Yesterday's Weapons Forums

ok I was wondering. hollow points are all the rage in personal defense ammo.
but how would they do in normal lead cast bullets? what if ol joe cowboy
punched a hole in his bullets. how would he do against the bandits?

so I have taken 44 cal 240 gr hardcast swc and chucked them in my lathe and drilled various size and depth holes in them to test if they expand,
how much they expand, if they fragment ECT. Also made some cone shaped
holes of varying sizes to test.

Gotta build me a water box to test em now.

Loaded ahead of 8 gr of universal clays in starline 44 rem mag brass.

they will be fired from my 44 ruger blackhawk for the test.



To Be continued

GG

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A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

built the water box for testing this morning

construction


Setup


three trash bags filled with water with heavy posterboard in between

Should give me a good idea of penetration and deviation/fragmentation.

GG

_________________
A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

Hmm fired some rounds into the box.

First group of drilled slugs had no real diffrence in performance than
the undrilled group they and the undrilled group sliced thru all 3 water bags and whacked out or lodged in the backer boards.

one of the undrilled group in the backer board



pried out of the board



one of the first drilled group
Could almost reload it


the second set of drilled slugs performed about the same. However with the deeper drilled slug of the set I noticed it deviated from course quite a bit.

The third set of drilled slugs the shallowest drilling of the set flattened out
quite nicely however it seems to have lost some weight in doing so and although it penetrated into the third bag it only lightly dented the backboard



Next I fired the deepest drilled of that set It punched through the first bag
through the second card into the second bag and then deviated wildly from course and escaped the box altogether. bouncing off the topper board and out over the backer boards.

so now I wonder if my cards are causing the deflections or if the depth of the drillings are unbalancing the bullets and causing them to pitch and yaw out of control.

got to do some modifications to the box to cut down on variables

Then I will fire some more.

GG

_________________
A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

When the experts do bullet expansion tests, don't they use a material of more density? Something called ballistic gelatin comes to mind. Forensic ballistic testing sometimes is done on animal cadavers to replicate the resistance and consistency of flesh. It could be that the bags of water don't provide the right amount of resistance to cause the HP bulet to expand. Maybe something like wax or clay would be a better medium. Using something with less give than water would also solve your deflection problem.

_________________
A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

That is partly what I am thinking Pete.

my guesses are as follows

1 bullets are hard enough that they tend to keep thier shape instead of expanding

2 when enough force was applied to the deeper drilling the structure of the bullet was compromised and the force caused the outer walls to fragment
and the undrilled base continued on

Don't got any pure lead on hand. Wanna send me some pete.

Will test the rest of the set and post results this weekend.

GG

_________________
A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

_________________
A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

Completed the test today

Firing of the remainder of the drilled slugs has yielded some interesting results

first: Shape of Cavity has some effect on the results

All of the cone shaped drillings reacted to the water box.

Second: with hardcast lead the bullets don't expand.

Third: once sufficient force is applied to the drilled hole the bullet fragments
to the depth of the drilling quite quickly Most of the fragments are in the first foot of water in the box.

So if your hunting with hardcast don't use hollow points unless you want to be a pickin lead bits out.

Fourth: I gotta get some softer lead and do this again!

GG

_________________
A dart or a sledgehammer What do you prefer?

Old Thor ain't got nothing on me.



Gungrubber

The bullet mold I got for my .36 Colt Navy replica throws .375 balls but my replica is one of the early production guns that has a chamber mouth around that same diameter so the bullets fit to loose to stay in under recoil.
I generally just tap them once with a tack hammer while they sit on a steel plate to give them an even bulge around the equater and they load okay.
While experimenting with this fix another fix came to mind.

Instead of tapping them with a hammer I would drill a hole in the sprue mark and using an old bowie knife I laid the edge across the hole and tappe the back of the blade with a rawhide mallet, repeating this at 90 degrees to the first cut. The cuts going about 2/3 of the distance from the front to the middle.

I tried these homegrown Dum Dums out on large chunks of hard packed clay mud I found where a huge stump had been pulled.
A lump of hard packed clay weighing close to ten pounds totally disintegrated from a single shot.
Solid balls just sailed straight through leaving a finger size hole.

I figure the hole lightened the ball significantly increasing velocity and the cross cut let the ball fly apart in wedge shaped quarters shortly after contact.