My bullets have flashing....

"maybe" my best was a bruiser hit on the way to work.Old straight six fowd 300 shop truck.

Once past the oh chit moment,getting out of the pos....look.Dangit,he hit my radiator dead bloomin center with an antler.Cpl broken bits of plastic grill and coolant spewing out dead center....doh.

Not only made it the jobsite,but several days to a junkyard to get the replacement.

"Rats"..?..I'm passed out on the couch a few months ago.

I get awoken by this crunchy crunch sound?It's too early for mice?It's a dang buck chewing on the ivy growing up the Fr on the house!Get up,figuring it out...sneak over to the open window and SHOUT....

He barely moves...kinda just moves off to chew on the bxwds...doh.

IAN
If you have any issues of the CBA Fouling Shot, Issue 87, page 13 article on split bullets

rifle or handloader had an article on it some time back also.
a quick googlage should turn it up.

Shoot those puppies and post some pics.
Low noise, low recoil, cheap on powder...and expansion? Lots to like right there.

I read the Handloader article, seems like ten or more years ago, and I've seen the split tip thing pop up quite a few place so for sure it's nothing new, but the idea of placing the foil behind the tip of a spitzer-type nose was what I wanted to explore. The AR-15 chambered in 300 Blackout has special needs which are contrary to every normal thing we'd do to try to get good, low-velocity expansion, hopefully this is a solution. Will report as soon as I can, might coat one in BLL and shoot it through my .308 just to see what happens.

Still open to ideas for a test medium. The primary purpose for me is pigs and maybe deer, though with deer and sub-sonic .30 caliber I maintain the best thing is to blow their minds for DRT, but still it would be nice to have the boiler-room option.

One thing I can report for sure is even 12.5 bhn ACE 235 bullets poke pencil holes right through the skull of Mr. Piggy with no expansion, tried that one from several angles on a "volunteer". Even one shot through the spine at the base of the neck just went right on through with 30-caliber exit hole in the hide on opposite side after shattering vertebrae. Miss by an inch and piggy runs away.

You need .005" aluminum, cut it with a paper cutter and punch holes in it where the alignment pins are. Drop the AL plate on the male pins, close mold, pour. Keep your AL plates on a hot plate.

the problem here is the more restrictions you place on the boolit the more specialized the application becomes.
speed, nose shape, and alloy are about all you have to work with.
the nose shape is fixed for feeding, and speed is fixed to a more narrow window.
which leaves alloy to do the dirty work.
it has to be enough to endure the first issue, but not too much to be terminal when it gets there.

Ian said:

Still open to ideas for a test medium.

Click to expand...

Gelatin with bone made in just below the surface. Got a couple doe skulls could send them your way. Proly some smallish shoulder bones I could toss in or ribs if'in you want. They've been mother nature cleaned. Was going to shoot hollow points at them eventually.

If you know a butcher you might could get some just expired tenderloin or something free to see what they do in muscle. Trim tied in a panty ho, I dunno.

From the,"way back files"....

We did cadaver testing on Ghogs back in the 70's.I'd shoot hogs with a 722,.222...

Then we'd prop'm up,and test HP wheelgun ammo at them.Think,super vel. corp.

To say underwhelming is an understatement.I jacked them with pretty much everything.SBH's loaded with everything we could think up?Just did not get the expansion....just sayin.

All of which,reinforced cast 429421's running at obscene velocities as having better"performance".You get the hardcore smack of a sharp meplat.....then the following wound channel...more damage.

Ian said:

I read the Handloader article, seems like ten or more years ago, and I've seen the split tip thing pop up quite a few place so for sure it's nothing new, but the idea of placing the foil behind the tip of a spitzer-type nose was what I wanted to explore.

Click to expand...

Ian, I somehow did not catch the tip being split BEHIND the nose. That is interesting and I might try that here with subsonic loads. I am very interested in what you learn, please share.

The medium for catching and evaluating bullets... simulating game tissue... has been beat to death in discussions/arguments and there are many opinions. I have done extensive testing using wet newspapers and that seems as good as any to me, at least it is consistent and permits relative evaluation. Draping it with carpet or innertube to simulate hide seems smart for tender nosed bullets. Putting a barrier of masonite or thin plywood seems reasonable to simulate shoulder or deer ribs. I think that shots on actual deer never provide exactly the same results twice owing to many factors.

You bring up a lot of good points, Chris. Yeah, the intact bullet TIP is the whole key to not destroying a suppressor with 7-twist rifling. Also it is supposed to help the point survive the feed ramps. Dang it I forgot to bring home an old mudflap from the mudflap graveyard at work to simulate hide. I do have carpet scraps around here somewhere. Newspaper I'm always lacking, local rag isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Endless supply of junk mail and thick catalogs from work, but those have a lot of glossy pages in them and that's no good for this kind of testing. I'll get it sorted out.

Got my powder coating stuff back a few minutes ago, so I'm rearin' to go as soon as I can sneak a few minutes to do some tests.

Well you may have created a new hunting cast bullet universe to explore. Conventional expansion techniques: hollowpoints, large meplat, two-piece softnose, alloy toughness vs. velocity. What happens if you take a great hunting bullet like 3589 or 311041, etc., and split the nose a ways back from the tip? Now what alloys and at what speed does this work? Think about it. If it works at all then we should all be experimenting with this.

I hate to ask this but have you tried to chamber one of your nose beagled boolits yet?

Oh yes. I used Reynold's non-stick since there was some handy and saved a trip to the kitchen, it's really really thin. Oddly, I cannot measure any thickness increase to the nose at all, which is actually a disappointment as the noses are too damned small even when powder coated. I may use thicker foil in the future if this shows any promise. They shoot 2 MOA or better out of everything I've tried them in, and about 3/4 MOA out of my .308 once I switched to WLP primers from CCI 200, so I'm not sweating the undersized noses too much and they NEVER jam my ARs even running suppressed, dry, and super-filthy.

Ian,
How do you add that strip of foil in the mould? Is it a precise positioning or just potluck?
Can't wait to see your test!
As for media I have found if you fill up about 6 empty boxes of wine that have been refilled with water that is a pretty good test. ( Of course don't drink them all at once)
In my experience the Crumb rubber mulch makes the shot bullets look like they are un-shot except for the rifling marks...very good as a decellerant
Jim

Well, I did some tests but was unable to stop the bullets or find them. My initial conclusion is the split nose is going to need some help.

Not having any newspaper, I took a piece of house carpet and about 80 pieces of cardboard that had been soaking in a bucket all day and stacked those together. the bullet was through and through and lost in the earth embankment. Exit hole in the last piece of cardboard showed that some part of the bullet had expanded maybe to .35 caliber, but that was it. Bullet did not yaw or come apart through a 10" bale of wet cardboard wired together.

Round two was the same, but with a hotel curtain folded up for about 64 layers of rubberized cloth behind the cardboard and carpet, same results and didn't find the bullet even after digging six inches into the embankment.

Third test was with carpet, cardboard, a 5-gallon bucket of crumb rubber mulch, and a wet bag of blasting sand. Bullet went right through it all and more than several inches into the damp caliche beneath, never did find it. Hope it didn't hurt a Chinese!

So back to the shop I went and did some smash tests. First one was with a 2# hammer, medium swing. Bullet made a coin instantly, but the nose only split apart a little bit. So I took a plastic deadblow mallet and used lighter taps on another one, getting the nose to split but the point rolled over. I did a few more and they all made J-bends and only split a little at the foil.

Now for the even more disappointing part. Right out of the oven, sized, and loaded, these bullets tested off the Lee scale at probably 7.5 BHN. The air cooled culls cast a few days ago were almost 9 BHN. So if a 7.5 BHN spitzer won't expand at 960 fps even with a split behind the point, I have my doubts a 12. 5 BHN fully-cured bullet will. I'm not sure where to go next.

Well, hmmm...guess you now have the perfect excuse.

See honey, they won't expand no matter what. We really must send this mold to Erik for hollow pointing. It's for the wildlife, think of the wildlife..they want controlled consistent expansion. Deer love inset bar conversions, just love'em.

Better test medium is proly the only hope, unless you act on the hp suggestions.

The problem with HPs is that to get one to feed in an AR-15, it has to be small. Small hollow point cavities, or ones with small entrances, don't expand very well either at low velocity. Already been through that with the MP hollow points, they need to be "started" with a tapered punch before shooting soft stuff or the points just crumple in and make a round nose.

an initiator tip would help.
moving the foil all the way forward would help too.