Your opinion, please

[quicksylver]

Here are my thoughts on the 30 Hunter. The nose has a bore-riding section that is drawn too large to a.) fit most .308 rifles and b.) with the "standard" NOE oversize can be expected to cast .302 or larger...making it totally useless for any sort of autoloading rifle unless the lands are quite worn down. This is a problem that plagues most .30-caliber bullet designs out there. Also, the nose taper won't allow any "wiggle room" or self-alignment. Also, no crimp groove, and too long. To get it to chamber, even in a bolt-action rifle, the gas check, bottom band, and at least half of the bottom lube groove will be way down in the powder space. I think that bullet was designed more for the .30-'06 or maybe Krag/Jorgensen rifles than anything else. And for an M1A and AR-10, sometimes you really want to crimp the case mouth, they are murder on cartridges, especially the M1A. I've pored over every design out there and bought probably half of them, and still the one needed doesn't really exist. So I aim to fix that....with y'all's help. BTW, this is intended for stout loads that push the envelope. For paper assassination inside of 100 yards, with a bolt gun, plenty of existing designs fill the bill nicely.

Ian....very interesting....however I have found exactly the opposite...all most..agreed Al's molds pour large (TG)..

I have 8 03's and 03'a4's....half have NOS barrels,one has a pristune star gauge barrel....I also have that newly acguired Remington 700 VS ...in 308 Win...
I have had at least a dozen Savages in 300 S...two Winchester 88's and a 100 in 308 Win....

I have used about every 30 cal bullet design made by Lyman...Never did I have to seat a bullet at the crimp groove...
Nor did I have any feed problems...in a bolt rifle...if I showed you pictures of where I seat my 308 Winchester bullets I think you would be shocked....
Now I will have to defer to you on the AR 10...and maybe the M1A...but this I can tell you ..my friend tried some 31332's out if his M1A ...he never got passed the first five 'cause he didn't want to ruin his 1.5" ,100 yd iron sighted group....

So my friend ...I belive this is an a tempt to design the perfect 30 cal AUTO LOADER design....if I am right I will watch with interest...
But to say a bullet like the 30 H won't fit bolt guns unless seated deeply...IMO might not be exactly correct..

OH ..one last thing...I shoot several bullets in my 308 with 304 noses .....I do reorganize that is my gun..

Hope we are still friends..really apreciated your controbutions...Dan

 

[Maven]

I like it, Ian! Reminds me of Ed Schmitt's (Lyman) original #311644, only your design will probably cast .311". Where can I sign up for one?

 

[Rick]

I like it, Ian! Reminds me of Ed Schmitt's (Lyman) original #311644, only your design will probably cast .311". Where can I sign up for one?

Uh . . . . Hhmmm . . . See post #15 and #19 in this thread.

.

 

[Ian]

Of course we're still friends, why wouldn't we be? I don't think you and I are quite talking about the same thing for the most part, and maybe I should clarify (not having a rack full of nice old mil-surps) that MY rifles, which are fairly representative of modern .30 caliber sporting and military long guns, won't swallow that bullet at all. I have four .308s and a .300 bore wildcat with a SAAMI '06 front end, none of them will chamber a bullet with a .301" nose that extends past the leade taper. I traded off an M70 that had a .301x.309" barrel, that NOE hunter bullet would have been about perfect for it. Also, of all the Lyman moulds you have used, what sizes were the noses? Lyman has never been famous for making moulds with noses too large to chamber in "most" rifles. Your friend with the M1A made a good choice of bullet and even with the parallel nose it should shoot pretty well up to a certain point, right around 2300 fps I would imagine. I got in the 1.5 MOA range at 22-2400 fps with mine using Ardito's 311679 and also an old Lee 311041 group buy with the intermediate nose band which allows it to shoot so well in so many different rifles.

"Universal" is an attempt at just that, autoloaders, bolt rifles, leverguns, you name it. The nose design should make all that possible.

 

[Ian]

I like it, Ian! Reminds me of Ed Schmitt's (Lyman) original #311644, only your design will probably cast .311". Where can I sign up for one?

It's not a group buy, it's for ME. I'm soliciting opinions because there's a lot of experience here that surpasses mine and custom moulds like this one are expensive. Once settled upon and cataloged, hopefully Tom can cut you one to order if you like it. I'll post up a link to the number when he has one. As for copying the design and getting a group buy through Al's forum, that's perfectly fine with me but you'd need to get Josh's permission to copy his drawings, a courtesy which has previously not been extended to him on an NOE buy, which frankly I think was pretty lousy.

Let me get this going and see how it shoots before anyone gets too excited! I've had some dud ideas in the past.

 

[quicksylver]

Now ..i am happy to say I agree completly...

 

[Ian]

This bullet design is a reflection of the ideas I put forth in Ben's bore-riding nose thread that is a sticky, where a lot of different experienced opinions were expressed. One thing that keeps coming to light is we all have different goals and have weeded through various algorithms to find what works best for each of us, and our individual rifles. We're bound to have formed very different conclusions on some things.

My conclusions up to now are that for self-loading rifles, one must have a zero-contact bullet design, but to operate, often a relatively high velocity load is needed, and only certain bullet styles will deliver both if you want good groups. Also, the same principles apply at lower velocities just as well, but the alloy must be adjusted for the pressure and powder burn rate. If you want a bullet that will fit a very broad spectrum of throats (as I do), is NOT dependent upon bore dimension being exactly such-and-such in order to deliver the goods on target, as well as meeting all the needs just outlined, then you're probably going to have to consider a generally tapered shape, and a convex one at that. I've tried quite a few different bullet styles and all but a few fail at high velocity, and many don't do well at medium velocity unless the nose is a perfect fit to the bore. I'm searching for a bullet to do all those things, and have tested my theories with a very frustrating example of one that pretty much does except the gas check shank is way too big and the lube groove makes them very difficult to cast well from the low-tin alloy needed for top-end loads.

 

[Maven]

Thanks, Rick! In my quick reading of the thread, I missed those (and a few others too).

 

[fiver]

my take on the all around bullet is gonna be a bit different. [yeah I know,, surprise]

let's start with the shortest case neck and the tightest throat.
I know for a fact we are gonna be trying to cover from mild to wild in velocity so we have no choice except to focus on velocity.
which means nose design.
and all around means to me semi auto's.
this is gonna suck to hear but a more balanced alloy is gonna be needed for this.
nothing outrageous but something like Tim's 2.5/2.5 'house' alloy would be a bit better at this.

let's look at what makes the auto loaders/ lever guns work with cast and start over.

 

[Ian]

Well, the autoloaders and leverguns need their cartridges to fit loosely so that that the weak bolt camming mechanisms can get them into battery reliably. So no jamming the nose into the lands, and no precision press-fit between case and chamber. Now, take that and accomplish the presumable #1 end goal of getting the bullet straight into the bore with all it's parts concentric with boreline. How? Funnel is how, but making the bullet funnel at the speeds it reaches within the first quarter inch of movement without it's high inertial mass and soft skin distorting itself is a tall order. When a bullet gets moving, it really, REALLY wants to keep going in exactly the same direction it started out in. If the very first move the bullet base makes is sideways, it starts crooked because it isn't supported in the right places at the right time and herded to the middle, and then the the forced corrections of the throat and barrel will smear it around and then re-extrude the bearing surfaces into a cylinder, but who knows where the lube groove centers will be or how crooked will be the nose.

Alloy is probably half of the whole game (bombshell? Probably not to everyone here). Sometimes you can get by with just about anything, sometimes tin is your enemy, sometimes your friend, and sometimes you need to extend the tough yet flexible properties of heat treated 96/3.5/.5 to the next level with half a percent copper. I'm not following on the half #2 alloy, seems like it would be gummy, amorphous, weak, and a pain to heat treat. Help me understand?

Bullet/throat physical fit is only part of the challenge, as is cycling. Make it work at high speed and it will work at low speed too. You remember the things done with straight, matching throat angles since about 125 years ago, and how that worked out. Gotta have wiggle room, gotta have a little mis-match for incremental onset of engraving resistance. That ties in with burn curve, and here we go again. All about fit (static and dynamic), powder, and alloy. Brew up the recipe required and it will work with a lot of bullet shapes that have a few basics right for the rifle firing them.

I want a versatile bullet mould. I can make whatever bullets I need for whatever job out of the alloy that proves best, and use the same basic mould for a lot of things. OK, maybe not a .300 Savage or a rifle with zero throat like some have, but most that need a middleweight .30 caliber.

This might be the thread where we finally put up some napkin drawings of how a particular design acts in a given rifle throat during that first half inch of travel.

 

[fiver]

here is an excerpt from a post I made yesterday.

but I believe it's because it don't work that way.
think about it, shove something in a hole and push on it, it might try to get shorter or whatever.
but what ultimate shape will it take [a cylinder] get your boolit pretty close to that shape and allow it to flow a little closer to that shape under launch.
and what happens.
you destroy less of the boolit or alter it's shape less towards the ultimate compressibility shape in a barrel.
thus being able to push it harder than normal without upsetting the balance.

okay now the alloy part.
did you know antimony crystals break down inside a lead alloy and allow the lead to flow easier under pressure?
think about that.
the uber hard alloy is actually able to slump easier under pressure.
combine that with areas of non support and throw in some rotation.

1422 X Bent = Jack..... on paper.

 

[Ian]

As promised, I re-checked a couple of dummy rounds and the bullet as Josh drew it up will work in all of my guns sized just a titch under .310" and with .700" of nose sticking out of a 2.215" case. All I get in the M1A is a scuff on the sized portion from the throat, the Rock Creek Bisley barrel with the tight, very long throat also just scuffs the sized portion and puts a tiny hint of a mark on the "frost" of the bulle's nose at around the .299" diameter mark (it has a .299" bore), and I get a little more nose bite in my Savage Hog Hunter, but easily tolerable.

Fitwise, it's good to go.

 

[Josh]

Soooo...... when ya buying that mould? lol

 

[Ian]

did you know antimony crystals break down inside a lead alloy and allow the lead to flow easier under pressure?
think about that.
the uber hard alloy is actually able to slump easier under pressure.
combine that with areas of non support and throw in some rotation.

Yeah, that's exactly what I want it to do...I think. That's my idea of how a bullet body can start out .006" over groove diameter (or whatever) to fill up the neck and throat for support and yet extrude into the bore while keeping the nose straight without slumping into a wad of putty. Make the sides of the lube grooves steep to give the alloy an easy path to move without elongating and distorting the unsupported parts of the bullet excessively. Given enough pressure delivered at the right time, the nose can even fatten up and grip on the lands a little better. Excess tin has always worked against me trying to do that in any sort of predictable manner when the pressure and velocity is high.

 

[fiver]

tin and antimony are something that has been on and off my mind for quite some time now.
I keep on pushing things down the barrel and initially was worried about tinning the barrel with my 4/6 alloy.
but something amazing actually happens when you combine the two in a 3 to 1 or near equal amounts in an alloy.
we know tin likes to soften an alloy over time and antimony hardens and enlarges a boolit over time.
but get the tin amount higher than the antimony and the bhn varies up and down over time.
this is pretty fascinating to me.
but why? now really,, why does the different amounts affect the alloy the way they do.
well tin has different relationships with the two other components, it's really a mis-match in a lead alloy, it's been used since forever because it melts at a low temperature.
it just happens to allow the lead to flow easier and fill out square lube grooves. [right we all know this]
but put it with antimony and you suddenly change things.
you form an intermetallic bond between the Sb and the Sn which creates a stronger chain than either one alone could make and that chain stays together under pressure.
you get toughness under stress it's like adding concrete to rebar..
if your going to rely on the nose to catch the throat and let things kind of rattle around to find it's own center you need that structural strength to maintain the shape.
your in effect mimicking how a jacketed bullet works.

if you add copper in you need extra antimony for the copper to bind with even though the tin will allow it to go into solution easier.

 

[Ian]

Soooo...... when ya buying that mould? lol

Haven't heard back from Tom yet, your check for the .22 mould went out with the rest of Tuesday's mail from work, and if you'd get back into the mould making business I'd be ordering a pointy-nose version of this one from you.

 

[Josh]

Haven't heard back from Tom yet, your check for the .22 mould went out with the rest of Tuesday's mail from work, and if you'd get back into the mould making business I'd be ordering a pointy-nose version of this one from you.

Give me some time, I am moving and plan to buy my own lathe and mill, I hope to do work akin to what Tom does.

 

[Ian]

I see it as not so much as a fling and rattle through the funnel as it is a "herd and slug" operation. Time the pressure rise so it slugs that puppy through there just as it gets straight. Like how a brad nailer can fire a 2" piece of soft wire through solid hardwood without it bending (most of the time). As long as it's in-line with the direction of force when the pressure gets past the point of deforming it, the brad or bullet will go where its line of inertia is aimed.

Of course we can theorize but what really gets it done on target? What do the fired bullets really look like? And how many different ways can it work? I think there's more than one answer. No, I KNOW there is. We can get 1MOA or better at 2300 + out of standard twist .30 caliber barrels doing two almost completely different things.

 

[Josh]

Haven't heard back from Tom yet, your check for the .22 mould went out with the rest of Tuesday's mail from work, and if you'd get back into the mould making business I'd be ordering a pointy-nose version of this one from you.

BTW, I wasn't insinuating anything about the 22 mould, just thought it was funny you are on the move for another mould already.

 

[fiver]

but when it ain't inline...