odd the fibrous filler talk.
can't wait for Ian's reaction to the link I sent him earlier today about one.
might smell nice too. :lol:
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odd the fibrous filler talk.
can't wait for Ian's reaction to the link I sent him earlier today about one.
might smell nice too. :lol:
Thank you so much for your advice guys... it saved waiting for a shipment of Sodium Stearate to show up.... We have a ballistics lab the local university uses for forensic training... I'll subject 10 rounds in a freezer for 1.25 hours, 10 in a fridge for 12 hours, 10 at room temperature and 10 with a raised temp up to 120° to see how things pan out.
Should I use a vice grip to secure my hand gun? I figure it might cut down some bias. I hope I know what I'm doing :-/
Steve
remember we are looking at how the barrel is affected from residue left behind from each shot, as well as it's affect on the target.
You need the firearm that cold too, not just the ammo. The cold start issue is caused as much by residue in the barrel changing in cold weather as it is the cold ammo.
Actually, I think the barrel temp is more critical. Cold ammo in a cold barrel may give flyers but cold ammo in a warm barrel shoots just fine.
I think both the gun and ammo should be the same cold temperature like in a hunting situation to simulate cold weather. For hot they could start out at the same temperature with the gun getting slowly hotter like in a rifle match.
Both btroj and Doc Highwall are correct. I call it gun and ammo being temperature 'saturated'.
While we want our future 'Extreme' lube to handle anything and EVERYTHING it faces; it just can't be tested that way right off the bat. there are just to many variables to watch.... and watch closely. It's how we learn. Think of it like a big juicy steak in front of you with you starving..... You can't just shove the whole steak in your mouth! You have to take it a bite at a time!
Differential...... The temperature differential between ambient and your gun and shells is also important. I have settled on 25 degrees differential max after much testing. In other words, taking equipment from the house (in my case) outside you can get away with testing down to 45° temps max. (70° minus 25° = 45°) We talk about using the freezer..... Even with iron sights this is murder for any sort of uniforming! I have tried to test a 70° gun and ammo at -15°F below zero.... once! The 'heatwaves' coming off the gun made sight picture more a guess than a sure thing!
It's Best to have everything at the same temp to KNOW our lube formulation being tested can handle that 'bite of the steak'.
Eutectic
Ok, I'm so glad I read this before I left.... ummmm.... I'm really nervous about shooting a fridge temp firearm.... the instant heat from the gun powder might clash with the cold barrel and crack it right? How cold should I bring it? OH BY THE WAY, they have a high speed camera. :-D I bet that will help me measure how it appears exiting (though I don't know precisely what I'm looking for, I bet the trainer there will have good advice for their equipment)... I'm gonna find a recipe for ballistic jell because the institute wants to charge too much for theirs :-/ $50 per lily rectangle blob. I have about 4,000 .45 casings and boolits made with an HP MP mold. I bought 5lbs of beeswax yesterday. This is fun :-) I'm gonna run and get some jars to make various batches of lube to compare. I have a feeling I'll be going through a lot of cleaning patches.
oh man. I wonder if we should start writing letters to inform his next of kin of what is about to happen.
cold does have an affect on metal.
some steels really become brittle in the cold, -20 is really about the lowest point steel should be subjected to blunt force trauma.
Dear God... I said fridge temperatures. Not Eskimo exhaust pipe cuddling temps. I'm not taking my $1,500 baby and freezing it. And the purpose ballistic gel is to study how well a bullet would penetrate. I don't have a speed meter. The gel is easy to make.
Hey did anyone know you could call your local forestry service and ask when and where the next canal (or dam) is getting drained and they'll let you clean up all the lead sinkers from fishing. Apparently my doctor claimed he salvaged a couple tons of lead from it and the Forestry service is delighted because you're removing toxic waste. :-) News to me.
I don't think the forestry service knows that Nebraska exists!
That does it, no more elk hunting in 20 below weather
maybe if you take a tail pipe??
I have broken some high dollar metal hitting it in cold temps.
they wouldn't even let us rig up high presure iron in the oil field if was
below -20 because it could fracture the iron.
we could work in it, they just didn't want their metal harmed.
I wouldn't worry too much swheeler..... You notice Run said some steels are brittle at -20...
Run's 'blunt force trauma' was hard to fit into some info but I chose the Abrams tank! Ice cleat metallurgy in fact!
What we should be concerned with is the DBTT of the metal in question to understand the temp of its brittle transition stage. This is calculated using Charpy impact tests. "Ductile brittle transition temperature" is 'DBTT'.
There are some easy to read graphs for non metallurgical types even, on the ice cleat data I've attached. The 1030 carbon steel (30 points carbon make it just slightly tougher than plane ol' steel plate your welder uses.) note it does indeed have a DBTT of only -15°F. But the other two cleat choices are alloy steels (both are or have been used in gun manufacture) Note the DBTT is around -150°F! That's a little cool for even me to hunt elk!!!
One fly in the ointment here.... Stainless steel guns..... 416 martensitic stainless steel (or 416R) is a very common stainless steel for guns. IT IS COLD SENSITIVE !!!!! Here's a comment from the Bench Rest forum that sums it up pretty well:
416R doesn't handle extreme cold as well as 4140. It's ASTM test results for yield strength drop as the temp gets below zero F. If you are planning an artic hunt, 416R is a poor choice.
Stainless guns with fiberglass stocks scare me at 20 below!!!
The older I get the more 100 year old Winchester engineering impresses me! Some of you old guys may even remember when 'Nickel Steel' was their smokeless barrel steel. Well... looking at cryogenic alloys I found this. (In case you want to hunt Wooly Mammoth on Neptune at -300°F in the future! The best alloy is:
The only alloy steel recommended for cryogenic service is 9% nickel steel. It is satisfactory for service down to -195°C(-319°F)
Here's the Abrams tank cleat info....
Eutectic
http://www.sfsa.org/tutorials/ice_cleat/icleat_06.htm
At 20 below I get brittle. At 20 below Gear doesn't exist, he avoids anyplace where that might happen!
I don't shoot at temps that low and from what Eutectic has shown the lube issues are a totally unique set. What works fine at 20 may fail at -20.
Cold barrel testing is fine if done at temps below 50. 30 degrees or so is my ideal temp, I can shoot well in it and cold barrel flyers are common with many lubes.
My hat is off to Eutectic for his ability to even venture outdoors in that kind of weather.
I don't stop shivering until it's about 75F. Anything below freezing is too damn cold to do anything outside besides bring in more firewood. So, all of my guns are good-to-go except for that plastic stock on my 10-22 that turned into a noodle in the front seat of my truck a couple of years ago. Yeah, it gets hot here, but that's ok, we had about eight nights and two days below freezing all winter, I'm ok with that.
Gear
nickel steel is some good stuff, maybe that's why the old international harvester truck engines kept plugging along.
they just didn't get all bendy funny in the cold or the hot..
btroj, I use to be a truck driver (long haul, Owner Op, flat bed, 48 states) and every time I drive through your state I can't help but wonder with all the turned over trucks during windy days and winter, if knitting sweaters is considered a state sport, but it beats LA traffic any day ;-) In Utah, we suffer from weather battered syndrome.
Eutectic, I checked out ur link; very interesting, but it was discussing "impact" energy not rapid temperature change. The atoms in a solid (any solid, not just steel) arrange themselves so that they are as close together as possible at the temperature at which they are. The absence of heat will increase the distance between atoms. If the temperature changes, the atoms rearrange distance, but ALL remain an equal distance from each other, and if the temperature change is sufficiently slow the atoms can rearrange in an orderly manner. The rearrangement ripples through the solid at the speed of sound for that solid. This is because the speed of sound in a solid depends on the average distance between atoms and the speed at which they can move. Large and fast temperature changes make the atoms rearrange so fast that the other atoms in the solid can't keep up with the rearrangement, and so a crack occurs. So it takes both a large temperature change and a fast temperature change to make a solid crack. So with a -20 temp sold exposed to an instantaneous temperature increase from gun powder, what do you suppose is happening?
So does anyone give merit to the lead source I recommended? Or is that an age old source? My doctor said he was shocked at how much lead builds up at the bottom of those canals/dams.
-Steve
the bottom of dams and spillways will hold some serious amounts of lead.
i picked up more lead from the shorelines of 2 lakes last summer [as the water dropped] than i got off my local range.