Super Hard Bullet Recipe

[Ian]

If you don't end up pushing things to failure (within safe pressure limits, of course), you aren't going to learn very much. If you're serious about shooting cast bullets, you need to experiment and learn when and why antimony is needed in the alloy, what tin does and does not do, the difference between ductile and malleable bullets and how they behave under different pressure curves, how to fit a bullet to a gun, how and when to manipulate pressure curves to your advantage, how to engineer a hunting load for specific game (if you hunt), how to read groups, how to choose a powder, how to orepare your brass and why/what matters, and a host of other things. Keep those things in mind when you sit at the loading bench and ponder your next experiment.

Powder coating has its own, unique set of guidelines to keep you out of trouble, but it will eliminate one of the most frustrating variables associated with cast bullets: lubricant!

 

[Mitty38]

In my Humble Amateurish Opinion.
I always looked at powder coat as just another form Bullet coating.
Each form has its advantages and disadvantages.
But PC it also seams to be a "skin" then a lube or jacket.
The skin helps hold things together so a little less hardness needed.
But a lube Coates the barrel letting things slide thru and not changing malability .
However I have had the skin"rip" where a jacket would not have. Yes I have leaded a gun with a powder coated bullet.
Lube will not rip, just smear. Pc does not "heal" lube will.
That poly skin can "rip" and cause issues. Especially, if you go too antimonial with an alloy, and it does not move enough to prevent separation of the skin. Or so my limited experience tells me.
Messing with hardness and alloys, along with deciding what to coat the bullet with. Along with the many other factors involved in sending a hunk of lead home. This all seams to be in par with the Juggler plate balancing act. When you get it all right it can be amazing, but just mess up one thing and it all crashes down.

 

[Ian]

Sizing a titch smaller than you normally would with plain cast bullets seems to be the ticket when using powder coated bullets. Keep them at least a thousandth larger than the groove diameter at the origin of the rifling and use a gas check and they won't lead....ever.

 

[fiver]

passion permits perfection.

 

[Bret4207]

IMO there are two fields of endeavor where you can spend a life time at it and just keep learning every day- cast bullets and bee keeping. Art and science. Every day it's something different, every gun, a change in the weather. I will never figure it out, I just know what doesn't work in the majority of guns because I've seen things fail repeatedly. The wins I get are just often enough to keep me interested. Some here have a good start on figuring out things, but they go in a direction I'm not real interested in. To each their own! There's no reason most of us can't find some combinations that work. Time! That's what most of us lack, plain old time!

 

[Rockydoc]

First, the bullet must fit the gun (could write a book on that one).

I wish you would!

 

[STIHL]

Time! That's what most of us lack, plain old time!

No truer words have ever been spoken!

 

[fiver]

i can guarantee once you start down the road of high speed, and little groups, you quickly realize you own far too many rifles.

 

[STIHL]

Well I’ve got 2 that I want to try out first, minus the 45-70 that’s still a work in progress, but some different than the 7mm or 30 cal stuff. But I am working with something. I did push those 405 gr 457-193 to 1900 so that is something to work from I think. I’ve got a few 30 cal molds and a couple 30 cal rifles to spare for the test, just have to decide on which one is the cast test dummy for a while.

As Bret stated time is my biggest issue. I’ve got a lot on the to do list, but only 1 ass and 2 hands. I need 2 of me! Then I could get something done.

 

[hrpenley]

Lots to be learned there if you think about it. The flow characteristics of the alloy can be manipulated by what you put in it, and also by the pressure curve of the powder you put behind it. Those two things working together is the definition of "dynamic fit", which occurs in the first inch or so of bullet travel and can make or break your groups.

well said

 

[Ian]

i can guarantee once you start down the road of high speed, and little groups, you quickly realize you own far too many rifles.

Yeah. After about a decade you finally just start powder coating everything, shooting at jacketed speeds, and settling for 1.5 MOA groups.

I wish you would!

Nobody would read it. F.W. Mann wrote The Bullet's Flight and Harold Vaughn wrote Rifle Accuracy Facts. Virtually anything I could write has already been covered by those two gentlemen and I'm surprised how few people have read either volume thoroughly and with understanding.

 

[hrpenley]

Depends on what you're doing with it. The parameters it will work depends on the specific gun, cartridge, load, etc. Put it in a 223 and try to blast chucks at 2500fps, probably not your best bet. In a 357, 44, 45 or 45-70, even a 35 Rem or 30-30, it can work great. And is it GC'd or PB? PC is alleged to help too, can't comment directly on that. The variables add up and determine what you can do with what you have and how you are using it. IOW, there's no right answer outside

That all makes a lot of sense.

Longer I’ve thought about it sounds like my best bet is to work off of what I’m already working with. I actually have hard data on this alloy I’m using and know what it has done so far so I should be able to modify it to gain some terminal performance without sacrificing all the toughness of the alloy I think . I don’t know what the mess is, but it is a very tough alloy.

If I get alloy that I can't figure out or is contaminated I pour it into shotgun slugs, Lyman shuttlecock type slugs are the most forgiving, you can have bad WW (zinc contamination) which you can very easily end up with buying lead off ebay - I know trust me.. Lee and svarog are a little less forgiving unless its a steel mold because you have to pour it hot to get a good fill-especially if its got zinc or anything else in it. With the primer shortage I have been doing a lot of clay and target shooting with the 12guage got lots of shotgun primers lol, since I am not using it for hunting I am not worried about the hardness for target and its just as much fun with 5x the destruction, at least once you get used to the kick of a 500g slug at 1500fps or better. I probably have made 10x as many shotgun shells these last 2 years as I have over a lifetime I don't think people appreciate the power and versatility of the shotgun, I know I didn't till now. Its hard to match that cannon inside 50 yards, a 223, 30cal can be deflected by a branch or even a twig but not a shotgun. If I had to choose only 1 gun I think it would be a shotgun and the damn thing will shoot anything you can fit in the hull. just my 0.25 cents (adjusted for biden-omics).

 

[Bret4207]

Yeah. After about a decade you finally just start powder coating everything, shooting at jacketed speeds, and settling for 1.5 MOA groups.


Nobody would read it. F.W. Mann wrote The Bullet's Flight and Harold Vaughn wrote Rifle Accuracy Facts. Virtually anything I could write has already been covered by those two gentlemen and I'm surprised how few people have read either volume thoroughly and with understanding.

I own copies of both, and my "Bullets Flight" has Harry Popes margin notes. Read both and can confidently say one reading will only just get you started and leave you with lots of questions. Maybe after the 5th or 6th reading it will start to click, but I'm none too bright to start with!

 

[RicinYakima]

As I worked on The Bullet's Flight off and on for ten years, I found answers, but you had to come up with the right questions. The question you have may not be directly linked to one of the experiments and answers. It is structured in typical 19th century format and hard to work through. Victorian writers thought it was great fun to make you puzzle you way through a book.

 

[hrpenley]

I’ve said it many times, it’s as much if an art as it is a science. We all learned this in one way or another and the absolute rule is none of us do it the same way, all we can do is bounce ideas off each other and make suggestions. It’s up to you, or in this case me, to make the determination of what to do based on the information given. I will make it or break it and it will all be my problems, either for not listening to sound advice or screwing up and pushing too hard. I thinking that’s a given for all of us at some point.

Think I’ll just keep on keeping on and go back to what I learned in the beginning and build on that. Size them to the gun and shoot and see what the paper and barrel says, the rest can be figured in small adjustments.

Before I deleted Facebook, I read so much BS on the loading pages. Cast questions came up pretty often, and the answers people would give would blow my mind. Had one guy shooting a 500 grain “HARDCAST” in 45-70 iirc and he was shooting it though 6-8-10 2x4s and was bragging about how it didn’t deform or anything. I made the comment if it doesn’t expand it’s not doing what it should. I may as well have kicked a hornets nest, I got schooled about Maximum penetrating power and shooting through and through 3-4-500 pound hogs, blah blah blah. Although I agree a .45x hole through anything and the hydrostatic shock associated with it is going to be (or at least should be)deadly, but imagine if that bullet would expand just a little to like 750 then it would have been something even better in my opinion. Anyway this guy knew it all and that was the end of that. Shortly after that I became tired of That place and decided I needed to remove it from my life. Best thing I ever did.

Point being there is always someone who thinks he knows it all and then there are the ones who do know massive amounts of information. I’d rather be listening to the ones that do. From my experience those lessons of learning come from failures associated with doing something and not giving up. There are few left in the world willing to put the effort into achieving something where you get defeated as much as you succeed.

I completely understand casting for penetration, there are a couple of us that go out to a buddy's - he lives in the middle of nowhere, got a nice piece of property and a backdrop of a few miles of woods. We do a lot of "testing" me and 2 others in the group cast and reload and the rest buy or shoot ours - we keep the brass so its fair. We cast to see how far we can shoot through logs, rows of milk jugs, refrigerators, stoves even had a junked car (.450BM and a .50 Beo will do amazing things to an engine block) We compete for penetration - which you want minimum deformation for sure, we machine inserts, turn copper slugs on the lathe, we also go for expansion to see who can make the biggest hole on exit - both thin and thick media, accuracy and just who can make the biggest mess of whatever particular objects we can get our hands on, steel plate, lead disks, aluminum blocks and plates but would never give someone a lecture on how it should be done. That's just respect, it's amazing what you can do with lead,copper,steel,titanium and a few other metals we scrounge or buy from mcmaster and access to a decent lathe. I never knew how hard it was to plant an machined inset in a chunk of lead and keep it on target. Took months or trial and error and lost count of the outrageous jigs we built to make it work. Art and Science is the only way to label it. I guess thats what you do when you live where the most exciting thing is keeping the raccoons out of your trash and weekend events consist of corn festivles and library book sales..

 

[Ian]

As I worked on The Bullet's Flight off and on for ten years, I found answers, but you had to come up with the right questions. The question you have may not be directly linked to one of the experiments and answers. It is structured in typical 19th century format and hard to work through. Victorian writers thought it was great fun to make you puzzle you way through a book.

LoL! Yes, TBF is a little like wading through Wuthering Heights, but there's a tremendous amount of information there even if it's based on gunpowder and binary alloy. Some of the formulae he worked out are priceless if you want to do specific calculations, for example rifling twist forces translated to PSI, as a second derivative.

Vaughn was an egotistical fellow but he had every right to be as he did the work (most of which was unique in theory, scope, and inquiry) in excruciating detail and at great labor and expense.

 

[fiver]

man HR., i'd probably be burning out the barrel on my 220 swift.
speed kills things that even armor piercing bullets won't go through.

 

[RicinYakima]

Vaughn;

He volunteered for the Army Air Corps Reserve (the beginning of the US Air Force) in June, 1942, and reported for duty in February, 1943. He flew 100 combat missions in P-47’s and P-51 ‘s from bases in New Guinea, Morotai, the Philippines, China, and Okinawa and was awarded the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf clusters and seven battle stars during his tour of duty. Colonel Charles Lindbergh flew several missions with Harold’s squadron as a civilian technical consultant to demonstrate how to obtain more aircraft range with optimum throttle and propeller speed settings. Harold returned to civilian life in January, I 946, and to Amarillo Junior College to finish the last semester of his sophomore year in engineering. During the summer of 1946, he entered the University of Colorado and received a BS in aerodynamics in 1948 and a MS in aerodynamics in 1949. He worked at the NACA (now NASA) Ames Research Laboratory, Moffett Field, California, from September 1949 to September 1951, where he conducted research on the aerodynamics of swept wings. In September 1951 he joined Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico as a staff member in the Aerodynamics Department. He was promoted to Supervisor, Aeroballistics Division in July 1959, a position he held until his retirement from Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) in 1986. This division provided the flight dynamics and the aerodynamic research and development and design for nuclear weapons.

Ego well earned.

 

[Bret4207]

I enjoy "TBF" for the lengths he went to to try and find answers. Mann made his fortune, as it were, by designing a bone pulverizer/grinder/cracker, whatever you want to call it. It was used to crush livestock bones into bone meal for use as fertilizer. In those days, there were people who made a living collecting bones from every farm, city, etc just for this use. There was one of his crushers listed in a local auction some years back and I was going to go an bid on it just for the novelties sake. Something prevented me from going, for all I know the thing went to scrap. Shame.

I didn't find Vaughn that hard to read compared to Mann, but I found my own notions kept me from seeing some of his ideas as the only answer. He's probably right, but it's hard sometimes to let go of what you believe. As I said, maybe by the 5th or 6th reading it'll start to click. Ackley was clearer and I think in that era Phil Sharpe was about the clearest of the well known writers in that line.

 

[fiver]

Mann was like reading the translated from Chinese directions to building something big.
after a while you anticipated where they were going, and the wording started making sense,, but you better not lose that little wrench they sent with the boxes of parts.