Speer has decided to quit making the solids in case you have any interest in them. Midway only had 375's yesterday and Natchez had some 416's yesterday.

I only have enough left for about 125 elephants. I hope it's enough!

What are you going to use after your 125 elephants?

I have a few boxes of these bullets, so as soon as Will has reported killing his 125th,k elephant, I will mail him half a dozen boxes

I guess they didn't sell very well, I suspect the cost is what held up sales as they were bloody expensive, and the fact that a GS flat point, BarnesX or most any solid today will do the job quite well..Just my opine on why they stopped production. Only elephant hunters bought them and only a few of them and elephant hunters don't make a deep track in the hunting scheme, they are few by number comparison.

Maybe now Speer will make available the Sledgehammer for reloaders...

Check www.gunaccessories.com they may still have some at 25/$134.95

Bull1

Lessee,
North Fork FP and CP solids for about one dollar per bullet.

GSC FN solids for about two dollars per bullet.

Speer AGS tungsten core solids for about five (5) dollars per bullet, and sometimes the tungsten penetrator rod leaves the brass jacket of the "solid" behind, they do come apart sometimes.

Failure proof solids like the FP, CP, and FN for 1/5 to 2/5 of the cost.

The North Forks are the best bargains in the world of game bullets. Best Triad ever, and easy on the pocketbook too:

Soft Point Semi-spitzer
Flat Point Solid
Cup Point Solid

Bye-bye Speer AGS "solid" and good riddance.

Tisk, tisk.

The unknowing preaching to the knowing. There must be a proverb that covers that.

quote:

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Originally posted by Will:
Tisk, tisk.

The unknowing preaching to the knowing. There must be a proverb that covers that.

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Will,
I'll bet your Momma was trying to squeeze the tsetse fly while it was still attached to your hide. "Squeeze those bug guts into little Will, and maybe he will go to sleep, a year long coma that is no sleep at all ..." I can just hear her thoughts.

Maybe she was PO'ed at Pondoro for leaving her to raise you all by herself in the bush of Mozambique.

I'll give that a 6 out of a possible 10. My Momma wants to see a better effort shown next time.

i know one of the fellas that helped start what became the ags... he was a machinist in the shop...

said that the failure/reject rate was ASTOUNDING, even on cnc machines, hand made, during production.

jeffe

The guy at Speer told me that they might as well write a check to every guy that wants to buy those bullets, as it would be cheaper than than producing them.

I shall shed a tear for the AGS solids.

If you shoot a .458 Win they are the way to go. In .375 they fall appart too often for my likeing, but in .458, I have never used or seen used anything better.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ganyana:
If you shoot a .458 Win they are the way to go. In .375 they fall appart too often for my likeing, but in .458, I have never used or seen used anything better.

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Aye, Ganyana, but that is only because the denser-than-lead tungsten cores allow for a shorter bullet and less wastage of the .458 case capacity. That would be a compromise situation, though a monometal copper FP or FN would be much more rugged than the AGS, they are also longer.

I have seen the 400 grain .416 AGS come apart: on 3/4 " mild steel plate, the whole brass jacket stays behind and the tungsten core drills approximately a .20 caliber hole through the steel.

Hi Rip

But there are mono's and mono's... I have a Barnes Super solid from a .458 Lott that mushroomed like a premium soft! (recovered from a heart shot on an ele two years ago on Proficiency exam). Many are a bit soft and equally others are too brittle. The PMPmono's often loose a chunk out of the back of the bullet and then they tumble! Velocity is no friend of mono's any more than conventional solids, and in any cartridge that is short of case capacity like the .458 or even 9,3x62 or .376 Styr monos are not a great option.

Ganyana,

You are just the man I wanted to talk too.

I purchased some new 465 grain A-Aquare .458 RN monometals.

They appear to be swaged rather than turned on a screw or CNC machine.

Have you heard of A-Square monometals mushrooming like a soft? If they are soft enough to swage in a die they might mushroom at the velocity I will be shooting them, about 2450-2500 fps I expect.

The Barnes RN solids I tested were very hard but not hard enough to shatter. But they have obviously been turned.

I think the shorter monos w SD of circa .300 rather than .330 are much les likely to tumble or bend.

Thanks in advance. Andy

I wonder about the A2 solids myself. There are about 30 types of bronze/brass alloys available in common resources like McMaster-Carr. The A2 solids I've seen appear to be bearing bronze and they support that by claiming the "leaded" quality of thier alloy is easy on barrels. The Barnes monos appear to be a stricter brass alloy, generally harder and less ductile. In my penetration tests in saltwater, bronze alloy lathe turned solids are wont to deform slightly. Velocity and nose profile are also factors. I've only tried two alloys so far but prefer brass to bronze even if it's harder on the barrel, terminal ballistic results being paramount.

I liked the idea behind the AGS but have noticed they either work great or split and loose the core. And, for the cost of five boxes, you can get a mini-lathe and rod stock and turn all the monos you want.

Ganyana,
True. I like the copper FP/North Fork and FN/GSC. My limited testing on buffalo, water buckets, and umbrella thorn tree trunks shows them to be laser straight penetrators.

mikefairbanks,
Now you have me wanting a "mini-lathe" and some copper rods for X-mas.

Gotta agree with Andy on stopping around 0.300 on sectional density with the monometals.
Cheers!

Will or any other interested party.

The last time I was in one of the better shops in town I saw a few boxes of the AGS solids. Corpus, despite it's size, can be a bit of a backwater town so things like this usually stay on the shelf for a while. If anyone is interested I can verify if they are still there and purchase them for you.

Regards,
Eric

Mike,

Tell me about your penetration tests.

What caliber, velocity and nose profile?

I have some old shot up 12 x 12 inch 3/4 inch plywood boards I am going to shoot the A-Square and NF FN into, but its so expensive to shoot water only RIP (or elephant/500 grains) has done it so far!

The wood is too hard probably but if it does not deform in that it wont on jumbo.

Let us know what youve done, would you?

Andy

Andy,

Someone who used to post here shot a bunch of oak trees with the AGS solid and the tungsten rod kept breaking loose and going a different direction from the rest of the bullet. But buffalo are not made of oak.

You would know.

The tungsten penetrator will separate through the nose of the bullet casing in AP bullets. Thats the whole idea. The heavier and harder core has no problem perforating soft copper or even B50 Rockwell steel jacket.

Ron is correct in saying that is a problem and a psossibility with the AGS.

How often would this happen in critters? Dont know, but Ive shot up enough armored vehicles to know I would not choose an AP design as my first choice on an elephant skull, hunerus, or pelvis.

The wood is a torture test for sure. But a confidence builder for me.

I would ask any bullet to survive hitting a buffalos horn, and then have to kill the buff. The NF soft and CP should do that.

For jumbo, I just dont know.

What would you use to sort out the wheat from the chaff (other than a dead elephant!)?

Andy

Barnes has some nice solids as well. Flat metplat and driving bands.

Hi Andy

The A square mono's are the only ones I have never seen a problem with. I belive they are a bronz rather than brass (Zinc and iron in them according to our metal lab, as well as copper and tin).

They are still the standard issue here for our parks service. We began running out of some calibers a few years back and I had a whole bunch of flat nosed solids with three narrow driving bands turned up out of 90/10 brass to replace them.

Not as good, and they do deform on heavy bone, but work well in .404 and .425 W-R. They have always got through!

Some of the .458 Win loads are showing signs of age but we still have 150 000 rounds of .375 and 500 000 rounds of 30-06 mono's in stock if we ever start culling again.

NB love the ASquare lion load- for leopard. Never on lion!

Andy / Ganyana,
The A-Square monos are turned on a CNC machine and they are currently available in all calibers from the company.

TCCI makes a bronze solid that works very well. I understand they used to make the solids for A2.

When did they stop production?

Years ago, we had an argument here on what bullet will penetrate a 1" thikc steel plate.

Here are the results, and the only bullet that actually went through was the tunsten insert of the Speer AGS.

Great photo, Saeed.

Makes me glad I have a couple of boxes of .375/300gr. AGS on the shelf.

George

If those eles and buff ever start wearing armored plate, I'm ready!!

quote:

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Originally posted by Saeed:
Years ago, we had an argument here on what bullet will penetrate a 1" thikc steel plate.

Here are the results, and the only bullet that actually went through was the tunsten insert of the Speer AGS.



http://www.accuratereloading.com/sp5.jpg
http://www.accuratereloading.com/sp6.jpg
http://www.accuratereloading.com/sp15.jpg

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Saeed,
That is exactly what I experienced on steel shooting too. Did you have to dodge any returning bullet fragments?

However I find that no recommendation for elephant hunting.

Ganyana has also reported his elephant simulator testing where the Speer AGS exits the side of the pack when it comes apart.

The Barnes X .375/300gr seems to have done a lot of damage.

Is that the remnants of the bullet still sitting in the crater? How is that?

This would seem to be more a recommendation for a monometal copper FN or FP when it comes to tissue and bone.

Not just duck the bloody things, but I had to be ready to pick them off the carpet and put them in a metal container.

I have two patches burned in my carpet in the shooting room!

After the first one came back, I fired the next shots half standing,a nd ducked to teh side as soon as I pulled the trigger.

The rest of the crew were outside, looking from behind hardened glass, and making all sorts of remarks on my mental state!

Saeed,

I cannot believe you were not using a very long string.

quote:

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Originally posted by Saeed:
Not just duck the bloody things, but I had to be ready to pick them off the carpet and put them in a metal container.

I have two patches burned in my carpet in the shooting room!

After the first one came back, I fired the next shots half standing,a nd ducked to teh side as soon as I pulled the trigger.

The rest of the crew were outside, looking from behind hardened glass, and making all sorts of remarks on my mental state!

---

This confirms my suspicion that YOU ARE ALL CRAZY!

I have shot up T-54, T-55, BMP-1, BMP-2, BTR-60/70/80, M-113, M-114, Amphibius landing craft, Panhard armored cars, ambulances, duece and a half trucks, parked and low-flying aircraft, and various other moving steel (and aluminum) targets but I was several hundred meters away!!!!!

The AGS is great for case capacity challenged ctgs like the 416 Taylor and 458 Win mag. Will knows what he is doing, and leave it at that. No bullet is perfect.

I see it now, The Old Elephant Hunters Nursing Home. Will recieves a care package from his long lost nephew, Saeed. 100 more .416 AGS solids. While the other gummers swallow mashed potatoes and gravy, Will plans his 125th elephant hunt!

Thats living.

Andy

Out of curiosity, the tungsten core comprises what percentage of the total bullet weight?

Would it be better and or cheaper to increase the tungsten core size and weight and use a polymer sabot rather than the copper/lead "jacketing"? If the lead/copper "jacket" is going to separate from the core why go through the hassle and expense of trying to bond them together.

Eric

If the polymer coating could withstand the rifling, maybe.

The separation of the tungsten from the jacket is more urbam legend than reality, except for 1" steel plate. Of the many I have recovered, all were re-useable, if the rifling grooves don't bother you.

This is a A-square 458-465...Looks like a turned bullet to me.

k

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
The separation of the tungsten from the jacket is more urbam legend than reality...

No, it's reality.