I bought some of cutting edge bullets after reading the terminal ballistic thread and the results on there rifles have been excellent. I bought some solids in .357,.44, .458, and .500. For my smith and wesson .500 i bought some 400 and 550 grain solid bullets. the 550 grain is originally used for a rifle so i was wondering how it would work for my smith and wesson. And any info on powder amounts? I generally use lil gun and H110. I figure if I can fire a 700 grain cast bullet a 550 grain solid punch bullet should not be an issue.

I would guess it all depends on what one wants to shoot with them.

Boar, Bison, Water buff, etc

should work well for that

I've just started testing the solids, but have to say I am thoroughly impressed with the Raptors. They just flat-out work on the small animals I've shot, but we'll see how they do on something with more mass.

I got some for the .45acp but will definitely be looking at the other calibers.

Tag to hear how they work in your revolvers. I have been thinking of ordering some in .44, .45 and .475.

-John

What is the length of the 550's and the loaded length? Also the length of your barrel for velocity guestimates.
I can plug it into Quickload and see what it spits out.
Quickload is not load data, but should be able to give you a good place to start, and work up from there.

Steel,

The 550's are going to be overkill in the S&W, one being to long also the bands are not designed for the pistol.

Just FYI brass is a no no in pistols.

The 400 grain solid will do everything you will ever need, I have the load data for these bullets shoot me a PM and I can email it to you.

BTW check down in the in the Terminal Performance Thread there is a write up about the performance on the raptors.

the barrel is 8 3/4 inch. not sure of the length of the bullet as it has not come yet. Why is brass not good for a pistol? i shoot punch bullets out of it all the time.

Those 550s are going to be really long. The Punch has a lead core, bringing the weight up without the additional length.

For example, Guessing at a bullet length of 1.111" with a nose length of .4" for a COAL of 2.024"
A 100% load density of 28gns of H110 should give close to 1300fps @ 48k psi. (Just a guess, not load data)

The COAL will be the big determining factor in your charge weight.

Did I mention that I really like Quick Load?
Just got version 3.8 with the new powders in it.

I will have to take a look at quick load. Sounds useful.

Steel,
PM Sent

Some of these CEB solids are extremely long even for a rifle and definitely too long for a revolver. Many rifles do not have a fast enough twist to stabilize them properly and penetration suffers accordingly.

quote:

Originally posted by Whitworth:
I've just started testing the solids, but have to say I am thoroughly impressed with the Raptors. They just flat-out work on the small animals I've shot, but we'll see how they do on something with more mass.

Significantly more so than a dirt-azz cheap proper hard cast?

quote:

Originally posted by Boxhead:

quote:

Originally posted by Whitworth:
I've just started testing the solids, but have to say I am thoroughly impressed with the Raptors. They just flat-out work on the small animals I've shot, but we'll see how they do on something with more mass.

Significantly more so than a dirt-azz cheap proper hard cast?

We shall see. I still use hardcast bullets for 80% of my hunting, but these Raptors seem to work really well. They are undoubtedly expensive, but the accuracy I have gotten from them alone may be worth the price of admission -- we'll see, as my testing has really just begun.

I shot these groups with the 220 grain Raptors out of my .480 SRH at 50 yards (pulled last shot on second group).






Shot a couple of small hogs with them a few weeks ago, but will test them on bigger critters soon.

quote:

Originally posted by Whitworth:
Shot a couple of small hogs with them a few weeks ago

Am curious to see what you thought of performance on the hogs, both from a meat hunter standpoint (did they create a mass amount of meat damage) and from the shear standpoint of effectiveness.