bnh requirments

[bigted]

i have a question on bnh requirments for expansion on game animals, specifically grizzly bears. YES I LIVE IN INTERIOR ALASKA. the bears up here are wonderfull and fearsome as they have not the food supply that the coastal grizzly's do which means that they are in a foul mood most of the time and are looking for a scrap almost every second that they are awake.

my question is this

does the hardness of 21 seem like it will expand properly when going thru animal flesh and bone, and furthermore, will this hardness shatter and become useless when contacting some of the most terifying bones in this country?

any informative reply would be welcome as im fairly new to this cast...do-it-yourself boolit making.

[leftiye]

So I guess that makes me little Ted. I'm somehow guessing that you'll go for a jacketed bullet when going for bears. I probably would, even though I expect that the right cast boolit would be fine too. It's them "Terrifying bones" that will be the problem, and my guess is that almost any alloy of lead boolit would be prone to shatter if it hit a real heavy bone.

I was going to go into large caliber boolits (over .45 caliber) from pistols lacking the power to penetrate well and expand also in big game. Rifles are needed to get enough power to expand and penetrate too. But, if you make the boolit to expand, it will deform extremely, or shatter if it hits bone, so, I think the issue of expansion just evaproated. The bad news is that the harder alloys with a lot of antimony in them tend to shatter.

I have one exception to this. I've experimented with 10% tin and 1%copper alloy. This is the toughest lead alloy that I can imagine (most resistant to fragmentation). It runs about BHN 18. 2% antimony could be added to run the hardness up (the best percentage of antimony for malleability in lead tin antimony alloys), but only if you want it to NOT expand would you want to harden it any. The high tin percentage just about precludes heat treating.

[Boerrancher]

Softer is better. Anything harder than straight WW and you start to loose expansion and become brittle.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe