tell me about hollow base bullets.

[fiver]

well I was going through the swage dies and such today moving everything around and putting up yet another cabinet for storage.
when I come across a 35 cal die I have with the proper stems for making hollow base wad cutters.
I also have some wad cutter and some semi wad cutter molds.
this of course gets me to thinking
I also have a pretty accurate Dan Wesson 357 which likes to shoot both of those bullets at about 750fps.

so what do I have to gain from the hollow base?
I can control the base from just a dimple to a full hollow base which means I can control the skirt thickness.
I have a full range of weights I can make from 90grs up to about 190grs.
I also have the choice of a lube groove or just a knurled body with tumble lube.

so if you had the option of a wad cutter with either style of nose [flat or short button type]
a hollow or not.
a lube groove or not.
and weight.

which one would you pick???

 

[358156 hp]

I'd choose a plain old double ended wadcutter around the common 148 gr. They are shorter than HBWCs, and since you don't have to worry about the skirt detaching, you can load them really hot if you want to. Another bonus with the DEWC is the fact that you can load them with the sprue end forward for a more consistently clean and uniform base.

As for HB anything, you can use a hollow base to reduce the weight of any bullet. It isn't necessarily just a low speed design anyway. Keiths 429422 HB wasn't intended to make up for barrel & throat discrepancies. The 429422 was designed as a 235 gr full power speedster. The skirts were extra thick so as not to expand in the bore. They just lightened the bullet from 250 gr to about 235 gr. All other features of the Keith design were present.

 

[RicinYakima]

I have an article coming out sometime in The Fouling Shot on HB bullets. They will solve your problems with too small throats for the bore, too big of throats for the bore, and maximum bullet speed for a small amount of quick powder. The problem? skirt failure! Even Keith no longer recommend his HB bullets after 1941. With 2% tin and 6% antimony, they will have about a 10% failure rate over 800 f/s. Do I still use them? Yes the Lyman 290 grain for the .455 Webley (.448" throats and .456" grooves) at 600 f/s. FWIW, Ric

 

[KHornet]

The only HB's I ever played with were HB wadcutters backwards in 38S & 357.
In special loads they turned inside and about the size of a nickle, and were
great on feral cats. At moderate357 Vols they were vicious things, and didn't
load and shoot many of them. Would be excellent defense loads for indoors.

Look forward to your article in
Fouling shots Ric!

Paul

 

[SierraHunter]

The only HB's I ever played with were HB wadcutters backwards in 38S & 357.
In special loads they turned inside and about the size of a nickle, and were
great on feral cats. At moderate357 Vols they were vicious things, and didn't
load and shoot many of them. Would be excellent defense loads for indoors.

Look forward to your article in
Fouling shots Ric!

Paul

This is the same thing I would do with them.

 

[Ian]

I know Starmetal used to bump his cast 9mm bullets in a swage die after lubing the grooves and got some out of this world groups compared to shooting them just cast and sized the normal way. I think anything you can do to compress and uniform the alloy structure and shape will improve groups, but hollow base? Nah, I'd work on a top plug for the SWC's nose you have there and just crunch them to perfection, then see what they'll do at 200 yards at about 1K fps launch speed.

 

[David Reiss]

I answered this question on another thread and will condense my opinion. At the PD where I was a firearms instructor (my department was so large we trained officers 5 days a week) and I saw millions of wadcutters shot over a 33 year career. I also shot probably over 500,000 of them myself (one of the perks) and we used every kind of wadcutter of the years. We also shot all other types of ammo / bullet combination because for a long time officers could carry just about anything, what a logistic nightmare. We trained with street ammo also, but that was not the standard for the first half of my career. But I digress, the real answer is they all shoot well and there is not enough difference between them to matter. When we shot PPC for competition, there were a lot of guys that used mixed stuff because it didn't matter with accuracy to 50 yards. The winner of the match was always the one who could hold his concentration the best. If I were buying a mold or swaging one, I would go with a DE PB, with lube grooves and anywhere from 145 - 155. But again, it won't matter much.

As a side note I also own a Dan Wesson 15-2 I bought in 1980. I have never meet one that was not real accurate.

 

[freebullet]

For the desired speed I'd say it's not worth the trouble.

 

[KHornet]

10-4 Freebullet!

 

[fiver]

the odd thing about the Wesson is I swapped a rossi for it because the original owner couldn't get it to shoot.
[I later bought the rossi back as a bum around truck pistol]
I have a NIB 6" barrel for it with another full underlug shroud around here somewhere.
maybe I will just make some cores and squish them to weight.
then punch them into cylinder shape, knurl and tumble lube.
I know after swaging a bunch of regular cast boolits I did see a group size improvement.
I just hate to do all those steps for not much gain all I'm doing is making holes in paper.

 

[John]

I had a 358395? HB wadcutter mold some years ago. My Model 14 shot them best with dental x ray lead so dead soft using one lube groove only. I am only 62 but when my eyes could not allow me to shoot better groups than a standard SWC I sold it. I prefer a slight bump of a nose to a flat wc but probably influenced by reading Cast Bullets by Harrison at a young age. For me if I believe something is better it is hard to be 100 % detached from that in unbiased testing.

 

[9.3X62AL]

My hollow-base wadcutters in both 32 and 38 calibers have all been commercial/swaged. The only ones I still have laying around unshot are about 300 Remington 38 caliber slugs, awaiting me to get off my aspirations and empty out some 38 Special brass to refill with them. I have shot A LOT of them--Speer, Remington, and Hornady. Over the years, the Hornady with the dusty "lube" have shot a little better in my guns. I had use of a Walther GSP-C in 32 SWL WC for about 6 months some years back, and ran the Hornady HBWCs through it at 700-725 FPS. INCREDIBLY ACCURATE, as some ground squirrels and jackrabbits learned to their chagrin during that time. Lyman #313492 seated with nose at case mouth length and a moderate roll crimp shot almost as well with 1 lube groove filled (Javelina Alox). Fill both grooves and accuracy went south HARD. I'n still kinda Jonesing for a GSP-C, though what I would use it for begs a few questions.

Truth to tell, it has been at least 15 years since I launched a wadcutter of any kind. Darn, I'm getting old in a hurry.