what is the maximum amount you can increase, by paper patching a bullet,.002,.005?

You may want to read Ross Seyfried's article in "Handloader," issue #220 as he describes how you can significantly increase the diameter of a cast or jacketed bullet to fit an odd-sized or obsolete caliber.

thanks for info,will do search ,sean h

Aladin:

me;

Paper patching is as you say. Two wraps of high quality cotton fiber paper is best and works well. It is tedious to prepare patches and time consuming to wrap bullets but results are reliable if a man has the time.

Also, balistic BC is improved over compareable grease groove bullets because the sides are smooth and more aerodynamicly efficient.

you;

Another practice is wrapping the slug with teflon taper aka pipe lube tape.. Some report is works well.

me;

This is one I never had any luck with at all. IMO the teflon tape is too soft, breaks down in the bore and provides the bullet with no guidance.

Good afternoon,
Forrest

I hear you Forrest-- never tried the tape method either. A friend of a friend reported good results.

PP'n is something I might try someday.... I would think a sabot makes more sense though.

Aladin, Forrest: I believe teflon tape was originally used as a substitute for lubing CB's. The idea being the "slippery" teflon would reduce friction between the CB and the bore. To increase CB diameter a la paper patching will require an awful lot of tape in comparison to paper. I've tried teflon "patches," but wasn't impressed enough to try them again. ...Maven

Teflon patching was touted at one time as a way you could use pure lead bullets for hunting. The tape is thin enough so you can put two wraps on a normal diameter bullet for the caliber and size. Seemed to work for pistol, but I could not find any tape wide enough for the bearing surface of the rifle bullets I wanted to use. I was not real interested and did not look real hard, though.

Much the same goes for paper patching. It took me a very brief trial of paper patching .313 diameter bullets to try to get them to work in a .318 barrel to convince me that it would be easier to find .318 bullets.

If you are interested in this stuff for its own sake, more power to you. I love a good lunatic project myself. These things may be well worth doing, but they don't seem to be a simple solution for a minor problem.

Paper Patching, an example, This is a .450 diameter, 510 grain swaged bullet, 3% tin, wrapped with two wraps of .0015 tracing paper, loaded on top of 33 grains of Reloader 7, in a Marlin 1895 Cowboy Gun. Muzzel velocity of about 1425 fps, shot at a wet sand berm at about 20 yards. FWIW.

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4290830869

Muffin............

I never doubted it worked, Muffin.

I just pointed out that to me it was not worth the effort it would take to make it work.

There are a lot of things like that.

Back when I was shooting a Siamese Mauser converted to .45-70 and wanted to cast some expanding bullets for it, I took some pure lead conicals I had around for a .36 C&B and rigged a stand to hold a Lyman ladle over a propane torch and went to casting in a Lee 405 grain HP mould with my normal alloy. When the lead melted and was good and hot, I'd cast a .45-70 bullet with 130 grains of pure lead nose and an alloy base.

Those bullets gave dramatic expansion in wet phone books and decent hunting accuracy. Never did shoot deer with one, but have no doubts they would have worked fine.

I'm not saying my way is better than yours or even as good, but it was good enough for my purposes. No special mould, no swaging, no template, no trying different papers and lubes.

I'm all about easy when it works.

I actually just read the article on patching with Teflon, Handloader #86 1980. Bought some old issues. The teflon was used and recomended to push cast bullets at 2700 to 3000 fps. This was the cast answer to molly coated jacketed. They were to be sized with gas checks applied after they were wraped. These were full sized cast bullets. I would like to tell 475/480 that what I have learned is that it is best not to think in terms of patching up. think in terms of a jacketed bullet. the paper is the jacket and the core must ride the bore or just engrave on the rifling. The depth of the rifling is the thickness of the paper jacket you can use. each type of barrel has its own requirement. You can use softer bullets with pp but you still need a harder bullet to hold together at 3000fps. I don't know if lead would stay together at that speed. Best of luck, Give PP a try, it will mess with your head in ways you can not immagine. JB

Lead can be thrown that fast, but it needs to be harder than pure lead, the biggest problem is getting them to withstand the centrifical or centripetal, I never know which is right anymore, forces. Longer, smaller caliber bullets can literally spin their noses off at higher revs.

Aladin, Muffin is on track with what he said. Give me a couple of days to round up the reference if you don't mind. Pure lead or alloy up to about 3% tin can move up to about 2000 fps when paper patched, near 3000 fps with relatively high BHN alloy, this activity being mostly suitable for target shooting. Perhaps being snow bound for long periods leads people to such endeavors???

I'm not aware of the thing you refer to as slumping, certainly not to the degree it would cause a bullet to resemble a wad cutter. As to bullets comming unstrung in flight(throwing off tips), this is a documented occurrance primarily associated with atttempts to drive spitzer or semi spitzer bullets of cast/swaged lead at high velocities and with conventional twist rates. The unsupported nose can't take the ride down the barrel and after exiting the muzzle it seems the acrobatics exceed the tensile strength of lead or alloy. Conventional lead roundnose bullets do not seem to be affected by this, especially in rifles designed for shooting lead bullets in the first place(read: slow twist).

My final .02 worth: Paper patch IS worth the effort, and if one takes the trouble to set up for it there is precious little effort required. I patch about 50-70 bullets an hour when I'm on the roll, and recently fired a .86" 100 yd group using 300 gr pure lead in a Ruger 77/44. MV 1530 fps, penetration about 18" in damp loam(berm), expansion to .8"+, retained weight averages about 295 gr. Okay, I cheated, it was off a rest. Do I get extra credit for using a dot sight? They are in my opinion the ORIGINAL premium bullet.

I'll be back with that reference.

Okay, the results of a partially sucessful trip to my displaced library.

Handloader's Digest, 1996 15th ED., "The death of a myth" by Jim Foral. Subject is accuracy with pointy lead bullets. He references tests done years ago wherein such projectiles were fired and recovered undamaged by impact(no, he does not explain how). Unsupported nose sections of spitzer shaped bullets were grossly distorted by rotational forces. This using soft lead alloys.

Mr. Foral found suitable accuracy with such shapes when fired in the range of 1600-2100 fps with more conventional alloys. About half of his loads fired 100 yd groups under 2". Of the other half groups were poor. In many cases they failed to strike the target at all, and this was generally associated with higher velocities. There is a photo of one bullet he recovered that has an unsupported nose design and is "warped(?)", but he does not make assertions regarding why, nor comment about the missing tip section. It appears due to impact damage as it is a fracture.

The down side is that I could not locate the article I was looking for sooooo, when I do I'll get in touch. I hate it when that happens. One comment on the subject before closing. There are a number of small bore bullets that have speed limits due to structural limitations, one being the Hornady .224 Hornet. It will disentigrate at velocities above 3600 fps when fired thru a conventional twist barrel. This occurs with a jacketed bullet w/ alloy core. Imagine(or calculate if you desire) what the angular momentum would be for a .30 cal banana shaped piece of dead soft lead(180 gr) originally in spitzer form doing 180,000 rpm. Keep in mind that those RPM may, at some point in the gyrations, be perpindicular to the longitudinal axis of the bullet.

"He references tests done years ago wherein such projectiles were fired and recovered undamaged by impact(no, he does not explain how)"

Then you go on to state/assume--- "Unsupported nose sections of spitzer shaped bullets were grossly distorted by rotational forces. This using soft lead alloys"

Those are your conclusions...

Then-- "a photo of one bullet he recovered that has an unsupported nose design and is "warped(?)", but he does not make assertions regarding why, nor comment about the missing tip section. It appears due to impact damage as it is a fracture"

Again-- that author makes no conclusions, because in that scenario he can't conclusively prove anything.

Sincerely meant-- you need to study the meaning of obturation. And granted there's many poor explainers of this on the net. Then you might understand what I mean by the term 'slump'.

It's impossible to do what your imply-- once that 'soft' slug gets to such speeds, the inertia forces at ignition and acceleration down the barrel flatten the nose/bend it out of line anyways.. Usually that soft lead alloy is failing to take the rifling anyway at those kinda speeds-- ie- slugging.

[ 02-02-2003, 00:48: Message edited by: aladin ]

There are indeed others that tend to agree with the notion that RPM can distort bullets, even in the jacketed versions. If this is so then it certainly could be possible with the 'softer' kind.

I quote:

High Speed Varmint Bullets
Many traditional frangible varmint bullets have velocity restrictions. When they are driven from ultra-high velocity cartridges such as the .220 Swift or .22-250 they would sometimes come apart in flight and never even make it to the target. The extremely high acceleration of these high velocity varmint cartridges puts incredible forces on the base of the bullet and base deformation and failure is one of the primary causes of high velocity in-flight bullet disintegration. The problem of in-flight failure is also compounded by the centrifugal forces of high velocity, which increases bullet rpm as velocity rises.

http://www.edershunting.com/publication/2000/September/Plastic/default.cfm

And Another:

The Crucial Twist Rate Choice
In these various applications, rifling twist rates will vary a great deal. Most hunting rifles will have a 1-in-12 (or 1-in-14 in some early rifles) twist, while competition rifles are often as fast as a 1-in-7 twist. Some, such as the Colt HBAR Sporter, split the difference with a 1-in-9 twist. The twist rates are a prime consideration in reloading the round. A twist of 1-in-14 will not stabilize a 55-grain bullet very well, and at least a 1-in-12 rate is needed for bullets of this weight. The heavy bullets used for long-range target shooting, such as the 80-grain Sierra projectile, will require a 1-in-7 twist to stabilize. Any bullet of more than 60 grains will likely shoot better with at least a 1-in-9 twist.

Conversely, the 1-7 twist is too fast for most varmint-weight bullets and those designed for fragmentation on contact with the target. When fired at full velocity, the Speer TNT, Hornady SX or V-Max, or the Sierra Blitz will tear apart in flight from the centrifugal force of the too-fast rotational velocity. I have fired Hornady 40-grain V-Max factory loads in a Colt HBAR with a 1-in-9 twist with excellent results. This twist should provide a good compromise for shooters looking to use the long 60- to 70-grain bullets while still providing excellent results with bullets as light as 40 grains.

http://www.gun-tests.com/performance/oct96remington.html

FWIW - Muffin

[ 02-02-2003, 02:40: Message edited by: muffin ]

Q- What does a varmint bullet doing 3900-4000 have to do with a cast bullet moving half that speed??

A- Almost nothing.

To be honest as well as candid-- this whole thing is a waste of time. Reading net blurbs here and there does not suffice as to knowledge-- if you do not understand the circumstances which lead to these bullet failures.

It happens I also have extensive experience with the 220 Swift, three rifles and thousands of rds. Bullet failure can and does happen shooten bullets made for the 222 or similar speed cartridges if driven fast in the Swift. The jackets aren't strong enough for those pressures and forces, some of which are indeed rotational. But the failure of the jacket in the barrel itself is primary.

Never had a bullet fail meant for shooten in the Swift though, mostly the Sierra 52 HPBT Match.

Another 'bullet failure' feature seldom mentioned with the high velocity 22's-- just nicking a blade of grass at those speeds can blow a bullet. Not deflect-- I mean blow. This I've seen several times-- the pattern on the target looks like a fine bird shot pattern otta a 22 RF shell.

Hey sport, how 'bout you go perform an unnatural act with yourself.

I have to agree with the damaged (by rifling engraving)is part of the high speed bullet blow ups,I have fired saboted .224" 40gr hornet bullets at close to 4000fps in my 30-06 and they have always made it to the target intact.the same bullet has failed a few times in my mild shooting .223 rem at around 32-3300 fps.doesn`t help with the p-p type question originally asked but I at least have had experience with them,also have used teflon tape in lube grooves of my .458" fbhp with acceptable results,not as good as my normal lubes (tumble first with moly,then lube w\oversize die to apply lyman super moly)strange combo but never get even a few specks of lead in my cast bullet guns.can I go do an unnatural act with myself? please?

AS quoted by aladin

"Q- What does a varmint bullet doing 3900-4000 have to do with a cast bullet moving half that speed??

A- Almost nothing"

Well if jacketed bullets can be spun apart, you reckon softer, lead bullets, can too, at maybe even lower rotational rates?

AT any rate, I'm done with this conversation it's getting boring now. I offered information recognized by, at the very least, several others. You on the other hand chide me for finding and refrencing on line articles while you suggest the same in an earlier post. Earlier you quoted a 'friend of a friend' and provide neither the how or the what, and you then corrected 'Digital Dan' for doing the same.

475/480 Read the articles by Seyfried, get a copy of the book ' The Paper jacket' by Matthews, paper patching can be fun, and it's a usefull reloading technique.

IMHO Gene

"Well if jacketed bullets can be spun apart, you reckon softer, lead bullets, can too, at maybe even lower rotational rates?"

What's somewhat frustrating in this thread is the comparison of apples, say like to oranges. Show me a cast bullet going 3900-4000 FPS???

Some experience with actually shooting cast bullets vs reading various blurbs on the net would be helpful.. Your connnecting dots that don't fit in the same realm.

FWIW-- by the time a soft cast bullet is reaching speeds where obturation slump is affecting accuracy, the bullet fails to hold in the rifling INSIDE the barrel anyway. This is termed slugging-- which to some extent happens with jacketed slugs also. You can't drive a cast bullet fast enough to make a nose 'twist' off-- the bullet slugs first inside the bore, exits in a deformed state and tumbles......

So why bother with this trivia?? Simple. There's a good number of new cast shooters etc who might see the rationale behind what I'm saying. Understanding the why's of shooten cast in the long run has to help a guy shooting cast when problems arise.

Tips twisting off?? Take a spitzer nosed 55 gr slug in the Swift with the nose tip showing lead. What does happen with those high speeds is the soft bullet nose slumps back flat due to acceration AND the resistance of the air inside the barrel [almost the effect of hitting a wall]. These larger exposes noses CAN flatten to the extent of having small wings remaining on the nose with the lead flowing around the jacket material, and I'd think the effects of rotation could conceivably spin them off-- that and the effects of air resistance---- IF, those lead wings had flattened enough at acceleration in the bore.