Hard Cast Hollow Points

[Super Sneaky Steve]

I've made, shot and tested lots of soft cast hollow points but I'm curious about hard cast.

Has anyone tried them? I would assume at some speed and pressure the nose would fragment and the base would keep on going like a wadcutter.

[Nueces]

I've posted here before about my early experience casting Lyman 457122HPs (the Gould bullet), cast in linotype and loaded in 45-70 cases over 16 grains of Unique for use in my new Marlin 1895. I ordered directly from Lyman and the mould was clearly an early version - cardboard box, bevel base, very long HP pin.

Explosive results on Texas jackrabbits. Never found a bullet fragment, probably scattered all over the Hill Country. So, yeah, at the fairly low rifle speeds achieved with only 16 grains of Unique, it looked to me like that bullet behaved as you expect. Wonderful varmint performance, much too violent for a meat animal.

[Forrest r]

I've made, shot and tested lots of soft cast hollow points but I'm curious about hard cast.

Has anyone tried them? I would assume at some speed and pressure the nose would fragment and the base would keep on going like a wadcutter.

I only made hard cast "ness" bullets for the 30cal's. They performed exactly like you described & hit extremely hard leaving massive wound channels.

I tested them (water dropped ww alloy) in wetpack (bundles of newspaper soaked overnight in water) @50yds. The top +/- 1" of newspaper and a small entry hole and then they opened up to this.
https://i.imgur.com/7XXQEas.jpg

Those cavities went on for 4"+ and the base of the bullet was found another +/- 2" deeper. Shot several groundhogs with that bullet and the results mirrored the wetpack tests.

[fredj338]

In handguns, if the hp is wide & deep, the nose frags. If its a cup point, it deforms a little but stays intact.

[Larry Gibson]

That alloy WQ'd with a deep HP is great on varmints or vermin where massive expansion and minimal penetration is needed.

Start of using a 311041 Lyman HP back in the late '60s, early '70s cast of COWW AC bullets on deer out of a 30-30 and .308W. Did not get satisfactory results. Went to a shorter HP stem and more malleable alloy and got the results on bigger game i was looking for.