Target damage saga continues

[Ian]

Nuke welder, that's the problem. He probably does an XRF test and matches his rod to the plate material within two hundredths of a percent of nine separate elements. That's like hiring an EE to put new batteries in your TV remote.

 

[462]

Intetesting specs. I think many assume that the majority were draftees from poor backgrounds.

The media had an agenda and invented lies to support it. It's no different now.

 

[RicinYakima]

Intetesting specs. I think many assume that the majority were draftees from poor backgrounds.

Here is what happened, if drafted you would almost likely go to the Infantry, 11B MOS. If you enlisted two years unassigned you would mostly like go to 12 B, Combat Engineers, 13 B Artillery, or 14 B Armor. Infantry had a KIA rate of 14%, Engineers and Armor had a rate of 9% and Artillery 6%. By 1968 everyone knew the score.

 

[fiver]

your assumption on linotype would also be another old wives tale that doesn't pass the try it and see for yourself test.
think more like water dropped ww with 1% tin added alloy or a near lyman number-2 alloy or a 50-50 mix of the 2.
the key is to match the alloy to the design and help it along with your powder choice.

a simple easy 308 or 30-06 recipe is something like 34-36grs of I-4064 pick one of the above alloys, and a sturdy design, something simple and easy like oh heck the Ed Harris design, or a Loverign bullet and use the 5-5 type alloy or the 50-50 mix, throw them in some room temp water from the mold and focus on your casting cadence..
lino-type can be used as a control just to simply see the group size difference.
but that should get you under an inch no problem, and run in the 2400 fps zone from your average deer rifle.

 

[Ian]

So you are shooting plain lead bullets of some hardness at 2400 fps and above with no ill effects? Assume it is really hard alloy like linotype. I've never said I was an expert on this stuff. Always willing to learn more.

So what calibers, distances and group sizes do you get with your 2400+ fps plain cast bullet loads?

2400 was the low end for .30 caliber, that's about where the sweet spot was for my M1A. Several of us including Brad were bumping up near 2700 and holding multiple 5-shot groups around 1 MOA at 100 yards with bolt rifles. Walter was smacking some little steel gong at 500 yards off a bipod while laying prone in the bed of a pickup, I think his loads were in the 23-2400 fps arena. No powder coat, just the right bullet, (we all had our favorites and they weren't the same), the right alloy or therabouts, a good lube for the speed and temperature, and a real rifle powder that had a curve and peak that the alloy and bullet shape liked in the particular throat each rifle had.

Once I started fooling with powder coat and found out how it fit into the powder/alloy/fit equation and that it will easily equal store-bought ammunition in any rifle with even more ductile, deadly hunting alloy than bare bullets would permit, I lost interest in chasing itty bitty groups, bare bullets, or fooling around with bullet lube recipes for the ten thousandth time. I also shoot through suppressors most of the time and bare bullets are a no-go in those.

 

[richhodg66]

Throw an orange at a piece of sheetrock as hard as you can. Then throw a baseball at it as hard as you can.

So, a powder coated cast bullet is much harder than a a jacketed bullet as a baseball is to an orange? Seems all these powder coaters who swear by them for hunting are shooting game with FMJs then? I don't powder coat either, just can't understand how it makes a cast bullet harder than copper.

 

[300BLK]

Copper or copper and nickel are only the jacket just as baked on powder paint becomes the jacket. The core in most jacketed bullets is relatively soft compared to 15bhn and harder cast bullets. The paint is tenacious enough to stick to the core, and acts as an insulator between the core and rifling so there is no Pb/Sn/Sb transfer to the bore. While the "copper jacket" is designed to add strength to the core, the paint doesn't.

Back to what fiver was getting at, a relatively low Sb alloy will be far more malleable than linotype. Think of malleable as tough vs the brittle linotype. A water dropped low Sb alloy can be harder than linotype and still retain its malleability, and yes, those hard bullets will expand.

 

[RBHarter]

I run out of lube in the 222 . I don't foul barrels . My alloy is only about 18 bun and definitely not lino in the 222 . I'm very close with the 25-06 to the bottom of jacketed data and again I'm not using anything but a grease wax lube and what I hope will be an expandable alloy that stays in more or less one piece if I hit a bone .

It's not a simple 45 Colts 14 kpsi deal to do but I do so much match prep excess anyway that the little more to get where I want to go isn't all that far to go .

 

[Snakeoil]

but that should get you under an inch no problem, and run in the 2400 fps zone from your average deer rifle.

Interesting. Seems to run against all the urban legend stuff about fast cast bullets. Now, can you shoot say 40 of 50 rounds and maintain your accuracy? I'm still wondering about lead buildup. When I was actively shooting in action pistol events, we shot some very hot loads for pins and deleading the barrel was a regular practice. I don't remember getting huge amounts of lead, but it was there for sure.

This is a good conversation because one of the paths the club was considering was simply banning bullets. But if they can still be pushed that hard without any coating, then we accomplish nothing other than possibly addressing the target welding complaint from the club welder.

Appreciate the insight, guys. I've said this from the first day here that I'm truly a newbie to rifle shooting. I grew up a shotgunner and then moved to handguns. BPCR was my first foray into rifles in the 90's and BP brings with it, its own set of rules and limitations, not to mention home brewed theories and advice. A famous BPCR author shot with us and I'm sure many here would be familiar with his name and books. For all his years of shooting BPCR and all his experiments and theories on what works and what doesn't, the man never was able to hit 10 turkeys.

I'll be passing this along to the club hierarchy. Looks like it will just muddy the waters further.

 

[300BLK]

Paul Matthews was blind in the right eye, but shot right handed by craning his head over the stock. His shooting at his age, with his disability, was amazing. IIRC, he held the "open" long run record for pigs, and may still have it for seniors. I didn't know that he never was able to shoot 10 turkeys, but was present when some other guy shot 32 turkeys, and when Brian Chilson shot the perfect 40/40.

 

[popper]

When the targets gets too many 'ripples' just turn them around and 'pound' the ripples back flat.
PC isn't nearly as hard as a jacket. IMHO for soft alloy it handles the torque from grooves better than a lube. Just enough toughness to help.

 

[Bret4207]

You know, I was wondering about that. I know some of his other non-VN stories were a bit over the top. But never really thought much about his VN comments. So, after reading your comments, I did a little research on the USMC in VN and their use of helos. This is an excerpt from an article that I found. The article was titled, "The Marine Air War in Vietnam".

Helicopters played an extensive role in air operations in Vietnam, as Marine pilots flew CH-34s and later CH-46s and CH-53 Sea Stallions to transport Marines into landing zones near suspected enemy concentrations. They were also used to evacuate the wounded. Helicopters were also used to re-supply Marines in the field if landing strips were not available for use by C-130 transports. Other Marine pilots flew UH-1E Hueys and AH-1 Cobras. These choppers provided reconnaissance and armed air cover for combat air operations.

I would think that if the pilots were Marines then the crew would be Marines as well.

Absolutely. Based on stories told by older guys from when I was in the Corps, and I went in in '79, there were door gunners, it just wasn't an MOS or anything. I imagine it was whatever warm body was available...and good at it.

 

[fiver]

just gotta lead them a little...

yeah you can shoot them pretty much all day long. [if you can stand the recoil, i stopped where i did with many of my rifles because i wanted to be able to see straight]

it's no different than shooting jacketed bullets, the junk in the barrel isn't a problem, the heat is what gives you grief.
unless your tearing up your throat with lino-type.

 

[Ian]

That famous writer has been sent out of town on a rail numerous places by people who know how stuff really works.

Before switching mostly to PC bullets, I had many regularly-used rifles whose barrels hadn't seen a cleaning rod or a jacketed bullet in years...not all HV barnburners but several were for sure.

 

[Snakeoil]

Shared this today at "church" (Charlie's Gun Shop) with the guys from the club. Looks like we are back to limiting velocities.

And I wanted to address something Fiver had said in his "laughing" post. I normally prefer to ignore silly comments. But I since it was made in a very public forum, I need to say something. The picture you painted of Wilton as a bunch of old ladies drinking coffee and shooting wimpy loads just to hear the bullet go ping on the target could not be further from the truth. As I had mentioned before, this club started out as a BPCR club. As a matter of fact, we were amongst some of the first when BPCR was rediscovered and the boys at Wilton started figuring out some of the secrets that had been well known to guys like Pope and such but lost to time. The result was as an NRA Silhouette club, our shooters were ranked nationally and the scores from our monthly matches were turned into the NRA. As a result, the NRA took issue with the scores they were seeing and were suspicious that the shooters were padding their scores. The club was a bit put off by this insinuation and the result was the NRA sent a rep out to walk our range and witness one of our shoots. The NRA was of the opinion that it was not possible for our boys to be shooting the scores that were being submitted without bending the rules in some way if they were not simply lying on the scoresheets. Well, the NRA guy came out and he got a ringside seat to our monthly match and he saw for himself that the Wilton range was within NRA standards and the Wilton boys were shooting the scores that were being turned in with no skullduggery of any kind. And several Wilton shooters went to Raton on more than one occasion and showed those folks out west that we could shoot in the wind just like they did and we could win doing it. Dave Hicks is one of the boys from Wilton and he went on to shoot on the US team and has set several records and I believe some of them still stand.

So, my point is the tradition of shooting BPCR type velocities is deep at Wilton. At 71, I'm one of the youngsters in the club and we have all lost our appetite for the recoil from rifles like .45-70, .45-90, .50-90 and similar. Myself and a couple other shooter have floaters that are still attached to our retinas. Heavy recoil can cause the floater to actually tear the retina. That is not something you want to happen. Plus, we have also grown weary of the stink and work involved in cleaning up after shooting BPCR. So, we have dropped out of NRA matches and bent the rules to allow other types of vintage rifles, mostly military. Knock down targets have been converted to swingers because we can't get enough geezers out to reset targets after every relay. And we even went so far as to allow smokeless powder (which Charlie still maintains is a passing fad although he probably shoots more Unique than BP these days) as long as the bullets are lead and the velocities in the BPCR region. And if you think that is wimping out, then I'd suggest that you try to shoot a slow .30 caliber bullet at a 3 MOA target set at 500 yds in a changing wind that goes from nothing to 30 mph faster than the spotter can call it, along with eddies, mini-twisters and mirage all at the same time. We have had more than one new shooter come out and see us shooting off the bench with vintage scopes and think, "Hell, this is easy.". They show up the following week ready to kick some ass and normally leave with a serious dose of humility.

My shooting partner is 87. He has been a rifle shooter probably longer than I've been on the planet. He's shot bench rest and was on many Army teams over his military career. He still shoots F-class with a .308 and he wins his class on a regular basis. I'm talking out to 1000 yds. He has said on more than one occasion that Wilton is the best thing that ever happened to him. He has more fun shooting his 03A3 or .32-40 High Wall than anything he has done in years. Although, I'm not sure that includes his time as a skirmisher and on a cannon team that also won matches on a regular basis. If you think we are la-de-da shooters, you are more than welcome to come shoot with us some day. Bring any rifle you want. But use lead bullets and keep the velocity below 1600 fps and we'll see how you do.

Respectfully submitted.

 

[L Ross]

Shared this today at "church" (Charlie's Gun Shop) with the guys from the club. Looks like we are back to limiting velocities.

And I wanted to address something Fiver had said in his "laughing" post. I normally prefer to ignore silly comments. But I since it was made in a very public forum, I need to say something. The picture you painted of Wilton as a bunch of old ladies drinking coffee and shooting wimpy loads just to hear the bullet go ping on the target could not be further from the truth. As I had mentioned before, this club started out as a BPCR club. As a matter of fact, we were amongst some of the first when BPCR was rediscovered and the boys at Wilton started figuring out some of the secrets that had been well known to guys like Pope and such but lost to time. The result was as an NRA Silhouette club, our shooters were ranked nationally and the scores from our monthly matches were turned into the NRA. As a result, the NRA took issue with the scores they were seeing and were suspicious that the shooters were padding their scores. The club was a bit put off by this insinuation and the result was the NRA sent a rep out to walk our range and witness one of our shoots. The NRA was of the opinion that it was not possible for our boys to be shooting the scores that were being submitted without bending the rules in some way if they were not simply lying on the scoresheets. Well, the NRA guy came out and he got a ringside seat to our monthly match and he saw for himself that the Wilton range was within NRA standards and the Wilton boys were shooting the scores that were being turned in with no skullduggery of any kind. And several Wilton shooters went to Raton on more than one occasion and showed those folks out west that we could shoot in the wind just like they did and we could win doing it. Dave Hicks is one of the boys from Wilton and he went on to shoot on the US team and has set several records and I believe some of them still stand.

So, my point is the tradition of shooting BPCR type velocities is deep at Wilton. At 71, I'm one of the youngsters in the club and we have all lost our appetite for the recoil from rifles like .45-70, .45-90, .50-90 and similar. Myself and a couple other shooter have floaters that are still attached to our retinas. Heavy recoil can cause the floater to actually tear the retina. That is not something you want to happen. Plus, we have also grown weary of the stink and work involved in cleaning up after shooting BPCR. So, we have dropped out of NRA matches and bent the rules to allow other types of vintage rifles, mostly military. Knock down targets have been converted to swingers because we can't get enough geezers out to reset targets after every relay. And we even went so far as to allow smokeless powder (which Charlie still maintains is a passing fad although he probably shoots more Unique than BP these days) as long as the bullets are lead and the velocities in the BPCR region. And if you think that is wimping out, then I'd suggest that you try to shoot a slow .30 caliber bullet at a 3 MOA target set at 500 yds in a changing wind that goes from nothing to 30 mph faster than the spotter can call it, along with eddies, mini-twisters and mirage all at the same time. We have had more than one new shooter come out and see us shooting off the bench with vintage scopes and think, "Hell, this is easy.". They show up the following week ready to kick some ass and normally leave with a serious dose of humility.

My shooting partner is 87. He has been a rifle shooter probably longer than I've been on the planet. He's shot bench rest and was on many Army teams over his military career. He still shoots F-class with a .308 and he wins his class on a regular basis. I'm talking out to 1000 yds. He has said on more than one occasion that Wilton is the best thing that ever happened to him. He has more fun shooting his 03A3 or .32-40 High Wall than anything he has done in years. Although, I'm not sure that includes his time as a skirmisher and on a cannon team that also won matches on a regular basis. If you think we are la-de-da shooters, you are more than welcome to come shoot with us some day. Bring any rifle you want. But use lead bullets and keep the velocity below 1600 fps and we'll see how you do.

Respectfully submitted.

Funny how that has paralleled our experience at my Thorn Hollow range. BPCR, then military, then pretty much anything shooting cast as long as the MV is sub 1,800 fps. Did some BP buffalo rifle shooting getting prepped for a match up in Virginia, MN and was reminded of how much fun it can be, for about 30 shots a day.
When the .30 cal stuff gets too easy we shoot off hand.

 

[Ian]

Lots of people said we couldn't possibly be doing what we were doing at the speeds we were doing it, because they couldn't or it was just "common knowledge" that it wasn't possible. We been kicked off boards, called liars, keyboard commandos, and names worse than that. Saying I know how to load and shoot cast bullets from ordinary rifles using jacketed bullet loading data...with accuracy...simply violates some people's religion. If it ever gets too easy to achieve, there's always the 5.56 to fool with, or the Swedish Mauser.

I've had six laser surgeries on my dominant eye to repair retinal tears. I have more floaters than a septic tank. I can't do the big recoil anymore either, so I switched to gas-operated semi-autos for a lot of my hunting. Getting accuracy at velocity from ordinary cast bullets in a gas rifle is another supposed impossibility that drives certain people nuts when you actually do it. It DOES require a different approach (no nose engraving, oh my!) but was quite educational to figure out. When I added suppressors and switched from lube to powder coat it all got a little easier, but it wasn't impossible before at all.

Some people like air rifles. Some enjoy embarrassing riflemen with a revolver. Some like seeing how many bullets they can send through the first hole without making it any bigger. It all makes for good horseracing.

 

[fiver]

yep.
the good thing is we are all spending the time to perfect our craft. [whatever it is]
slow and low, 50 foot groups, open sighted mil-surp rigs, lever guns, revolvers.

it isn't easy to stand there for a couple of hours pouring bullets while counting and moving and monitoring like a machine.
then going through the disappointment of throwing a third of them back because of a little ding in the wrong place or a torn sprue cut that's too deep especially knowing there's another one in there somewhere that's gonna get tossed too.

it sucks to spend a few hours in front of a scale weight sorting bullets, trimming cases, annealing, or simply fire forming cases in one rifle so they fit another one even better, but not so good they won't chamber from the magazine.

but it all seems worth the effort when we sit down to the bench and have a decent day where it's some cloudy so the southern sun isn't putting a glare on the front bead pulling our bullet one way or the other, the wind is in the constant westerly direction our sights are set for, and we don't jerk that fifth shot a half inch away from the others.

 

[Snakeoil]

I've had six laser surgeries on my dominant eye to repair retinal tears.

Yikes!! I know a guy with similar experiences. And he doesn't shoot.

 

[Bret4207]

I knew a Marine who was assigned as a machine gunner on a USMC Chinook helicopter. However, his MOS was Rifleman and was assigned to an independent security platoon in Da Nang. His position was on the M60 on the right side of the ship and the crew chief on the left side.

Would have been a CH46, not a 47. 46 has tricycle landing gear and is smaller, also known as the "Sea Knight". 47 is the Chinook. CH46 is the Marine/Navy bird, CH-47 is Army.