Ness safety bullet hg #38

[Recycled bullet]

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Has anybody here cast loaded and shot the ness safety bullet?

Did you use a gas check or a plain based design?

What kind of guns did you shoot it out of, and did it feed well? Does it feed from magazine and does it fit the barrel throat without choking up and jamming?

What type of lead did you use, did you powder coat or lubricize or tumble Lube, did you shoot targets, water jugs or varmint animals?

What kind of performance did you get?

Any kind of information that y'all can share I really appreciate it.

[Elpatoloco]

Tagged. Just so I can find it again. I am wanting some "soup can" guidance.

[Recycled bullet]

What excites me about this mold is that install the Flat Point pin and it's 170 grain soup can, install the hollow point pins and its a150 grain varmint grenade. I want to feed this to my Remington model 7 308 Winchester.

[Forrest r]

Never cast any with a solid nose. The hp version has never been known for it's accuracy due to the hollow nose slumping/deforming during flight. When pushed over 1800fps it was hard to keep groups under 4" @ 100yds in a couple of different rifles and a bunch of different test loads.

I have a August 1936 American rifleman magazine. In it on page 12 as an article about the Ness bullet. It's called "Sure kills and no ricochets" by F. C. Ness. I've scanned the article (3 pages) in pfd format. Interesting reading.

[Recycled bullet]

Never cast any with a solid nose. The hp version has never been known for it's accuracy due to the hollow nose slumping/deforming during flight. When pushed over 1800fps it was hard to keep groups under 4" @ 100yds in a couple of different rifles and a bunch of different test loads.

I have a August 1936 American rifleman magazine. In it on page 12 as an article about the Ness bullet. It's called "Sure kills and no ricochets" by F. C. Ness. I've scanned the article (3 pages) in pfd format. Interesting reading.Could you please share the PDF?

[barrabruce]

I have the plain based version.
Gave some to a friend and they tested them out on pigs at 1050fps. at 50 yrds aprox they went in a bit then the nose fractured off in bits making a mess of the internals.
Said they were quite effective but not real accurate.
For some god unknown reason the powder coated them and tried them in a marlin lever action sized to 308.
Still worth knowing
I want to test them out myself one day on game.
I believe you need a brittle alloy for best results.

A pdf of that article would be great.
I lost all the 3 sources of information I had on it in a computer crash and it appears the interweb has turned it all into unfindable vapours.

[Forrest r]

Could you please share the PDF?

I don't know how to post a pfd document???

If someone could help me with the process I gladly would post the article. Right now the only thing I could do is email it to people if they send their email adress

[longbow]

I would appreaciate a copy of the article! I will PM my email address to you.

My understanding of the Ness safety bullet was that it was developed for varmint shooting in areas where ricochets might carry the bullet too far in rural areas. The bullet was supposed to be cast brittle so it would disintigrate when it hit a critter or the ground and it became unstable at around 600 yards IIRC so would start to tumble limiting range.

It is an interesting design and had some thought put into it.

Longbow

[Recycled bullet]

I don't know how to post a pfd document???

If someone could help me with the process I gladly would post the article. Right now the only thing I could do is email it to people if they send their email adressI would really like a copy of the PDF document. I will PM you my email address. I may be able to screenshot the PDF document and post it so that other people can see the article. The total amount of information on this obscure bullet design is very small and every little bit helps.

[barrabruce]

Thanks for the pdf much appreciated.

[longbow]

Thank you as well Forrest r!

Also, I found that I had that article and a couple of other articles on my old back up hard drive! All are in .jpg format so easy to put on Postimages. Links to all below:

https://i.postimg.cc/K8jj3SvW/1-AR.jpg (https://postimg.cc/qNf4WFKc)
https://i.postimg.cc/brLYd3X8/2-AR2.jpg (https://postimg.cc/fStQr7Tg)
https://i.postimg.cc/gjGkY1TN/3-AR3.jpg (https://postimg.cc/tZmHkvyx)
https://i.postimg.cc/YSmS86Ff/4-Dope-bag.jpg (https://postimg.cc/Y4MkCmbh)
https://i.postimg.cc/vZKBWq4Z/5-Dope-bag-2.jpg (https://postimg.cc/v4Wbyv7J)
https://i.postimg.cc/85RzgTt7/6-Dope-bag-3.jpg (https://postimg.cc/CBKgjpy0)
https://i.postimg.cc/hjWtYXbF/7-GP.jpg (https://postimg.cc/Mc5wMKFt)
https://i.postimg.cc/zDkGdXyM/8-GP2.jpg (https://postimg.cc/14fSXScc)
https://i.postimg.cc/5N7NV7qS/9-GP3.jpg (https://postimg.cc/56zM5mrX)
https://i.postimg.cc/QxxxvG5M/Ness-Safety-Slug.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

This was all downloaded during the group buy discussion as one of the posters (georgewxxx IIRC) had a website with the info on it so credit goes to him!

Longbow

[Recycled bullet]

Thank you longbow for sharing that!!!

[M-Tecs]

interesting read here https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?383057-HG-38-Ness-Safety-Bullet

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?367475-Ness-Safety-Bullet-(H-amp-G-38)

https://hensleygibbs.com/casting/Hensley%20&%20Gibbs%20Mould%20List.htm
#38 - .30 Caliber. Ness Safety Bullet. Gas check base, two round grease grooves, no crimp groove, long straight parallel-full-length nose. Very large hollow point, which tapers to within .100" of base of bullet. Designed to reduce ricochets. "See June 1935 and August 1936 issues of American Rifleman" "See Young (P.A.). September, 1941.

https://www.mp-molds.com/product/hg-38-ness-safety-bullet-multi-choice/

https://www.mp-molds.com/tipstricks/mp-molds-and-me-by-gregor-hodnik/

[magnumuser]

strange... they say an upside down wadcutter is not going to stabilize very well, i guess you just need rifle velocity..

Be fun in a 45-70 loaded to ruger only load level.

[Recycled bullet]

The article was stating 7 to 10% antimony content in order to gain the explosive function. Interestingly they stated there was attempts made at exploding bullets using Dynamite or nitroglycerin but they discontinued or declined testing due to safety concerns.

[longbow]

That bullet was purpose designed for use in "settled areas" both to avoid ricochets and to have limited maximum range. As per the articles, it was developed for short range varming shooting. The wadcutter design gives a poor BC and I believe I read somewhere that the Ness bullet becomes unstable past practical shooting distance so it tumbles and sheds velocity even faster so very limited max. range. The brittle alloy was both for explosive effect and to avoid ricochets.

I have only used my clone for close range shooting and using ACWW. It worked well. Not sure how it would behave at higher velocities and if cast of say Lyman #2 alloy. I don't recall reading any posts describing that after the group buy. It certainly wouldn't hurt to try but it wasn't meant as a big game bullet or long range bullet.

Longbow

[Recycled bullet]

Thank you forrestr for the email.

[Recycled bullet]

OK guys i have a 2 cavity mold and rotometals super hard incoming.

[magnumuser]

not for squirrel hunting, or turkey hunting. But cast as a solid, it could make a good bowling pin round

[barrabruce]

321278
Two groups large pin
321279
Penta point casts and shoots easier, for me
321280
Big hp at 100 tipping.
Sort of groups I was getting with the bullet.
You can see them unstable but the nose was undersized for this barrel.
I have experimented tapping a cone into the hollow point to bump up so the nose engraves the rifling somewhat.
Still much to be done with it.
I’m sure others do much better.
Ohh due to my lack of good cast bullets the groups lack some numbers.
May dust it off again after the summer cools off a bit.

[Gamsek]

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I did not shoot it much since I have to single load it in my Ruger Ranch American .300 BLK. I shoot solid version no GC, 170grs accurate at 1400 fps, HP also flew straight but never did some serious testing past 50m. Have more photos in my old phone….

So, posting just some photos :)

[Recycled bullet]

Well that was fast to arrive!!!!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20231226/52de23d7e1650d55e84ceec3819d2e5a.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20231226/0e0b8f7522559a286ab1048636c6e114.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20231226/69f8ffbd2e3d63d1f17e75923863c5a5.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20231226/b7a399a8f93743774320e6a69d4b8c57.jpg

[barrabruce]

Good onyu!
Well let’s see what you come up with
:popcorn:

[Recycled bullet]

So I fired up the pot and cast some bullets...https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240106/8f9921cd0dad921752764055d9d60ae9.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240106/1a8427504aa803a5057b6bffcf293802.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240106/ac54664d80cbd8af1218caff01135f65.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240106/ec3917cbfc7c5d7721932cfadc0ee2c6.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240106/2b67deb69029fe042e0fb3374f5f2106.jpg

[barrabruce]

Excellent
I like your/ pot burner setup. I bet you can keep the pins well and hot with that.
Champion
What alloy?

[Recycled bullet]

Excellent
I like your/ pot burner setup. I bet you can keep the pins well and hot with that.
Champion
What alloy?It's very soft 1.5%/ 1.5%/97%