Snow recovery of full-speed cast bullets

[FAsmus]

Gentlemen:

The first snow of this winter came early this month. As soon as the main accumulation had melted off I went to the range for some shooting with my M1891 Argentine.

There was a deep drift across the road on the hill-top, preventing the use of the regular firing point so I set up at the alternate location - same distance to most of the targets.

At the 834 yard distance there was a drift just in front of the steel silhouette. It was no problem and shooting continued as normal. ~ However on one shot the bullet hit low, into the drift.

Later, when all the snow had melted I went up to paint and there the snow bullet was; all bright and shiny - virtually undamaged from impact - only showing the pristine engravements from the rifling.

I took it home and carefully measured everything I could with Micrometer and dial caliper.

I recommend to you other shooters to try this method of recovering bullets fired over full cast bullet loads. You'll be surprized at what you find out about sizes, shapes, "bump-ups" and length as compared to unfired bullets from the same run.

Good morning,
Forrest

[Shuz]

Forrest--I've recovered boolits on my range in the spring after the snow melts, but my issue was not knowing which of my .44 revolvers or.44 rifles the various boolits came from and what the load was! Good source of re-meltable alloy tho!

[shredder]

It is a rare thing but it happend to me too. We had piles of snow year bofore last and the high snowbanks obscured the target backstops. I shot once into the snow bank then used the little black boolit hole as a target. I repeated that at 50, 100 and 200 yards with all the various rifles I had along that day. Imagine my surprise next srping to find little piles of my boolits laying out on the ground in pristine condition. My micrometer tells me that useful information can be had from these recovered slugs. I have had many a-ha moments measuring these boolits.

For instance I always had some unexplained fliers with my 311332 boolits in 30-06. I found out from my recovered boolits that they were coming into the rifling a bit crooked. The rifling on the ogive of the boolit told the story. Since then I have hardened up the alloy and seated them into the lands, resulting in far fewer fliers.

I found it an amazing look "under the hood" of my loads. It is amazing how undamaged the slugs are from their trip through the snow. It seems the perfect catch medium though unpredictable for sure. I feel very very lucky to have had the expereince of acutally finding and identifying my own boolits laying on the open ground at the range.

[10x]

In the past when I shot 45/70 with 405 and 500 grain cast in the winter at a target with a snow pile for a backstop an enterprising young fellow picked up all my bullets and sold them back to me. I payed $20.00 for a couple hundred pounds of my own bullets. There were also jacked bullets mixed in.
After melting and fluxing the the recycled lead cast better than ever.

[Digital Dan]

One can do the same year round with a bullet trap filled with sawdust mixed with a bit of motor oil. Little bit of oil goes a long way. Thin cloth on the end the bullet enters.

[10x]

One can do the same year round with a bullet trap filled with sawdust mixed with a bit of motor oil. Little bit of oil goes a long way. Thin cloth on the end the bullet enters.

Sawdust with motor oil. Careful, this sounds ripe for spontaineous combustion. If oily rags can do it so can oily sawdust.

[fecmech]

Been doing this for years where I live. Best snow is that which makes good snowmen or snowballs right around 30 deg. Dense enough so you don't need 10' to stop the bullet yet not so dense as to deform it. You can mark the bullets different ways by dots or number of cuts etc. Just keep notes because when you find them in the spring you won't remember the codes. Don't ask me how I know that!here are some from a previous post
84833

[45 2.1]

there the snow bullet was; all bright and shiny - virtually undamaged from impact - only showing the pristine engravements from the rifling.

You'll be surprized at what you find out about sizes, shapes, "bump-ups" and length as compared to unfired bullets from the same run.

As a matter of record, what other defects or whatever have you found from this method? Shapes in particular. We haven't had enough deep snow or drifts to try this for the last 25 years.

[Digital Dan]

Sawdust with motor oil. Careful, this sounds ripe for spontaineous combustion. If oily rags can do it so can oily sawdust.

The method has been around about as long as guns and sawmills have existed. Suppose you could use water, but oil will keep the termites away, don't ya think?

Geesh.....wasn't suggesting you store it in your closet.

[FAsmus]

45x2.1;

I have recovered bullets from barrel-measurement testing fired into piles of oily rags over a squib load. These were fired to get bore dimensions typically from a new re-barrel job or from a newly acquired rifle.

I naturally kept the bullets. Then, later on I would pick up bullets fired into snow from full cast bullet loads using the same rifle. These bullets always measure about 0.001 smaller than the ones fired over squib loads.

My theory is that when fired with the more powerful load that the lead alloy 'wears' during its trip down the barrel. Either that or the thin layer of fouling or "seasoning" in a cast bullet barrel squeezes the bullet down that much when the bullet is fired.

What do you think?

Forrest

[FAsmus]

45x2.1:

Also, in thinking about it I remember recovering the bigger bullets, say 350 grain 40s, 500 grain 44s, 540 grain 45s and 700 grain 50s that, these bullets being rather soft I find that they 'bump-up" as much as 0.002 on their noses - enough for the rifling to engrave them. This causes them to shorten up just a little as well.

Forrest

[ddixie884]

I believe Elmer Keith wrote of recovering and observing bullets from deep snow. He said much could be learned, just as you did.

[45 2.1]

I would pick up bullets fired into snow from full cast bullet loads using the same rifle. These bullets always measure about 0.001 smaller than the ones fired over squib loads.

My theory is that when fired with the more powerful load that the lead alloy 'wears' during its trip down the barrel. Either that or the thin layer of fouling or "seasoning" in a cast bullet barrel squeezes the bullet down that much when the bullet is fired.

What do you think? Forrest

A lot goes on in a barrel. Most all of that is pressure dependent. If you look at some of the high speed pictures of a bullet going down a barrel, you will wonder how anything is accurate with all the vibration and movement going on. The situation above leads me to think the higher pressure load really does strange things while en-route down the barrel. Whether it wears or not I don't know, but every once in a while I recover a 30 Sil boolit fired from a semi-auto at long range (basically shot into looser clay dirt and kicked out by another boolit in the same spot) which is basically undamaged except for the rifling (from the ojive radius to the base). If anything is going to get damaged, it should be those as they get shot at almost full velocity for the boolit weight in that cartridge.

[ofreen]

I have had a couple of Smith & Wesson M25-2 revolvers in 45 ACP/AR around for years. I bought the first one 40 years ago. It shot well with jacketed bullets. The conventional wisdom then was that cast bullets had to be of a hard alloy to work well because of the narrow lands and shallow rifling. So that's what I started with using the 452460 and linotype. The results were terrible, hardly staying on the paper at 25 yards. I persisted, trying different powders and charges, and with the 452423, all working no better than the last. And there was a fair amount of leading in the forcing cone. I didn't have much use for a revolver that only shot jacketed bullets, so I was just about to peddle it. Before I did, I decided to try a load using the 452460 cast from air-cooled wheelweights and Unique that I used in a 1911. I was rewarded with a nice round 2" 25 yd group. After tweaking the powder charge and OAL I could consistantly get 1 1/4-1 1/2 groups at 25 yards. Accuracy held up to 100 yards. This was against everything I'd read about cast bullets in these revolvers and was the beginning of me being very skeptical about "conventional wisdom" when it came to reloading, the skepticism serving me very well over the years. I still use that load almost exclusively to this day in those guns. It is no trouble to consistantly hit a 1 1/2" wide ground squirrel out to 60 yards with that combination.

I was always puzzled why the softer bullet worked so much better than the hard one in the M25-2. I lived in Alaska for 15 years and did a lot of shooting over snow covered ice in the winter. I recovered many, many cast bullets just sitting on top of the snow after shooting looking just like they did when they exited the muzzle. It was like picking berries. One day after shooting the M25, I received a clue. Recovered 452460s showed the usual skidding, but what was different was that there were two distinct skids on the front of the bands, one faint and one heavier. It was plain that when the bullet first entered the rifling, it skidded considerably. But then the softness of the bullet allowed it to obturate, filling the bore and taking the rifling. By the time the bullet left the muzzle, it had almost completely 'healed' itself. I think I still have some of those bullets around here. I'll put up some photos if I come across them.

I learned much of what I know about cast bullets from ones recovered from the snow. Failures from gas cutting, slumping, misalignment, incorrect alloy and poor fit were all easy to see.

For the benefit of M25-2 aficionados, the cylinder throats on both my revolvers are at .452.

[FAsmus]

Ofreen;

I learned most of what I know about gas-cutting in particular from snow recovery of PB bullets.

I had a Ruger New Blackhawk in 45LC that loved my 452460 - but cast from an old 4-hole mold @ 0.455. I cast them soft and loaded them as-cast, no sizing since the throats of the cylinder were 0.455. This combination worked wonderfully well for many years.

Good morning,
Forrest

[10x]

The method has been around about as long as guns and sawmills have existed. Suppose you could use water, but oil will keep the termites away, don't ya think?

Geesh.....wasn't suggesting you store it in your closet.

I was advising caution when soaking sawdust with oil.
Even charcoal briquets that are oil soaked can ignite on their own if conditions are right.
So can oil soaked coal.
Sawdust with a bit of oil to catch a bullet is a great idea - you can use it to flux later too....

But like using Aspirin, there is a risk, more Canadians die from Aspirin than from gunshot wounds
84982

[Messy bear]

Ofreen;

I learned most of what I know about gas-cutting in particular from snow recovery of PB bullets.

I had a Ruger New Blackhawk in 45LC that loved my 452460 - but cast from an old 4-hole mold @ 0.455. I cast them soft and loaded them as-cast, no sizing since the throats of the cylinder were 0.455. This combination worked wonderfully well for many years.

Good morning,
Forrest
i too have used snow for boolit retreival. alot to learn about what happens to the casting during its trip. some dont even look the same if pushed too hard. gas cutting even occurs with a gas checked boolit sometimes. i always remember the boolits that came out of paper with cutting on them at one of the Linebaugh seminars and they wore checks.