aged boolit= brittle boolit ?

[nekshot]

I reloaded and shot in wet book box some 190 grain 50-50 boolits for hunting that I recently cast and the results with LVR were stunning! So I got some boolits of same type 50-50 mix, same mould but cast last fall and while they expanded their mushroom petals would break off. So if using a boolit to harvest an animal, is it best to use a fresh cast boolit?

[s mac]

The way I understand it is usually your alloy will soften slightly with time, not harden, become more brittle. Was you hollow point pin possibly longer on the earlier batch?

[BK7saum]

Look at it this way, the petals cause additional wound channels. As long as the base maintains enough mass to fully penetrate, then you will still have a dead deer.

I don't worry so much about petals shearing off, but definitely don't want the bullet to blow up or fragment and cause nasty wound channels with un-necessary meat loss.

Was the alloy from the exact same batch or supposed to be the same. All wheelweights are not the same. If this was from the same alloy, I don't have an answer. But if this was a different 50/50 alloy, then your problem could be from slightly different percentages of antimony and tin in the batches.

Brad

[nekshot]

It was 2 different melts with the same incrediants basically but the 1 year old boolits appeared less pliable even though they mushroomed. It is no big deal but I am the kinda guy that likes to make big batches of what I do and store it for later use. It appears to me we need expiration labels also now for the cast boolits!

[45 2.1]

Any alloy with antimony in it that isn't polluted with too much tin will continue to get slightly harder as it gets older. I hunt with my hollow point designs..... I DO NOT worry about them getting harder as I water drop most all of them and I expect them to get harder. The nose blows off to the bottom of the hollow point and the base goes on thru the animal (tested up thru deer size... lengthways also). Kills very very very well with rib cage shots. I've only managed to keep one HP boolit in a deer (on purpose). That one fell over in it's tracks.... 60 yds with a 41 Mag 238 gr. HP.

[44man]

You just can not tell what a boolit will do in an animal by shooting wet books. Those might be perfect for hunting.
Test medium is the deer. Even jell tests tell you nothing, just solid water when lungs contain a lot of air.