Round Nose Bullet Expansion?

[RangerBob]

I have been playing with a 400gr RNHB bullet in my .458WM. This bullet is designed for BP, has wide lube grooves, a hollow base, and a very blunt round nose. It does not like to be driven too fast.

I have had some success (accuracy) with 2400 and 5744. Over the weekend I shot a <1" group at 50yds with this bullet and 5744 (about 1500fps). Next weekend I will probably try the same load at 100yds.

Anyway, I recovered one bullet from the backstop (damp earth) and found that the nose of the bullet had mushroomed so wide, that the mushroom sheared and the base of the bullet shot through for additional penetration. This seems like nearly ideal bullet performance for hunting deer.

Question: do you think that a 400gr RN bullet, cast of air cooled wheel weights, driven to 1500fps will expand on deer. Any experience here?

I have some cast bullet experience on deer, but it's all with FP bullets and I didn't care if I got expansion.

Thanks for any comments,

Bob.

[Bret4207]

Damp earth is much more resistant than flesh. The expansion dynamics are way different. That being said, yes, I imagine that load would KO any deer on earth given proper shot placement, and no, I don't think ACWW will expand much. There just isn't much to a deer when you come down to brass tacks. Try straight WW or WW cut with pure lead. Your "very blunt round nose" will be more likely to expand is cast quite soft, although if blunt enough it will do it's own work ala 311440, 358009. Air cooling of WW, IMHO, is needed more for handling a particular barrel than for wound creation. You can also try hollow pointing some boolits with a Foster tool or similar set up.

[versifier]

If you drill a 1/2" hole through the boiler room, I don't think it makes a bit of difference if it expands or not. For .30 cal (or smaller) I think you need to see some expansion, and maybe some for .35 cal, too. Anything bigger, if the nose is flat enough to deliver adequate shock it should be enough. (Not that a little expansion in your .45 's would hurt anything, it just becomes less and less critical as your bore diameter increases.) As an example, when I shoot .50 & .54 cal slugs out of my m/l's, I don't worry about expansion, only shot placement. Cast of soft lead, they do expand some, but all the expansion in the world won't make up for a poor shot.

[Bucks Owin]

I'm not sure how good a test medium it is, but I use packed oil wetted sawdust to check expansion. (Old crankcase oil) I got the idea from an old issue of Amer Rifleman that suggested it's use. I know it seems to stop a boolit in a hurry, especially if there's a couple ziplock bags of water to penetrate first....

Pretty hard to tell anything from bullets fired into dirt...

Dennis

[Dale53]

Lyman's 457125, a 522 gr Round Nose, does NOT work well on deer when cast of WW's and shot at about 1350. They just pencil through and do NOT make a 1/2" hole through the deer. Conversely, cast of 30-1 or even better 40-1 (lead-tin) and driven at black powder velocities it does well.

Even tho' we are discussing a .45 caliber bullet, they still benefit mightily from a good flat meplat.

FWIW
Dale53

[Beau Cassidy]

I have plugged one deer with an AC WW bullet from a Saeco mold (317?) at 1820 FPS or so from my .450 that will attest they will expand and completely penetrate.

Beau

[Bass Ackward]

Question: do you think that a 400gr RN bullet, cast of air cooled wheel weights, driven to 1500fps will expand on deer. Any experience here?

Bob.


Bob,

The correct question is not if it a round nose made out of ACWW will expand? But will it expand each and every time?

It is difficult to guarantee expansion with cast 100% of the time under the best of circumstances, and that is why meplats proliferate.

I would have to say no here. Not because it wouldn't, but because it might not. And that just doesn't justify the risk. IMO.

[RangerBob]

My cast bullet deer hunting is limited. I started with the RCBS 500grFPGC cast out of lynotype. I thought that the moderate flat point would work well enough.

After following two deer 250-400yds, I began to look for other options (a third deer dropped at the shot but kicked and yelled for two minutes).

Last year I tried an LBT 375grFPGC. This bullet has a much larger meplat and is cast softer than lynotype. I have only shot one deer with this bullet and had excellet results, however, the shot was near the spine. I think nearly any .458 bullet would have done well with the same placement.

I have some of the 500gr RCBS bullets that we cast with 180gr of pure lead in the nose. I would like to try one of these on deer, but haven't had the chance.

I would try a soft nose on the 400grRNHB, but it's a nose pour mold. I don't really know how to make those into a soft point. Since this appears to be a fairly accurate bullet, I was hoping to find a way to hunt with it.

Any ideas?

[Bret4207]

Is the nose "blunt" enough to perform like a FN? If so it should work, especially if you aim to break the shoulders. If not then you'll either have to HP with soft lead and hope it expands a bit, or go to a different design. A 400-500 gr boolit is not going to stop on most shots on deer. Anything less than complete penetration would suprise me. So taking adequite penetration out of the mix you just need to worry about the wound channel. If there's no metplat/flat nose/cutting edge to the boolit design then you may be in for a disappointment, ie- penciling through with no big wound to speak of. Regardless of how accurate the boolit, it's no good for game if it is an inhumane killer. Hollow pointing is an option.

Why not stick with the 375 gr LBT?

[Bass Ackward]

Last year I tried an LBT 375grFPGC. This bullet has a much larger meplat and is cast softer than lynotype. I have only shot one deer with this bullet and had excellet results, however, the shot was near the spine. I think nearly any .458 bullet would have done well with the same placement.



Bob,

OK. I give up. What happened to the 375 grain LBT RNFP?

At the velocities you are talking, ACWW would be like an armor piecer.

Glad you wrote about your .... less than desireable experience. It mirrors mine with hard bullets in 45 caliber when I bought into the hard / wide theory. Because you can have too much shock that bleeding and death are delayed if a vital is not struck. I even had a heart shot that went a little over 200 yards. So I upped velocity and produced 4" holes in deer that went that far too. That is the one I found. I lost one that had a 3ft ice cream cone shape of hair on the off side but never produced a single drop of blood until I lost it at about 500 yards.

Not any more. Many people wouldn't belive that possible with a 45 caliber size hole. It shows that you still have to be responsible just because you have a 45 caliber.

Once you discover softer lead, your hunting enjoyment and success are going to improve considerably.

[Leftoverdj]

You can bump a meplat on a RN bullet with very little loss of accuracy if the HB ain't too big. Just use the pedestal from a Lee pushthrough to run the bullet up into a .45 ACP sizer with a flat nose punch installed. If the die and nose punch is free of lube, the bullet will come back down with the ram. A little practice will tell you how much pressure is needed. If you are fussier than I am, you can rig a stop or add an appropriate amount of weight to the press handle.

I've also hollowpointed in a lathe with a center drill. Again, the loss of accuracy was minimal.

Can't help you with game results since I am much more of a shooter and tinkerer than a hunter.

[45 2.1]

Paper patched pure lead 45 rifle slugs work better than you would believe.

[Bucks Owin]

Is the nose "blunt" enough to perform like a FN? If so it should work, especially if you aim to break the shoulders. If not then you'll either have to HP with soft lead and hope it expands a bit, or go to a different design. A 400-500 gr boolit is not going to stop on most shots on deer. Anything less than complete penetration would suprise me. So taking adequite penetration out of the mix you just need to worry about the wound channel. If there's no metplat/flat nose/cutting edge to the boolit design then you may be in for a disappointment, ie- penciling through with no big wound to speak of. Regardless of how accurate the boolit, it's no good for game if it is an inhumane killer. Hollow pointing is an option.

Why not stick with the 375 gr LBT?

If one owns a Forster case trimmer (or wanted to do a little "tweaking" of pilot dia) you could use a Forster "hollow pointer tool" on them....They come in 1/8" and 1/4"...

FWIW,

Dennis

[charger 1]

Does the permenant wound channel of a large me plat not do the work irregardless of hardness? I mean all that tissue damage of a WFN has to mean sumptin,dont it

[waksupi]

Using the Bator 250, 358009 clone, I have my doubts on wheter I am getting any expansion at all. I have killed deer, elk, and buffalo with it, with no problem. But, when mining my backstop last weekend, I was finding bullets that looked virtually unfired. I water drop the bullets to make the 1-12 barrel happy. My new one is 1-14, and I suspect I may be able to go to a softer bullet. However, expansion or not, I am getting very good wound channels. Fat, flat noses kill well.

[RangerBob]

The 375grFPGC is a gas check design and I don't own the mold. I have to purchase these bullets from Mt. Baldy. It's a great bullet, and I will probably buy more, but I would really like a mold that throws a PB bullet of the correct diameter, that is accurate and works well on game. Most of the lighter bullets don't like the throat (huge) and twist (1:14) in the .458WM. The HB of the 400gr bullet seems to fill the huge throat a little better than most.

I tried paper patching a couple year ago but didn't have much luck. I was patching lighter bullets and shooting them to about 1900-2100fps. Accuracy was pretty bad. I figured that I didn't need patching for 1500fps. I may try it again, not to increase speed, but to allow softer bullets.

I may try to put a meplat on the 400grRNHB. Is die swaging the best way? Is there any consistant way to file a meplat?

[Leftoverdj]

Is there any consistant way to file a meplat?

Sure, a casehardened tube the length you want the finished round to be. Polish the interior of a chunk of 1/2" pipe and constrict the bullet end about half an inch from the end with a pipecutter so the bullet is a slide fit, then case harden. Slide a cartridge up into the tube and file flush.

[Bass Ackward]

Using the Bator 250, 358009 clone, I have my doubts on wheter I am getting any expansion at all. I have killed deer, elk, and buffalo with it, with no problem. But, when mining my backstop last weekend, I was finding bullets that looked virtually unfired. I water drop the bullets to make the 1-12 barrel happy. My new one is 1-14, and I suspect I may be able to go to a softer bullet. However, expansion or not, I am getting very good wound channels. Fat, flat noses kill well.


Ric,

That is because you are running about the "perfect" size nose flat. Run a wide flat on a 45 at higher velocities and you leave traditional shock levels that move into what the military phrased as hydrostatic shock, and then adrenilin and other factors come in to play much more like a jacketed bullet. For deer, that is about .200 to .275 at rifle velocity levels. IMO.

But have no fear, you are about to be able to report on a comparrison. Of coarse, you stalk close. That is where the margin of error is widest because velocity is still fairly high. I am interested in your results and comments.

[waksupi]

Ric,

That is because you are running about the "perfect" size nose flat. Run a wide flat on a 45 at higher velocities and you leave traditional shock levels that move into what the military phrased as hydrostatic shock, and then adrenilin and other factors come in to play much more like a jacketed bullet. For deer, that is about .200 to .275 at rifle velocity levels. IMO.

But have no fear, you are about to be able to report on a comparrison. Of coarse, you stalk close. That is where the margin of error is widest because velocity is still fairly high. I am interested in your results and comments.

That is a consideration. I don't take long shots, and impact velocity is still pretty high. I have yet to kill anything with the bullet, at much over 75 yards, most much closer. Last years elk was with the Bator lite, at 237 gr., full penetration at a quartering shot. And this was also a good wound channel, for the entire length of the wound. Probably 3+ feet of penetration. I would think the ending channel would have been of less severity. I'll have to think it over. I'm still not fully awake for the day!

[RangerBob]

Mr. Ackward,

Are you saying that a meplat of .275 is the maximum I should use (assume 1400-1600fps)?

I have some Lyman bullets with a .275 meplat (300 & 350gr). I have an RCBS 500gr bullet with a .300 meplat. My 375gr bullet has a .375 meplat (ironic uh?).

I used the 500gr'r with the .300 meplat on three deer. The bullets were cast of Lynotype and driven to about 1500fps. The range was 60-80yds on all three deer. I was not impressed with the outcome. This load would have driven through 10 deer placed end-to-end, but the "splash" was a little lacking. Two of the deer made long runs (200+yds). Even more troubling was the lack of blood trail. I had a very difficult tracking job and was lucky to find the last one (very dead btw).

According to your numbers, was this meplat too BIG? I have read Veral Smith's theorys. Do you think I'm getting too much "splash" and therefore too much blood clotting?

Thanks for any imput.

Bob

[Bass Ackward]

Mr. Ackward,

Are you saying that a meplat of .275 is the maximum I should use (assume 1400-1600fps)?


Bob,

My own 45 caliber bullet design is a 50% mepper. That is a measly .229. I will admit that it could be a little bigger because a 45 bullet is harder to expand because of the bullet diameter. I need 1800 fps to make it perform and 2100 is about tops. It was really made for bigger, tougher stuff than deer as penetration is always in excess. And I have the option to hollow point it too.

Just try ACWW or softer and see if you aren't more satisfied with your results.

[Bret4207]

Just my 2 measly cents on some of the problems guys have. No one seems to try to break the shoulders on a deer anymore. Yeah, it takes a little more time to learn just where they are, but even a 45 round ball at muzzle loader velocity will break one or both the shoulders. A deer with 2 broken shoulders isn't going more than a few yards. In heavy brush it's a good shot. Regardless of metplat and velocity it will almost always get you your deer. Nothing is perfect. And, yes, you will lose some meat, but you'll not have a 200 yard tracking job.

[Glen]

Will an ACWW 400 grain cast RN bullet expand on deer at 1500 fps? I can't say for sure, but I can tell you that a very similar bullet at 1650 fps will expand beautifully on buffalo. Go to:

http://www.leverguns.com/articles/fryxell/old_rifles_old_friends.htm

for pictures of the recovered bullet and the story.