287405 in the 280 rem.

[jhalcott]

I shot some 150 grain 287405 bullets thru my .280 remington today. I wanted to see how LOUD 3.5 grains of Bulle eye will be when pushing this bullet. I also wanted to see how much penetration I will get. I got a 5 shot group of about 3/4". It measured .760" with my dial calipers.All the bullets were in one long hole that went from ten oclock to 5 oclock but were about 2" low of the aiming point. I set a gallon jug of water and 4 inches of dry phone books at 25 yards. The bullet went thru with out hardly shaking the bottle. Since I still had most of the water in the jug ,I added some mulch and sand to it. I hoped it would slow the next bullet enough to capture it in the books. It did not! I'm going to try again with 3 and 3.2 grains of bulls eye. I am also going to flat nose a few and try that. I have a chance to shoot some ground hogs this summer in a populated area that I shot over a couple years ago. I don't want to use the .22 Rimfire again.

[Buckshot]

..................Were you using a GC on the boolit? If not that'd be some pretty cheap shooting. Interesting results too :-)

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

[jhalcott]

Buckshot, no gas checks, as I expect the velocity to be quite low. All the rounds were fired at 25 yards. I intend to try again at 50 for accuracy and penetration. I also will try a softer alloy, maybe WW or WW/pure lead mixed. i will flat nose some to see if that helps expansion. I didn't expect such a slow load to penetrate so much. A round gallon bottle full of water AND TWO phone books (about 4" of dry paper) at 25 yards. The bullets weighed from 149.5 to 150 grains as loaded. Gives one some real respect for the old cast projectile!

[Buckshot]

.................Small charges of energetic double base powders can be interesting so far as what they'll do. In my IJ break top 38 S&W revolter, 1.6grs of Bullseye will deliver a 150gr WC out the end of the 4" bbl at close to 500 fps. And that's jumping a sizeable bbl-cyl gap too. Granted the container has MUCH less room then your 280.

Dinking around with cast in the 223 I was also using Bullseye under a 43gr slug. The rifle had a 26" barrel. It was very sensitive to powder position. I forget the charge but the 'Either-Or' difference was startling. With the powder aginst the primer the boolit exited that 26" bbl at a bit over 400 fps. Simply chambered and then fired without regard to where the powder was would cause the slug to stick in the first foot of the tube, so it was either 400+ fps or nuttin :-)

I had paper patched up some Lyman 255gr SWC's to shoot from a 45-70. I believe I had 6.0grs of Red Dot in the big case. At the south end of my house was a dead Mulberry tree stump that was as hard as cast iron. About 40 yards further south was a hogwire fence on steel 'T' posts lining one side of the driveway. The same on the other side, and then a big open field.

A buddy of mine had arrived and so after BSing for while I said I had these loads I wanted to shoot. I fired one from maybe 25 yards and it hit the stump a resounding whack. I stuck a piece of straw into the hole and the boolit had penetrated about 4". For sure I thought we'd just find some skinned bark and a lead colored splatter! My friend took the next shot. He hit just to the left of my hit where there was a shallow cleft or channel in the stump.

We heard the slug hit but then it took a sharp left turn and it looked like a super speed rabbit going through the weeds (you could see them moving), hit the hogwire a 'TING' raised a puff of dust across the driveway, 'TINGED' the wire on the other side and then left a dust trail as it headed out across the other field for maybe 30 yards or so!

I don't know what the case capacity is of the 45-70 vs say a 45 Colt but we'll call the Colt case half, so it might have been like shooting it from a 45 Colt with 3.0grs of Red Dot. Plus the 45-70 had a 24" bbl, so there was considerable friction.

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