/

Well if the bullets have worked before they will work now, no need to use superbullets like GS , and others when they work.

I think many of the old bullets were good, and many more were bad, but the bad ones have been weeded out, IMO!

I believe the biggest problem with some of the old bullets is, the loader wants to push them too fast. This is a bad habit of some American shooters, they are impressed more by velocity, than common sense! Some of the newer SUPER BULLETS are not what they are cracked up to be! I have a 470NE double rifle that I bought from a poster on this site, along with a few boxes of Federal TB-solids! I was told by the origenal owner of this rifle that the TBs bent, and failed to break the leg bone of one of his elephants, requireing severl more shots, in a running gun battle. Not saying all these bullets are bad, just useing it as an example, of the fact that something is new, doesn't mean it is better! Woodliegh is a fine example of bullets being duplicates of the old Kynoch, and they work fine! Some of the better designed Mono-metal bullets are a big improvement ove some of the old solids, so it goes both ways!

In 1984 I bought a new VW Passat 5 cylinder Station Wagon. (VW Quantum in the USA and VW Passat Kombi in Europe.) It was the first of four VW Wagons I owned consecutively. When they stopped making the 5 cylinder wagons in 1987, I bought them good used. The last one, an 87, was stolen three years ago and I bought a sedan to use while I searched for another wagon. I found a very nice low mileage 1986 model late last year.

So for 22 years I have used the same model car that only failed me when I became lax with maintenance of the cooling system. I am comfortable with it and see no reason to change. It is uncomplicated and I am addicted to doing my own repairs and routine servicing.

Will a newer V6 Passat wagon be more economical, faster, more comfortable, have more features and be safer if I have an accident? Without any doubt it will. So why do I cling irrationally to this outdated vehicle for 22 years? It is not logical. Bottom line is that it is an emotional decision. It is what I am comfortable with.

Many decisions are made emotionally and not logically and there is no problem with that. I know a writer who still uses a typewriter. I know several people who do not have computers and do not know what the internet is. There are even some South Africans who do not have or even want a mobile phone. That is their choice, based on emotion, not logic.

So if someone tells me they prefer to hunt with a bow or a blackpowder gun, that is their preference. Just do not tell me that a bow or blackpowder gun will do all I can do with a modern bolt action rifle. Technology advances on all fronts. If you choose emotionally not to make use of advanced technology, that is your choice. Just do not tell me that your '84 Passat is just as good and will do everything that a 2006 VW Wagon can do. That is not logical.

bullets are more a mental game but i do think flat nose solids outperform r.n. solids...see rips iron buffalo thread.

you throw almost anything at 2500 fps it will kill an elephant. bullets are one of the only thing we have to argue minutia over...this is a sacred cow! start a thread about r.n. vs flat nose and you have 10 pages of pissing ranting and neer blows. start a thread about what p.h. to use and you get almost nothing...isnt the p.h. or outfitter 10 times more important? long live bullet threads!

gerard...you are getting way to agreeable...i like the other gerard better but you are right, to each his own even if that "own" is stupid and wrong like pink polyester leisuresuits in summer on safari.

whenever the "best bullet in the world" comes out there is sure to be lots of bemoaning in the world as you can attest to

The hippo brain is very shallowly placed, not guarded by horn boss, and any tumbling round nose solid can find one. It doesn't take much to brain a hippo. Hippo culling is not a severe test of a solid.

Welcome back Alf.

/

Old style bullets? Do you mean Woodleighs? I use them too, but the new generation of bullets such as from GS Custom and North Fork are far superior. And I suppose some guys still use a 450 Martini-Henry too.

If they're really that bad, tens of thousands of dead DG animals will be rising from the dead, and seeking an accounting, including more than a few that I have put down!

I see we are heading for the propaganda stakes again here. A hippo shot in appropriate place (proper bullet placement for a brain shot) can easily be killed with small calibre softs. My most recent experience of this was with 210-gr softs from .338. I have seen it done on occasion with a .270 and 130-grainers. A body shot on a hippo can be/is a different story which I am not addressing here. It is obvious that old style RN solids have been performing fairly well for ages (if correctly executed) and that there is no reason why they will not perform well enough in future if correctly executed (read: of correct design and properly manufactured). This must however not blind us to changes/advances. All changes are not necessarily advances and some actual advances my well perform unsatisfactory because of incorrect execution of the better idea/concept. Although it is obvious that RN jacketed solids have performed quite well (not perfect though) to date, there is no reason why we should not consider and prefer improvement. The meplat nose with sharp cutting edge concept (such as on the Superpenetrator) works, as that sharp edge is what Dzombo ascribes its good terminal performance to according to Danie Joubert. The fact that the Superpenetrator sort of reaffirms the sharp edge edge benefit does not mean that the concept is lacking because of design execution problems. The question that arises is whether the multipart design of the Superpenetrator is the best implementation of the advance - as the disk is sometimes lost. I think the jury is still out on the multipart execution, but fairly well agreed on the meplat and sharp edge concept advantages. The problem is that the very people that will often condemn a new idea because it does not always prove to be perfect, often are happy to retain old ideas that are even less perfect. The fact that a new idea does not yield perfection, does not mean that it is not an improvement or step in right direction - although in some cases it could also be a step back. The fact that there are performance benefits derived from some properly executed new ideas do not make the old RN's incapable of killing - but will in time (as the execution of the advances improve) make the old RN (Jacketed in particular)increasingly redundant. It is also important to notice that Barnes is busy moving away from its old style RN to a meplat nose with sharp cutting edge. Barnes is not doing it because it is a step backward. Randy Brooks knows what he does and why he implements changes.
Insofar as the claim that KNP used A-Square bullets is concerned. That must be a bona fide mistake by Alf's informant probably not drawing a clear distinction between actual A-Square and A-Square style bullets. The KNP did test A-Square bullets - in fact I gave these A-Square bullets to Bruce Bryden when attorney Schalk Pieterse and I visited him - but never used them otherwise than for evaluation. Alphin himself also gave some directly. During the 80's I was personally involved in attempts to get the KNP to actually use A-Square RN (made by TCCI, AZ in truth although the relationship between TCCI and A-Square later apparently soured) bullets, but Mr Bruce Bryden rejected them on the basis that the staff (Fritz Rohr?) were making a similar brass bullet (at one stage called the Big 5) that did everything one could expect of the A-Square without import problems. That was a point of view I could not argue against and still before PMP made brass solids or the meplat idea was applied to DG solids. One should also accept that the parallel sided homogenous bullets offered an advance over the more tapered jacketed solids used by the KNP until then and consequently it is indeed so that the KNP staff came to swear by these homogenous bullets, because they vastly outperformed what they had been using until then - old type tapered jacketed RN bullets. On that score alone one should accept that the old style RN bullet, although quite capable of still doing its job, was superceded by the homogebous design 20 years ago. The question is not whether the old style RN jacketed solids work, but to which extent homogenous construction, meplats and sharp edges of new designs improve on them and whether all such changes (advances) actually are correctly implemented. The biggest danger to the hunter is the advisor that gives an opinion based on a single result - be it success or failure.

Welcome aboard Pierre

Ja, ja mr Human. When are you coming to visit and how far is that .416?

Waiting for my competancy and then I can apply for the licence. The barrel is in for proofing.

We owe each other a beer, but I will be hunting this weekend, maybe we should try for next week if you are not too busy.

/

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
What defies logic to me is that we ( and the modern bullet manufacturers ) cannot seem to get it right or at least seem dabble in wordplay and pseudoscience when in fact the mechanics and science of collision mechanics have been well studied and published.

Alf, unfortunately much of what you have written here about bullet performance is just plain wrong. For example, you have repeatedly asserted that the permanent wound channel cannot be larger than the diameter of the bullet. Yet that proves false when bullets are fired into game in the field (i.e., no secondary projectiles such as bullet fragments or bone, and when the bullet has not tumbled).

/

I hope not to add more gas to the fire here..

I have shot a few deer with either my .300 H&H and my 8x57 mauser...

The .300 were using 200 grain Nosler accubond
and the 8x57 using 200 grain Norma Alaska, which is a round nose bullet...
The exit wound channel of the 8x57 is considerable LARGER than of the .300 H&H...no question. The roundnose bullets shove more in front them....
How does the hydrostatic effect works here??

quote:

Posted 14 May 2006 17:28

quote:
Jagter,

"Two .470 calibre bullets recovered may have lost their disks upon contact with the hippo."

Two of about 20, not at "contact", but during recovering. (Report doesn't say so, unless you have more information at hand - if so, please post full report here on AR.)

"...the question arises whether these bullets remained stable within the hippos they were fired into due to the bullets losing the disks."

Why? They lost the disk only at the end of it´s path. In the worst case they are acting like other soft copper FN bullets e.g. GS Custom FN, Bridger. (Again, refer note in blue above.)

"After this report on hippo results with SuperPenetrators one gets the idea that the outright "No" answer above leaves a lot of unanswered questions on penetration ability by these bullets."

The report claims excellent results on hippo. (Again, in the bit reported nothing to that effect is said - post full report.)
Pls give some of the "lot of questions".
Did you try any?

One question may be: Can we use this bullet with harder copper in doubles? That was the reason Hanke should use the soft copper ones.

Norbert.



What else was said in this report - why can't we see it all?

Só, eventually we may see the real answers and results on the use of Norberts' so-called super penetrators!

Alf,
There is something wrong with the test you report:
"It also holds true for bone as shown by tests done on freshly killed bovine and human cadavaric metaphyseal bone. When firing steel spheres through the metaphyses of these bones using pneumatic ( gas driven) gun platforms the resultant holes though the bones are smaller than the captured penetrating projectile."

They shoot holes in bones and can then accurately measure those holes. Do I understand correctly that these tests are also:
"......independent of velocity within the velocity spectrum of our current ballistics model."

How can this be when every time I have hit major bone with a monometal bullet at high speed (3500fps and up), the result looked like this (note that the entire hip socket and ball and part of the leg bone is gone)?:



While we are on the subject of the inability of a deformed monometal bullet to make larger than bullet diameter wound channels, have a look at these photos of a springbuck I shot a couple of weeks back with my 22x64 and 40gr HV bullets at MV 4700fps.

In both photos the entrance hole is on the right and the exit hole on the left. The shot was almost perfect broadside. The second photo shows the path through the rib cage. You can see that the bullet passed high through the lungs at 6cm below the spine.

Now here is the problem your theories create for me: By the time the bullet passed under the spine, it has either lost the petals or, whatever mushrooming was going to take place, has been completed. Let us forget about the fact that the 6mm diameter rope passed through both holes with lots of room to spare as the holes were 15 to 18mm in diameter.

There are no bone fragments missng from the rib the bullet narrowly missed on the entrance side and, from recovered 40gr HVs on light resistance impacts on tissue, weight retention of this bullet would have been between 34gr and 38gr. Impact speed would have been around 3200fps.

1. I would like to know what caused the complete stripping of tissue from the spine in line with the bullet path?
2. Why is the rib on the entrance side broken in two places close to the bullet hole, despite no actual contact with the bullet?
3. Why did the lungs fall out of the opened lung cavity in multiple pieces?
4. Why have I observed this same scenario several hundred times when theory says it is not happening?

Gerard,

Have you worked out a distributor in the U.S. yet? Would love to have a consistent supply of your bullets.

Best regards;
Brett Trimble

/

The "Penetration on Elephant" thread revisited!

And perhaps as Alf suggests, we are similar to the proverbial blind men describing an elephant via the parts: "lay persons not in command of basic theories of physics".

It seems that everyone in this discussion has offered a valid point, based on actual and valid experience but, there has not been proven, as of yet, a theory regarding the mechanics of penetration that might make the shift in knowledge to be deemed a law. Where are these basic physical laws?

Alf argues adamately that flesh is a solid. 500Grains points out that slapping a piece of meat results in the propagation of visible radiating waves. Norbert's findings correlate with Kursk torpedo technology. Gerard shows evidence of the all too familar wound much larger than the projectile. What does it all add up to? Seems like confusion at this point.

I was in disagreement with Alf's assertion that the target in question, flesh and bone, is much more appropriately conceptualized as a solid until it occured to me that hitting the pool with a belly flopper off the high dive sure feels a lot more like running into a solid than a fluid. At the impact velocities typical of a bullet, it does make sense to visualize that the projectile encounters something that appears as a solid.

But what about those "waves" in impacted flesh that anyone can see for themselves by tapping a loose, bulky body part? I am not versed in wave physics but are not most waves a moving pulse of energy than of a moving mass and that is why the bobbing cork bobs up and down but does not follow the wave to shore? So, would it be reasonable to conceptualize some of the energy in a bullet strike radiating from the path of the transiting bullet - in a greater diameter than the area displaced strictly by the transiting bullet?

But if most waves pass through a media with minimal disturbance and very little destruction what causes a three pound prairie dog to blow to pieces when struck with a 100 grain 7mm slug at 3500fps? Should secondary projectiles be limited to bone chips, bullet fragments, undigested material etc and not include the incompressable but viscous fluids and solids (such as granular particles behave) encountered/generated by a violent bullet strike? After all, it is possible to cut steel with highly pressured water. At the pressures a bullet is exerting on the flesh it penetrates, why wouldn't it create a temporary front of moving vapors, liquids, and solids that create those oversized permanent wounds so common with "soft" slugs, less common with flat noses, and rare with round noses and balls?

So then, to get back to the original point (pun intended), why abandon RN solids for FNs? Much like sharp knife edges, pointed fence posts, and spitzer bullets, a RN will penetrate further with the same amount of energy than a FN IF it remains stable and on course. However, plenty of empirical data point out that traditional RNs do not generally remain stable. Twist rates and insufficient precessional stability, a center of gravity (COG) behind a center of form (COF), and structural deformation are all pointed out as causes of this instability. Monometal FNs address structural deformation and bring COG forward closer to COF and the possibility of a flat meplat increasing solid/fluid vaporization of the target media and hence better translational stability within the target within a "supercavity". It appears that a larger portion of a FNs energy is used up maintaining stability and causing radial destruction at the cost of decreased maximum theoretical penetration.

Since so many RNs turn a corner so soon upon target entry, I for one, will gladly give up the long odds that a RN will remain point on and in the direction intended and trade that last few feet or two of theoretical penetration for a FN that has a much higher chance of continuing on in the direction it was launched. And, I will gladly take advantage of the increased radial effects of a flat nose, or soft point in the appropriate target, for that matter. But, this is certainly not to say that I can explain why RNs or FNs or SNs behave the way they do and so I remain curious and fascinated by this subject and open to further suggestions and insights.

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
500 gr:

Terminal ballistics science teaches at the hand of proven testing that when a non-deforming, non-fragmenting, stable progressing projectiles ( minimal yaw) are fired into media with primary elastic, visco-elastic biomechanical properties and no secondary projectiles are liberated then the permanent tract is smaller or equal to that of the projectile's maximum outide caliber.

But often it is not.

Brett,
Unfortunately not. We mail direct and have no trouble with airmail, other than the occasional delay of a week to 10 days over the expected time that no one can explain to us. We have seen parcels go to destination by airmail in 9 days but the norm is a bit longer than that. Parcel post travels by ship and there we have lost a few in the last two years. Once it was clear that the parcel is not going to turn up, we simply remailed it by air and lodged our claim. As I recall, we have a parcel to Alaska that is awol right now and we have resupplied already.

Alf,
What about the holes your tests get in bone and my inability to get anything but a bag full of fragments? Is it perhaps the fact that they shoot steel balls at low speed and in the real world we fire bullets designed to do a proper job?

/

quote:

Are old type big bore bullets ( RN's) really that bad ?

Application is the key. What is the intended goal that must be achieved? That means we need to differentiate between Softs and Solids.

Softs - RN bullets are meant for closer range work than Spitzers. RN bullets tend to be heavier and be driven slower and generally mushrooms bigger, provided it does not fragment or shatter. The lower impact velocity then makes for better bullet performance - more weight retention and better mushrooms. Better softs such as Woodleigh, Stewart, TBBC, Northforks or Rhino's are all excellent when used as intended - I would not class them as "OLD STYLE". Old style for me represents CONVENTIONAL thin jacketed bullets that are prone to fragmentation - I don't like them for hunting purposes. Long-range work require Spitzers with better BC's at higher velocities. So application is the key.

Solids - It has been shown that homogenous FN Solids provide better straight-line penetration than RN Solids. Flat meplats vary in width from one manufacturer to the next and there is possibly an ideal point per caliber as a trade-off between max penetration and wound size. Most all work well enough, but we could argue the differences and their effect. RN Solids still work most of the time, as in the past, but occasionally we will hear about a failure - more so with FMJ 'solids' that rivet or veer off. Again old style for me refers to conventional RN FMJ's that cannot be compared with present day quality solid bullets like Rhino or GS-FN. I have a gunsmith friend that prefers to use the 450-gr GS-FN bullet in his 458 Lott and then again there are many other PH's that use the Rhino Solid that are equally happy.

Going to a stronger class of FMJ 'Solid' - the steel-jacketed WDL RN FMJ - of how many failures do we know? Perhaps Ganyana can enlighten us here. Also another question ... what is the significance when a RN solid bullet, or any other bullet for that matter, turns during the last 10% of its journey when it has already passed through the vitals?

At the end of the day I view it as horses for courses. My preference though for game hunting - a controlled expanding bullet that does not throw its petals off easily - that means that it must be used within its velocity threshold strength.

Chris

Alf,
As I see it, there is the world of the test laboratory and there is the real world as it applies to the hunter and the shot he has just taken.

Lab: Bullets hit bones and poke holes in them.
Real: Bullets hit bones and break them.

Lab: Wound channels are caliber size or smaller because it seems secondary projectile formation is carefully avoided so that results are not complicated.
Real: Wound channels are larger than caliber because bullets mushroom and cause secondary projectiles of bone, tissue and bullet particles.

Lab: The temporary wound channnel is ignored as it is very difficult to quantify and therefore deemed statistically insignificant in it's contribution to wound trauma.
Real: The temporary wound channel ads significantly to wound trauma. It can break bones, rupture tissue adjacent to the primary wound channel and disrupt cns systems several inches away from the primary wound channel. (Hydraulic hammer?)

Lab: Experiments are done with non deforming (at rifle velocities) projectiles that are mostly smooth and present a spherical surface to the direction of travel.
Real: Bullets are designed to present surfaces that are more efficient at disrupting tissue encountered in the bullet path.

Lab: Experiments are done on a scale that would bankrupt a small country and huge amounts of information is neatly categorised and filed where only a handful of people can find it. Even fewer people can find enough of it to make sense of it.
Real: Bullet manufacturers do not have these financial resources and, those who are interested, are dependent on going out and shooting animals in the real world. They then arrive at workable solutions, some better than others, at vastly less cost and usually unable to explain in detail why their solutions work, or do not, only that they do, or do not.

Due to the lack of several hundred million Dollars, we at GSC specifically prefer to use the real world to find our solutions, to observe results as critically as possible and to experiment with real rifles and real bullets that are available to any handloader. It is a lot more fun and the pictures make more sense anyway.

/

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
Gerard:

With all due respect this last post of yours is very immature and reflects an "i'm so sorry i'm alive attitude"

Alf, pardon me for saying so, but your posts on bullet performance read like they were written by a man educated far beyone his intellect. Misapplication of textbook theories to contradict real-world results proves nothing at all. Better to put the shovel away and stop digging.

/

Alf,
Your take on me having a "sorry I am alive" attitude is way off base. I stated it as I see it.

I also think we are talking past one another. When you say things like "firing steel spheres using pneumatic ( gas driven) gun platforms" I visualise a BB gun. Or when you talk about "media with primary elastic, visco-elastic biomechanical properties" I have no clue what you are talking about unless I go look it up. By the time I have figured out you mean "muscle" or "lung tissue" or whatever, I have lost the plot.

So, yes, I have a comprehension problem when I read this answer from you:
" You say there are no bone parts missing, sorry but I see fragementation so there has to be bone and marrow parts. Also if you shot a HV it likely blew its petals off and that would cause wounds that you see."

I do not understand how you can confidently make such a statement. The wounds in the picture of the springbuck carcass consisted of the two holes in the rib cage, the tissue stripped from the spine and the comprehensive destruction of the lungs in what is clearly a high lung shot. If I take a 40gr HV bullet and completely remove the petals, the remainder weighs 34gr. So each petal weighs two grains for a total of 6gr. My inspection of the broken rib on the entrance side showed two clean breaks and the bones could be placed together with no fragments missing. If any bone tissue and marrow was ejected from the breaks, it could not have been more than a couple of grains.

Are you asking me to believe that around 10 grains of copper, bone and marrow caused these wounds through physical contact? The shaft of a 40gr HV, that is devoid of petals, is virtually as long as it is wide. So if it yawed, or even tumbled, how does this contribute to the wounding of this animal? Regardless of which surface is presented to the direction of travel, the diameter is the same.

To my mind the answer lies in the following wordplay and pseudoscience that we talk about in our "marketing". A veritable plethora of junk science:

1. Cylinder shapes make bigger permanent wound channels than other shapes.
2. The faster the bullet passes through the tissue, the bigger the permanent wound channel.
3. At certain threshold speeds, the temporary wound channel starts contributing to the permanent wound channel.
4. Cylinder shapes are less prone to yawing.
5. The less a projectile yaws, the deeper it will go.

All this is from MacPherson's book.

Based on this junk science I maintain that an FN bullet will go deeper than a round nose bullet and also produce a bigger permanent wound channel than a round nose. By the same mechanism, an HV going fast enough to strip the petals does the same, in addition to the damage caused by secondary projectiles.

Mainly, this also corresponds to what I observe under real conditions.

Regarding Sd; do you still maintain that higher Sd bullets penetrate better than lower Sd bullets? Come on, that was hashed out months ago and we saw that Sd is the poorest of parameters by which to judge likely penetration and effective terminal performance. Read my spoof on Sd and tell me where I am factually wrong. We can do this by e-mail to avoid the ire of several who no longer have an interest in this.

Where to get GSC Bullets? Try here. Why did you not give me a call when you were here and I could have told you?

I am going to throw some "gasoline on the fire" or maybe more appropriately said some "petrol on the barbie".
Ron Thompson in "Mahohbo" and Mike Lagrange in "Balistics in Perspective" compare the effeciency of the 470 Nitro caliber to the 458 Winchester. These two authors have an imense amount of elephant hunting experiece as both worked for Zimbabwe National Parks during the hey days of elephant PAC and culling during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Between them they probably killed more elephants than there are in South Africa now. Consequently, we would be remiss to lightly pass over their observations.

They both note that velocity is the same between the two calibers if we remove the occasional problem of squib loads in the 458 Win due to powder compaction. A velocity of 2,050 to 2,100 fps is realistic estimate of what they delivered out of real rifles under real field conditions. Both used 500 grain bullets. If we use current thinking on what constitues ideal bullet performance, i.e. straight line penetration and no deformation the 458 Win steel jacketed solid clearly has the advantage over the 470 Nitro. The 470 bullet wasn't steel jacketed until after WWll. Even then the jacket material was very thin on the skirts. Recovered 458 Win solid bullets very, very seldom showed
any sign of deformation while it was unusual to recover a 470 Nitro bullet that didn't have the tail flattened and/or twisted unless it only encountered soft tissue. The Winchester bullet was a much better designed bullet than the Kynock. The 470 has a slight edge in cross sectional diameter but the 458 Win bullet has a much higher sectional density. By common reasoning the 458 should be the better elephant cartridge. But that is not how Lagrange and Thompson saw it. Let me quote Thompson. "I am a 458 Magnum man. I love the caliber and over many, many years, I have learned how to use it effectively. Nevertheless, I must tell you the performance of the 470 on elephants is far superior to that of the 458. There is no comparison. The 'knock down' power of the 458 does not come anywhere near that of the 470. This, I know is a subjective assessment - but I do not 'put down' my beloved Magnum lightly."
Lagrange voiced a very similar opinion.

So if this is the opinion of two extremely experienced elephant hunters, what do we make of it. Is it possible that the 470 is superior in knock down power because the bullets partially deform? Is it possible that after a bullet penetrates to some distance in the head of an elephant on a straight line it then gains from destabilizing and penetrating that final distance side ways? I'm not taking a side here just throwing out some food for thought.

465H&H

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
Dan:

Thank you very much for your appraisal of my intellectual capacity? With your advanced insight into my situation could be please also appraise how many animals have fallen to my rifle over a lifetime ?

A truck driver can cover well over than 100K miles per year. But that does not make him an expert on tire design. In fact, he may not even have more than the vaguest comprehension of how a tire operates.

Completely independent of RIP, NFMike, Gerard, Norbet, and I'm sure others, I did my own penetration box tests but my media was ocean water as I had access to a large dock from which to suspend a plywood baffled trap. What started as a simple curiosity as to which conventional solid would penetrate the furthest out of my Lott led me to fire 30 grossly deviating test shots with RNs. I thought straight line penetration was a chimera until I fired an LBT style FN from my lowly .454 and it drilled straight for seven feet. The simple modification of cutting a small meplat on a Barnes Mono RN required an additional two foot extension on the original ten foot trap before I recovered a bullet. One memorable shot was a completely cylidrical Barnes whose splash was voluminous enough and high enough to soak me from fifteen feet above the surface of the water. There was a direct correlation between greater volume of backsplash, reduced depth of penetration, and increased diameter of meplat. For "pounding" effect, the wider the meplat, unquestionably, the heavier the blow.

The variables tried with round noses were center of balance (with hollow bases), twist rates (different rifles), longer and shorter bullets, velocity, and bullet material (lead, brass, bronze, combination. In my unscientific tests, the single decisive factor that would yeild straight line penetration was a meplat.

But, I'm preaching to the choir. Can anyone explain the physicial properties that makes a FN a better solid? Is it the case that although the effects are readily available for observation the causes are not yet understood? I'm convinced that the answer to the original question "Are old type big bore bullets (RN's) really that bad?" is "Yes - in comparison to a FNs we have today" but I'd like to know why.

/

world peace?

hunger?

saving the planet?

no...r.n. vs flat nose

carry on

flat nose and cup points rule!

Alf, you contradict yourself.

quote:

the permanenent channel (is) smaller in ogived projectiles once the velocity drops really low below 200 to 300 fps there is practically no channel at all

2. The faster the bullet passes through the tissue, the bigger the permanent wound channel.

No ! not true

See MacPherson p56 last paragraph.

quote:

3. At certain threshold speeds, the temporary wound channel starts contributing to the permanent wound channel.

??????????????????????????????????????????????
Where do you see this please illuminate at the hand of a specific study ?

MacPherson P58 to p63 which corresponds with what we saw in animal carcasses using 145gr FNs fired from 30-06 and 300 Win Mag at varying speeds.

Sure glad I mailed copies of the MacPherson book to Alf and Gerard. Otherwise what would they use to beat each other about the head and shoulders?