite common for WW's to rivet or roll the expansion back to the point of fracture/shear. It breaks off and the remaining shank rounds off. A softer alloy with the addition of tin will help some. HP expansion is dependent on alloy, hardness, impact velocity, media, and nose wall thickness. The amount of expansion or nose reduction is dependent on the above as well as the depth of the HP cavity.

There are a couple schools of thought on HP expansion. Some want a nice (hunting rag) rolled back mushroom. Great for initial wound channel. Not so great for penetration. Very dependent on impact velocity. This is very hard to achieve and only so it tightly controlled circumstances. The other school of thought is to set up conditions to blow the nose off under normal situations.

I personally try for blowing the nose off. I prefer a boolit slightly heavy for caliber with a HP cavity depth that will leave at least 2/3rds of the OAL intact after it's shed. This will produce a wound channel, in saturated newspaper, that is just above caliber for the first inch or so. There will be rapid expansion and a permanent wound channel of 1 to 2 inches in diameter for the next 3-5 inches, then a tapering effect. The remaining shank will penetrate to its final resting place based on its remaining secional density and velocity. Usually 6 to 20+ inches.

If the velocity has dropped or the impact range is farther than planned, then the above mentioned boolit will develope more of the classic mushroom shape and penetration pattern. As range is increased, where no expansion takes place, boolit nose design is left to do the deed. Here a design with a decent meplat covers your butt.

To answer your question for your boolit and velocity, I would need to know what you plan on doing with the load. I much prefer an alloy of 50/50 WW-Pb with about 1% tin. When water dropped you will get much of what I described above. This alloy is a bit more malleable that straight WW's.

[David LaPell]

This load is for whitetails and I did recall seeing a very large hole for the first couple of inches in the newspaper. If I recall after about 3-4 inches then it got down to nearly caliber size.

[Larry Gibson]

I also suggest adding tin and lead' I suggest 2% to the COWWs to get a better balance of tin/antimony in solution with the lead. Then I would add add 20% lead and test the HPs again for expansion. If not what I wanted I would add 10% more and test again repeating until expansion was what I wanted.

An excellent alternative is to just use a lead/tin alloy. At 1250 fps I would test HPs with 30-1, 20-1 and 16-1 alloys.

I have used the 358156 HP'd for many years in the .38 SPL and 357 Magnum. It is an excellent choice and once the right alloy is used for the velocity level it's performance on deer is excellent.

Larry Gibson

[jethunter]

Wood is not a good test medium to check expansion on a cast boolit. It's too hard and the petals break off. 14 BHN should be in the ballpark. Don't change anything except your test medium for now. Try balistic gelatin, wet newspapers, or even water filled milk jugs and you'll get a more representative sample to inspect.

[David LaPell]

I did actually use wet newspapers, but I am going to repeat the experiment with water next.

[41mag]

While I am shooting a bit bigger boolits, I am going through the same experiences as you. My recovered boolits are like your left and right. Just recently I had a few which actually held together in the classic shroom.

I have also started to add in pure and tin to soften up my alloy. I have been using straight Iso Core and feel the higher antimony in it is killing me. My last batch I added in enough tin and pure to bring the alloy from a 1/3/96 to a 1.5/1.5/97. I am hopeful that in the next couple of weekends I will have a chance to put some through the test in each caliber to see if they preform any better or not. Since my velocities are running a little lower than what yours are on the top end I should think they would be better.

Please update with your results, and as soon as I can I will post up mine.

[largom]

For testing expansion I use 3 or 4 water filled gallon milk jugs backed up with an old suit case filled with rags. The hole, if present, in the suit case tells where to look for your boolit. Duct tape over the hole gets you ready for the next test.

Larry

[44man]

I side with Babore.
Wet paper or water jugs still will not show hunting affects. There is as much air in a deers lungs as there is water so nothing can duplicate it except another deer. Bone is a worry with some boolits.
So far nothing matches live tissue and bone for testing. Even shooting dead animals will not prove anything. No more air and everything has settled.

[BABore]

I don't like water jugs cause I can't examine the wound channel. Water is also very hard on a boolit. I stick with well saturated newspapers with no catalogs or glossy paper. Green rib bones or beef shanks can be layered under the paper if your looking for penetration. 44Man is correct that this is not exactly live critter comparable. But, you can gleen good data by using a known standard. Shoot the same media with a Nosler partition for rifles and a Hornady XTP or similar for pistols. Use this as reference for your cast.

[David LaPell]

I tried the load and bullets from the same batch again, this time shooting into water jugs. All the bullets pretty much look the same and all ended up penetrating through two feet of water. This is how they all looked at the end, like this with the bullet crushed but no real expansion.

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[44man]

True, water does not compress. Air in lungs will and and wound channels all are different.
Same with ballistic gel, no relation to the real world.
Babore is correct in that you can get an idea.
You can have boolit failure with a lung shot but drop deer right now with a shoulder shot and the other way around. Just so many variables. We ALL enjoy testing and it is fun so don't quit.
Bruce, I shot some tough jugs at 50 yards with your HP the other day--WOW, Never seen a hard plastic jug blown so far. Those soap and oil jugs are tough plastic.

[Larry Gibson]

I also use sopping wet news print. I shoot a comparison bullet/load into it that is a known performer on the game intended. For example with .30 cal rfles the comparison is the WW 150 or 170 gr PP at 2000 and 2200 fps to emulate MV and at 1500 and 1600 fps to emulate 200 yards. That gives me a comparison for my HP cast to emulate along with the penetration. For your purposeI would suggest the 150/158 gr Gold dot by speer at the same 1250 fps. Get your cast HPs to expand like it and you got something that will work very well on deer.

Larry Gibson

[44man]

Larry, now I see that as a good match. Make cast duplicate the best jacketed. What I have said before but you say it better. You can make cast work the same.

[MT Gianni]

For hunting you may need to use boolits soft enough that they will require a gc. Only your gun will let you know that but that is one thing that makes the 358156 such a great boolit.
The late Bob Hagel had a test box 5' long on his property. He had 12" of wet sawdust then river muck separated by cardboard. He put lathe as guides and the cardboard would show expansion as the bullet passed down the box. IIRC, he had three pieces of cardboard, two heavy ones with a third one between them, that he could remove between shots and easily replace.

[fredj338]

Either or both. HP design is a lot of it, cup points can withstand ww alloy @ higher vel than deeper HP. Less antimony will help. HP design though does play a large part. I like tin/lead alloys best for LHP, but cutting the ww 50/50 w/ pure should help.
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[David LaPell]

I went out and cast some more bullets today, again more #358156 HP's but this time I used a 50/50 mix of wheelweights and then some lead roundballs I had lying around. While they are getting good and hard overnight and will be sized up tomorrow I took out some of my #358429 cast bullets, also at 12.5 grains of 2400 and about 1200 fps out of my Outdoorsman. These were made with a small strip of aluminum foil slipped into the mould to create a small void. I fired five of these into more wet newspaper, I was fired five and recovered one. All made huge holes for about 3-4 inches in, and the one I recovered made a hole of about 3-inches and stopped about 15 inches in, the rest kept on going to parts unknown. These are also straight wheelweights, around 15 BHN. These were going to be a hunting bullet for whitetail if they worked out.
I also tested out my 649 snub with a mild load of 5.0 grains of Unique which is about 750 fps out of the little barrel. This bullet went into about 8 inches of wet newspaper and stopped with no expansion what so ever. These were from the same batch as the hot .38-44 loads and were also 14 BHN. I knew this result was likely and I am going to cast a separate softer batch to use as a carry load.



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