Please help explain why?

[Wayne Smith]

I was at the range yesterday and another shooter, who happens to be a lurker here, asked me to look at his target and tell me what was happening. He was shooting an Enfield (P14?).

I saw this: ( I hope it posts!)

I told him lead was melting out of the base of his bullets. He asked how? I asked him what bullet he was using and it all became clear.

He had pulled 8mm Mauser bullets (military) and sized them first to .318 and then to .314, the bullets measured .315-.316 after springback. His barrel sized to a .3155 groove, he said. He was stumped. I told him that in sizing he had loosened the bond between the core and the jacket and probably squeezed lead past the base of the jacket. That lead then melted as it went down the bore.

He was suprised. Said his load was 13 gr. Bartlett #107, using them to "get to (clean) the bottom of the groove". I told him his groove was probably covered with lead. He was questioning if the velocity was adequate to melt the lead (no suprise there) and why it was still molten 25yds downrange.

I didn't think of it then but I guess I should have explained time of flight to him, even at low velocity.

What else did I miss?

[Wayne Smith]

OK, why didn't the picture post? It said it uploaded, so it's somewhere in cyber space!

Oh, Rick, if we can get this working you can ignore my e-mail. LOML kindly showed me how we can reduce the pic size on the camera!

[jonk]

No picture. So we don't know what was happening.

[MtGun44]

There isn't really any bond between the core and jacket on most jacketed
bullets. Not sure what is happening, but fairly sure that this explaination
isn't it.

Bill

[NVcurmudgeon]

Wayne, if the bullets showed spiral streaks of lead on the target, originating at the bullet hole, it could have been what are called "comet tails." There was an article in IIRC Handloader years ago reporting on this phenomenon. If a bullet is driven faster than it can stand, say a 40 gr. Hornet bullet in a .22/250. it will show the "comet tails". Apparently the weak jacket comes apart in flight. Your friend didn't have a lot of velocity, but he certainly had weak jacket covered. Just my guess.

[Ricochet]

Are you trying to post the picture as an attachment here?

Put it on a Web page somewhere. I use http://photobucket.com/ for free picture hosting. Then copy the URL of the picture and paste it into your post. Put "img" in square brackets in front of the URL, and "/img" in square brackets right after it. No spaces.

[Wayne Smith]

With a lot of help from my son we reduced the size of the pic. It says it's attached.

[Wayne Smith]

I'm thinking that when he sized the bullets down it caused lead to extrude from the open bottom of the bullet. This caused lead to obtrudate and contact the barrel. That's the best I can do. The only other place I've seen this is in The Bullet's Flight and Dr. Mann's pictures of his research.

[BruceB]

The swirls around the bullet holes are clearly the result of some part of the cores being melted. The consistency of the phenomenon around each hole proves that the same condition applied to each of the bullets.

WHY the cores are melting is another question, since the velocity and pressure are quite low with the load described in the earlier post.

I've seen this occurrence only a few times over forty-odd years, and most of the time it was from a very hard-driven (over 4000 fps) light bullet from my .220 Swift. As in this case, there was no apparent breakup of the bullet underway, as the holes were clean, neat, and not badly grouped. However, my obvious conclusion was that those .22 jackets were just little bottles of molten lead, shedding the liquid gradually from the FRONT of the bullet. Some of the shots also showed the "vapor-trail" effect if I watched, resembling the daylight track of some tracers I've seen where the bullet left a smoke trail as well as showing the flame at the bullet base.

It's possible that extrusion of the core, or the springback mentioned, has exposed an EDGE for the powder flame to work on in the base area of the bullet. Such an edge would heat-up and melt more quickly than an intact core without such an edge exposure, and this could give rise to the melted-lead signature on the target.

Interesting.

[twoworms]

I was looking at the pic and was wondering if it could be a oil/smoke mark on the paper. I would think that they had been fired at close range and maybe a smoke trail caused the mark? He had sized the bullets with a lube or oil maybe he left oil on the base of the bullets that burned off.

I was at a long range shoot a few years ago and a guy was shooting a 260 Rem with bullets that he had sprayed with WD40 and had forgot to wipe clean before loading them. When he fired the loads they left a smoke trail for a good ways.

Tim

[Bret4207]

Got me, but I'm sure the Brady Campaign is against it....

[Wayne Smith]

I was looking at the pic and was wondering if it could be a oil/smoke mark on the paper. I would think that they had been fired at close range and maybe a smoke trail caused the mark? He had sized the bullets with a lube or oil maybe he left oil on the base of the bullets that burned off.

I was at a long range shoot a few years ago and a guy was shooting a 260 Rem with bullets that he had sprayed with WD40 and had forgot to wipe clean before loading them. When he fired the loads they left a smoke trail for a good ways.

Tim

He had the target frame up at 25 yds. Given what he told me I assume (I know, it's dangerous!) he has much more experience and knowledge to leave lube on a condom bullet. He is a caster, as well.

The marks are not oily nor did the paper absorb anything, so I'd think not oil/ It definitely looks like lead.

I doubt that this would be seen at 100 yds.

[Ricochet]

I've seen lubed rifle boolits leave smoke trails. They corkscrew through the air quite noticeably.

[Buckshot]

.............Defianetly lead comet tails. How or way in this instance I don't know, but that's what it is. I don't know what surp #107 is the equivilent of, but 13.0grs of Red Dot is no piker pressure wise.

If the jacket has sprung away from the core, how do ya like this theory? I'm sure that #107 is fast as they're comparing it to AA#7. At ignition the pressure expands the seperated jacket and then the core in the throat. Then sends it down the barrel to engrave where the oversized slug creates sufficient heat through friction to melt the lead?

..............Buckshot

[Bass Ackward]

I have seen this when I used to use copper to remove lead fouling. The abrasive nature of the copper grabs the lead and my guess is that the RPMs of it makes it let go when it clears the bore. And after that many passes through a sizer, the outside copper had to be roughed up even more than normal I would think. The reason it may have been on so many was the low obturation of the jacketed bullet at those pressures. Otherwise, with high pressure, I would have expected it on only one or two.

Had this fella shot lead in this gun before?

[Wayne Smith]

It was the first time I've met him, and didn't think it through enough to ask that. He says he lurks here, maybe he'll chime in.

[Sam]

How about them FCB (fully condomized boolits) being steel (97% of them are)instead of regular condom material, done got hard from laying around for eleventyseven years and the sizing not to mention electrolytic action/corrosion under the coating on the steel condom(not oncet but twicet) and split when fired, mebbe even shoving some proper boolit metal out the front from all that pressure! Mebbe even getting gas cutting through the jacket on a few(like the ones with the tails).
Don't harldy ever see bullet bases melted anyway, just impacted with powder granules a bit, but gas cutting, thats another matter and a brittle condom with a loose boolit rattling around in it might be a way to make crazy marks on paper.

Sam

[The Double D]

Any correlation betwen the numbers of lands and groove in the barrel to the marks on target.

I have seen this before with jacketed bullets and the marks seemed to corresponded to the rifling. Seemed to happen during high humidity