Expansion without fragmentation

[Ledhead]

I've been working with trying to get a good hunting boolit for my 7.5" SBH 44 mag. My eyes aren't what they used to be so range will definitely be limited to less then 50 yards and most likely 20-30 yards. In an attempt to bring the deer down quickly I'd like to have a little expansion as where I'm hunting is crazy thick and a small parcel of land.( cannot track across property lines)

I'm using an NOE RD designed mold that has the three pins. I've used the solid for quite some time in more open, easier to track, woods but the deer often ran 150+ yards on a lung shot. When I try to soften the alloy I loose accuracy. I've attempted running the cup point around 1300fps and it seems no matter how much tin I add my testing shows that I loose the pedals and thus loose any expansion. Any advice for producing a functioning CP/HP boolit?

So far I've tested 50/50 +2, 20-1 roof flashing/plumbing solder, 16-1 roof flashing/ plumbing solder.

[Tatume]

You don't say how fast you're running bullets, only that you lose accuracy with softer alloys. You might want to slow down, after all, you're not planning long shots. Not only do I not lose accuracy with softer alloys, but often accuracy improves.

[William Yanda]

Can't remember where, but 96-2-2 is alleged to be "tougher". The secret is balancing tin and antimony evenly, the 2 could be 3, making the lead 94. 96-2-2 is 50/50 COWW and pure lead with 1% or so of added tin.
If that doesn't work you may want to check out adding copper.
Interesting question. Keep us posted.

[charlie b]

If you need a solid stop, then precise bullet placement is king. I'd question using a pistol at 50yd unless you are very good with it under hunting conditions (less than fist size group at hunting range). I'd go for a SWC and plan to hit something immediately vital, like heart, neck/spine, etc. An expanding bullet won't buy you that much when you need to hit the critical organ.

If you just need a large blood trail, then an expanding bullet that goes through both sides is a good choice.

I am not capable of that kind of precise pistol shooting 50yd anymore so would probably find a nice pistol caliber carbine. A little lever action would be perfect.

[Larry Gibson]

What are you testing the bullets in?

[mattw]

Over the years I have shot a few deer with 41 mag and various cast hollow points and alloys. The best expansion I have had so far is with 94/3/3, softer just come apart and harder do not expand. I go for about 1325fps with a 200 grain cast hollow point and it seems to work. If I do my part they do not go far at all. My eyes are getting old before their time and I will not shot above 40 yards without something to brace the gun.

[fredj338]

I cast soft with LHP, 20-1 in my 44mag cup points. Slow them down a bit to keep them from fragmenting. Even 50fps makes a diff. I run a modified Lyman Dev that casts 270gr cup points, no gc. Running 1250fps I get good expansion & 100% penetration broadside. I am shooting a RBHH with 2x Leup. So 50y shot off any rest is pretty easy.

[country gent]

What you might try is a 2 alloy bullet your harder alloy for the base and something like 20-1 for the nose. this way you still have the hard driving bands and gain the soft nose got expansion. Its not hard to do but does require some "special equipment"

The special equipment is 1) a ladle sized to throw a measured amount of lead. Very similar to a powder dipper. This can be made from a case and length of copper wire. I prefer a rimless case for the dipper. cut the case long and wrap the ends if the wire tight around the case cut the mouth at an angle to form a spout and the back lower edge to set the amount of lead. Once the ends of the wire is around the case securely form the handle you want. I put the end in a drill motor chuck and slowly wind it tight.

2) a small pot to hold and melt you soft alloy. this cn be almost any steel can or pot pan. A couple 3 pounds makes a lot of bullets.

3) a heat source for this pot to melt and maintain temps. coleman stove hot plate propane torch. or one of the small 4 pound dipper pots

To make these bullets you need to set up the pots for comfortable easy use you need to pour quickly Also a means of holding the mould level is helpful. Here a piece of angle iron inverted or even block of wood.

Keep the dipper in the melt when not in use run temps higher than normal 750 to 775 Is about where I am. Pour the measured amount in the mould and then move quickly to the second pot and fill mould pouring a large sprue. Done quickly and with the nose still slushy molten you shouldn't see a line just the color change in the 2 alloys. This does work better with a 1 cavity mould in a 2 cavity complete 1 then the other.

It is slower casting but for hunting bullets and the numbers required 50-100 last a long time. Remember for practice the bullet can be used with a single alloy with little change in POI

I cast a 45 cal PP bullet for my 45-90 that weighs 530 grns from 20-1. I lad it in the 1100-1200 fps range. When recovered from the sand back stop at the club About an 1/8" of the cup base shows in the back of the mushroom, dia at widest point is close to 1" and when cleaned of sand weight is still around 525 grs. THis is a round nosed bullet ( money bullet design by Steve Brooks.

THe abve should give you the best of both worlds the hard base and soft nose. aa benifit is as the nose mushrooms back its surface and force increases so expansion may improve some back ito the hard driving section.

[OS OK]

For 1,300 fps, I would use COWW's with 5.25% Sn total ... that's about a 16:1 blend but a tad-bit harder.

I would air cool them from the mould & air cool from the PC oven if that's your lube process.
If this were my project, I'd lube-size them so that I wouldn't have to contend with any higher heat treatment from that short bake in the oven.

I also like to fill the HP cavity with pure silicone, I think it will prevent fouling of the mushroom opening should it fill with hair-n-hyde or whatever and trap air so that it will not open fully or not open at all.

You can test them in water filled milk jugs but having something behind the jugs is essential to catch the mushroom should it exit the side of a jug. Folded up jeans and old towels will do that for you.

[Ledhead]

You don't say how fast you're running bullets, only that you lose accuracy with softer alloys. You might want to slow down, after all, you're not planning long shots. Not only do I not lose accuracy with softer alloys, but often accuracy improves.

I'm getting a mean muzzle velocity of 1323fps with an SD of only 7fps ES of 19fps. Results from an 18 shot string.

[Ledhead]

For 1,300 fps, I would use COWW's with 5.25% Sn total ... that's about a 16:1 blend but a tad-bit harder.

I would air cool them from the mould & air cool from the PC oven if that's your lube process.
If this were my project, I'd lube-size them so that I wouldn't have to contend with any higher heat treatment from that short bake in the oven.

I also like to fill the HP cavity with pure silicone, I think it will prevent fouling of the mushroom opening should it fill with hair-n-hyde or whatever and trap air so that it will not open fully or not open at all.

You can test them in water filled milk jugs but having something behind the jugs is essential to catch the mushroom should it exit the side of a jug. Folded up jeans and old towels will do that for you.

I PC my range loads but use the pan lube for anything I water drop.

I use a gallon jug of water backed by soaked phone books to catch the round.

I'll try some COWW + 5% and see what that does on my next outing.

[bmortell]

i also like the 2 different alloy soft point when your trying to run a compromise between hard and accurate or expanding and bigger groups.

id do about 80gr of tin lead alloy for a nose then fill with 50-50 WW and water drop / heat treat. then in a few days the base will be pretty hard and the nose isnt heat treatable. i wouldnt worry about losing damage from a piece of expansion breaking off, if it expanded that much it did some good damage and the rest will go out the other side. the deer will probably mangle soft expanded lead anyway so id be more worried about just making sure you get expansion with soft enough nose.

i do differently then him as i feel pouring liquid lead into another liquid lead will mix them, so i watch the nose till the moment it solidifies then pour alloy 2 wait till sprue solidifies, then set the bottom of the mold in the pot for a few seconds and the sprue melts again showing me the 2 alloys were liquid together. but this is with non HP aluminum molds.

[Ledhead]

I've dabbled with this but struggled to get the proper "joint" between the two mixes. I've also heat treated some boolits then annealed the business part. That method works great in my muzzleloader but haven't found a good mix for my SBH yet.

[Ledhead]

1 gallon jug of water for expansion backed by soaked phone books to catch the boolit. Fragmentation is occurring in the water. The fragments are sizable, usually consisting of one 1/4"X3/4" crescent shaped pedal and 3-4 fragments about 1/4". Then of course the main boolit that is now just a jagged wadcutter/roundnose hybrid.

[Ledhead]

I consistently shoot 50yrds and keep a fist size group but there are some flyers that worry me ( about 1 every 10 rounds or so) which is why I said "most likely 20-30 yards"

The increase blood trails are part of what I'm looking for. This property was logged 5 years ago and is a tangled mess of greenbriars and cedars

[bmortell]

i dont know if the fragments will translate over to deer with ribs and all the air voids behind the front shoulder, likely be different anyway in one way or another

[OS OK]

1 gallon jug of water for expansion backed by soaked phone books to catch the boolit. Fragmentation is occurring in the water. The fragments are sizable, usually consisting of one 1/4"X3/4" crescent shaped pedal and 3-4 fragments about 1/4". Then of course the main boolit that is now just a jagged wadcutter/roundnose hybrid.

The increase blood trails are part of what I'm looking for. This property was logged 5 years ago and is a tangled mess of greenbriars and cedars

Two ways to control expansion...speed adjustment 'up & down' and 'hardness and malleability' of the lead mix.

Big mushrooms are like little parachutes in the flesh and they slow things down quickly but they dump lots of FPE at the same time but...they loose penetration if they hold together and don't fragment. Retaining full weight for deep penetration was one objective.
The happy medium would be control the diameter of expansion while keeping them together and getting the best penetration for the highest speed you can safely run them & plan for that pass through you want.
I experimented with pistol HP's all summer, pert near all that I did was to experiment with the blend & the speed & the type of HP cavity I used.
Way too much information to explain here...there's just too much information to share that I learned a little at a time doing many, many experiments, so much so that I didn't even get to the gel testing I had planned...oh well, next summer I'll get to the gel.

Here's my YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5mfCQYNW1hfrgepvqCDsg/videos?view_as=subscriber
I go into lots of detail about what happened & especially go into the lead blends to control those big mushrooms & keep them to a workable size.
One jug-bust I did lost 1/2 of the velocity in the first jug of water & fully developed it's diameter with 100% weight retention, went in at 908 fps and came out from that jug at 450 fps...it lost 1/2 the velocity and gave up 1/2 it's FPE at the same time... this is the link to that test... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2maRWzS58gQ

Careful though...HP's are a deep rabbit'hole...you can get lost down there!

[megasupermagnum]

Don't waste your time with antimony alloys like clip on wheel weight. Antimony is brittle, and offers nothing that you want in an expanding bullet. The best alloys are going to be lead and tin only, 20:1, and 16:1 being top choices. Water is a very hard bullet stop, and often shows greater expansion than you would get in reality in an animal. Instead I would suggest you put the wet phonebooks in front, and use the water jugs to catch.

Try 20:1 again, but this time with phone books in front, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

This weekend I'll be taking my Redhawk out for our early antlerless season. I'll be shooting a NOE H&G 503 clone with deep HP, and cast of 20:1 alloy. It clocks about 1225 fps, and shoots very well, 3 1/2" at 50 yards. I tried this bullet into numberous things, water, clay, books, and wood. In everything except water, it expands greatly, but does not break apart at all. With any luck I'll have something real world tested to show you by monday.

[Larry Gibson]

As mentioned the milk jug of water is not a good test medium as animal tissue is far less "solid". Agree with trying the 20-1 at that velocity of you might try 16-1 which is what i use with the 429640HP "Devastator" at a similar velocity. Soaking wet phone books or newsprint is a good test medium. Use enough to catch the bullet w/o any other "backing" needed.

As to accuracy with the softer alloys at that velocity level I use a GC'd bullet.

[GregLaROCHE]

Bullet placement trumps all ballistics. That said, there was a recent post claiming tin helps hold the boolit together. Maybe try pure lead and only tin to harden it.

[OS OK]

I can't testify to the results of that high of velocity as all my testing this summer has been limited to the .45ACP but I think our lead blending and velocity has a relationship that can be varied by changing speed or blend of Pb & Sn and/or Sb.
Needing a bit stiffer yet malleable alloy for a penta .45ACP @ 209 ~ 211 grains & running at 975 fps, I tried using range lead I bought from a guy that got it from Quantico Va..
Thinking that the small amount of Sb in that type lead from the jacketed rounds might offset the high amounts of Sn you have to use in the 16 & 20:1 varieties of HP lead blends as you try to attain a hardness of 10 or 11 bhn. Tin doesn't harden at the same ratio like the Sb does and I noticed earlier this summer that any amount of antimony at all, even the 1% Bumbpo's calc. claims for range lead will kick the hardness by 1.2 bhn just as a result of that short 20 minute trip in the oven at 400ºƒ & air cooling of the PC coating. THat's a minuscule amount of hardness but it can be the difference between a 'fail & pass' in HP performance but it's a much larger difference in the Sn required, where we may get by at around 3.3% Sn instead of the much higher 4.7 to 5.8% of the 16 & 20:1 blends.
It would be a big deal, at least to me to be able to use range lead as the base lead of a HP blend for these .45ACP speeds and not have to add over 3% Sn. that stuff is expensive.
Anyway, I tried that in this last HP test no. 7 to end the summer's experimentation.
It appears to have worked but that won't be a conclusion until next summers continuation of the HP experiments...

https://i.imgur.com/MuZgXnb.jpg

I thought this was pretty good for this speed and bhn level with the trace of Sb, it didn't fold the petals over against the body of the cast...that's saying something about having some Sb in the blend, me thinks?

https://i.imgur.com/GGSuhpE.jpg

I hope by then to know the exact quantities of all my lead stashes of various type leads.
I think the XRF will be the definitive answer as to contents and then be able to apply RotoMetals bhn formula to describe exactly the magnitude of that difference.
As you prolly know, it is very difficult trying to blend good HP lead from stashes of lead we all have gotten from all over the place, the Sn & Sb & As also are all over the place too.

Anyway, that's the reason I suggested using the COWW's in your blend as it has somewhere around 3% Sb or depending on the source of COWW's that number could be much less.
I think it's worth a try.

[mnewcomb59]

There is a fine line with antimony alloys where just enough tin and just a hair too little tin can cause a dramatic difference in weight retention and penetration. I like to shoot for a quarter percent more tin than antimony to be sure I have enough.

I have had great results with 1-1-98, 2-2-96 and 3-3-94. One batch of 4-4-92 fragmented, and the next batch I mixed up at 4.25-4-91.75 had great weight retention.

I believe that my problem comes from assuming composition of my foundry type. I have seen xrf tests for that stuff all over the place and I am probably overestimating tin, underestimating antimony, or copper is messing with my alloy's grain structure. My laymans solution has been to make the tin 0.125-0.25% heavy depending on how rich I am making the antimony. This gives me 98-100% weight retention.

One guy on here is more liberal with his tin than me and I think he was having good luck with 6-4-90. It seems like too much won't hurt but you can definitely see when you have too little.

You can make a pot, run a couple test bullets then shut it off. Check for fragmentation and if needed add a little more tin to your pot then cast a bunch from that same pot and have 400-900 all of the same alloy.

[Ledhead]

Thanks for the responses, it's been an interesting read thus far. I'll retry the 20-1 and 16-1 in all wetpack, see how that goes. Along with the 50/50 +5%.

Does anyone think that my source of tin (silver bearing plumbing solder) could be making a difference? I wouldn't figure that the small amounts of silver would be able to make any difference. I've read where copper bearing alloy makes a boolit "tougher" but does silver add anything beneficial to the mix?

[45r]

I like to hunt from a tree stand or some other type of elevated position when handgun hunting and aim for a high shoulder impact.
Most of the time it can result in a drt or not a very long tracking job.
It breaks down the shoulders and makes a good blood trail with the exit hole being low on the off side.
Shot placement is key.

[fredj338]

1 gallon jug of water for expansion backed by soaked phone books to catch the boolit. Fragmentation is occurring in the water. The fragments are sizable, usually consisting of one 1/4"X3/4" crescent shaped pedal and 3-4 fragments about 1/4". Then of course the main boolit that is now just a jagged wadcutter/roundnose hybrid.

Try it the other way; wetpack backed by water. Water can be quite "hard" on an expanding bullet. If a bullet frags in water it often expands perfectly in gel or wetpack.