Well Deer season has finally ended, and I can get back to shooting and reloading. first on my agenda was to try out the soft nose cast bullets which my father in law and I cast up a few weeks ago. The results were quite impressive. The bullet is lyman 457193 and weighs 420 grains. The nose is cast out of pure lead with remainder being wheel weight. Lacking a proper test medium we decided to use 5 gallon buckets of sand. Not a true representation of game, but a tough test for a bullet. I fired 2 soft nose bullets loaded to 1250 fps, 2 at 1500 fps, and then fired a factory rem 405 gr. as well as the same 420gr bullet cast out of solid wheel weight for comparisons. The rem 405 weighed 400 grs and formed a classic mushroom .800� in diameter. The solid WW bullet fired at 1250 fps weighed 378 gr., and had expanded to .650�. The soft nose cast @1250fps weighed 400 gr. and was mushroomed in classic form but farther back on the shank than the rem 405, measuring .850�. The soft nose @ 1500 was very impressive, the bullet almost turned inside out, the base of the bullet was well inside the the �head� of the mushroom, weight was 360 gr., and it measured over 1 inch in diameter! Now this is a very limited test and not nessicary an accurate test of bullet performance on game but I found it informative. I plan to try this again with some harder base portion to see if that makes any difference, and also try different caliber's, 348, 30, and 375. Hope fully will have some pictures to post as well.

What is the best way post pictures here, I have never done this before. Thanks for any help
Jerry

The images have to be put up on a web server somewhere else. Then you put the URL to the image in your message with the "IMAGE" button on the "Post A Reply" page.

hmmmmm..... I would like to see these bullets. Who can afford the jacketed slugs? (At least for a lot of shooting.) How did you do this? Have you ever paper patched a soft lead slug and tried the same thing. Thanks, Dale

I am still not sure how to do the picture thing. I dont know how to put them on a server. Perhaps I could e-mail them to some one who could post them?. As far as make them it as simple as pour in a small portion of pure lead and then top off the mold with your usual alloy.
Jerry

you may email them to me and i will post them for you.HTH 45nut@mynra.com

Ok Folks,
Here is one of jerry pics,once it it here he can supply all the particulars so--->>>


HTH 45nut

Liking that alot got to give it a go. Thanks
Don

Thank you 45 nut for getting that picture on here. That picture is of the 420 soft nose bullet at a speed of 1250fps. One of the other pictures is of a plain ww bullet from the same mold fire into the same bucket and an rem 405 factory bullet and the difference is amazing.
jerry

Here are a couple more of jerry's pics..




45nut

JerryW, Although your test showed great expansion and most likely great expectations on deer, Your penetration is going to be very bad. At the slower speeds of BPCR's any over expansion will cause the bullet to lose the penetration on any but a perfect lung shot. I have many-many deer taken with .44 mag. and .45 colt revolvers and one so far with the 45-70 BFR revolver. I have tested all kinds of bullets from the XTP's to softnose boolits like yours. (I have the original LBT softnose pot) The nose of the 457193 will benefit from the softnose as it does not have a large meplat so you might be ok. However my very best results have been with a very large, flat meplat and a hard cast boolit. The LBT style 's are the best for hunting. The last deer I killed had entry and exit holes the same size with no meat damage, but the lungs were destroyed and the heart blown in half. The deer went 30 feet.
I am not saying your boolits won't work and they might just be devastating on medium game but I have been disappointed in some bullets that stopped in deer. Although they killed the deer, I keep thinking of what would happen with a raking shot or one that hits a big bone. I have killed 60 or more deer with round balls from muzzle loaders and any recovered balls did not show much expansion. Now if they were driven faster so they flattened into a disk, then they would be no good at all. Most of these soft boolits that I tested in sand and water showed the same results you achieved but did not perform so good on deer.
When you shoot a bunch of big game with these, see and measure all results from every type of hit, then get back to us, it will help form better opinions. I won't say yes or no about them because every boolit style is different. Don't look for super expansion. Moderate expansion or a large meplat will be better because these bullets are already big enough. For a small meplat, I would reduce the pure lead section so just the end of the nose expands and test on animals, not sand.
Keep us posted and good luck.