A friend likes to use the Speer 235 grain bullet in his 375 H&H rifle, but he does not get very good accuracy with it.

So I decided to make him a very light, expanding bullet.

I ended up with a 185 grain, which he named CRATER POINT!

And while talking about what it might do, I decided to go the whole hop and do a penetration test.

We made a box 6 feet long, as you can see.

Made partitions in it for different materials.

We thought of having materials that are easy to use, and available.

My first thought was to use silicone sealant with sand, and make blocks of it.

Our first attempt was 2 inch thick blocks, which took a week to dry!

Next we tried about 1/2 an thick, and this worked great.

We also have a stock of modeling clay, so made blocks out of this too.

My intention is to use these alternating, with 6mm MDF boars separating them.

I made bullets in various weights, from 185 to 300 grains.

Both HP and solids.

The beauty of a CNC machine is I can have the exact same bullet made, with a hollow point or without, at the touch of a button!

We are assembling everything right now, and I will post the results as we go along.

The 2 bullets on the right with a super deep crimp groove. Is the deep groove designed to make the bullet break in half?

The groove is just behind where the major cavity stops, and there is a smaller hollow point going further.

What really happens is still a mystery to us.

We will just have to wait and see.

The groups above are with this and a 270 grain HP.

These were at around 1860 fps, and the 270 was just over 2000 fps.

I will see how fast we can get them in our rifle.

What are the bullets coated with ?

The expansion in that material will be greater then in flesh.

The penetration will be less

Why don't you just buy some ballistic gel and be done with it.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
The expansion in that material will be greater then in flesh.

The penetration will be less

Why don't you just buy some ballistic gel and be done with it.

Not available here.

quote:

Originally posted by leemar28:
What are the bullets coated with ?

Spay on Molly.

Should be very interesting.
What stops a bullet better, modeling clay or silicone-sand ?



For future reference:

A +300-gr (?) FN Small Meplat

B 270-gr (?) HP

C ???-gr FN Small Meplat

D ???-gr HP

E ???-gr Wasp Waist FN Big Meplat

F 185-gr Crater Point

It would help to know the bullet weights and diameters of the meplats, when interpreting the penetration results for whatever velocities.
Surely that will be forthcoming.

This going to be interesting! Brian

We use normal copper rods supplied by the building trade for earthing.

They are 100% copper.

But, the weight of the copper can vary somewhat.

When I made the original bullets, they were made to a specific weight, which is really governed by the length of the bullet, as the diameter is constant.

The current lot of copper we are using is slightly heavier - the 300 grain bullets are weighing slightly heavier - some by as much as 5 grains more.

What I do is separate the bullets by weight.

Also, the difference between the weights of the hollow points and flat points is different, as you can imagine.

Largest weight difference in design is in the crater point!

The crater point weighs roughly 185 grains, and the non crater point one weighs in at 250 grains.

I will set the box at 50 yards, and I will shoot groups of 3 shots, then see where the bullets end up, and I will put down the weights of the actual bullets shot in that group.

The rifle is a Sako 85L stainless with a laminated stock, it was given to me by a friend.

I will set u a Gopro camera above the open ox, might be interesting to see what happens.

Looking forward to it.

Saeed, I love this experiment.

If I were to pull ten .375 caliber, 272 grain Hirtenberger ABC bullets, and send them to you, would you be able to include them in your tests?

They are the best expanding bullets I have ever used.

Infallible.

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Saeed, I love this experiment.

If I were to pull ten .375 caliber, 272 grain Hirtenberger ABC bullets, and send them to you, would you be able to include them in your tests?

They are the best expanding bullets I have ever used.

Infallible.

Hirtenberger. Not since the late 60s early 70s have I heard that name.

It was Hirtenberger 270 brass when I fist saw an issue with CRF and it was M17 30/06s rebarreled to 270. The extractor groove was to shallow on the Hirtenberger brass for the CRF extractor. Sako 270, no problem.

Saeed, I can't believe that you don't have any stores that sell cooking gelatin.

If you mix cooking gelatin at about 10%-20% by weight (I think that's the standard percentage, the FBI calibrates with a airgun pellet for density) you can make "ballistic gelatin"

It has to be cheaper than using silicone and boards...

quote:

Originally posted by Mike McGuire:

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Saeed, I love this experiment.

If I were to pull ten .375 caliber, 272 grain Hirtenberger ABC bullets, and send them to you, would you be able to include them in your tests?

They are the best expanding bullets I have ever used.

Infallible.

Hirtenberger. Not since the late 60s early 70s have I heard that name.

It was Hirtenberger 270 brass when I fist saw an issue with CRF and it was M17 30/06s rebarreled to 270. The extractor groove was to shallow on the Hirtenberger brass for the CRF extractor. Sako 270, no problem.

Yeah, they’ve stopped making it. But my stash just keeps on working and killing in both CRFs and push feeds.

Guess I must have got the only good ones.

With my experience of Hirtenberger ammo, I refuse to shoot it any more.

I have tried 223, 7mm Mag and 375 H&H.

Every single one I tried was way over maximum.

This experiment is basically for our own bullets.

I do have some other makes, and I might do that later if time permits.

Not ammo, only bullets.

But it’s your experiment. It was just a suggestion.

I have Hirtenberger ammo in .375 H&H Mag., 7mm Rem. Mag., 7x57mmR, 7.62x51mm, .357 Mag. and I think a couple of other calibers I can’t remember off the top of my head.

All of it is top notch.

Saeed, I think your chambers are tight!

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Not ammo, only bullets.

But it’s your experiment. It was just a suggestion.

I have Hirtenberger ammo in .375 H&H Mag., 7mm Rem. Mag., 7x57mmR, 7.62x51mm, .357 Mag. and I think a couple of other calibers I can’t remember off the top of my head.

All of it is top notch.

Saeed, I think your chambers are tight!

May be yours a bit loose Mike!

There was lots of Hirtenberger stuff in Australia in the very late 60s and very early 70s. Also lots of Norma powders, bullets and brass including a straight 2.85" H&H brass.

This is one of our modeling clay boards.

And while waiting for the silicone and sand boards to dry, I made a batch of 375 caliber bullets.

I segregate them by weight, each box in this lot has a weight variation of 0.098%!

quote:

With reference to this photo: Are you also planning to test the penetration and expansion in chocolate cake?

Wisecracks notwithstanding, I'm very interested to see how this turns out. You might be able to improve the consistency of your copper by ordering a bar with a guaranteed analysis. We used to buy beryllium copper bars for making electrodes. While the analysis was guaranteed, I will admit that we never checked the specific weight, since it wasn't critical to our application.

I'm looking forward to the results with the gaping hollowpoint bullet.

My wife makes an absolutely delicious chocolate cake, but I somehow doubt she would make enough for me to use for this test.

And I have no wish top spend hours and hours cleaning my shooting tunnel of the mess that will develop.

A kind friend actually went as far as to get specific copper from the US.

It was very good, but, very expensive by the time we got it here.

And in practical terms, it was not any better than the cheap copper we can get locally.

The bullets we made from it were just as accurate as the ones we make from locally supplied copper.

For our operation, where every single bullet is actually measured, and weighed, our locally available copper is just fine.

I got some messages about the above targets and the boxes we use for our bullets.

The boxes are just plain plastic containers w get from the supermarket.

We make the separators from 4 mm MDF boards on our milling machine.

The two targets I were just a trial to see my guess as to the velocity - I wanted to start from around 2,000 fps.

The top target, with the 270 grain bullet, was 50 grains of H4895 and had a velocity of 1955 fps.

The second one is with the 185 grain bullet, 45 grains of H4895 and was 1813 fps.

Funny thing is I found a box of very old Winchester Magnum primers. The ones which were in a blue box, and the cup seems to be made of brass.

I will post details of all loads tested.

I will shoot 3 rounds of each, and check for penetration and expansion, if any.

I am going to set up a camera above the box.

As a friend here mentioned yesterday, "we are going to have information overload".

Poor man, who does not shoot, nor reloads, so has no clue of what he is missing!

Chocolate cake attracts Walter like flies to honey.
Using it as a bullet test medium would be very risky to Walter ...
Great idea !

First results.

I will post complete details and how far they penetrated at the end of the test.

Powder used was H4895.

Looks like the sand has thoroughly abraded those bullets. I have to think it is reducing penetration to a significant extent.

Saeed,

At what distance are you shooting the test media? Also, at what distance is the chrono results?

Thanks

Great start.
You know they work at low velocity, but was there any doubt ?
No, the Crater Point will "mushroom" at much lower velocity than 1800 fps.
Interesting how the 2000-2100-ish-fps loads expanded the noses a bit wider and left some folded back petal remnants,
while the 1800-ish-fps loads snapped off the petals more cleanly with less bulging of front of the remnant bullet.
HIGHER VELOCITY PLEASE.

Bout dry time, acetico silicon mixer with water ( only some drop need) dry very fast

Chronograph is at 21 feet.

Targets at 50 yards.

This particular bullet is done.

Velocities were:

2244 fps
2406 fps
2570 fps
2701 fps
2876 fps
3056 fps.

I will post photos later.

Hi Saeed
An interesting test.
Looks like quite a stern test for the bullets.
How far into the test media did the bullets travel ?
How straight was bullet tracking overall ?
Cheers
Grant

Did any bullets exit the trap and hit acoustic tiles ?
Some stopped sideways in the silicone-sand blocks ?

Full details will posted at the end of the test.

The test media must be very tough, as they don't seem to penetrate very far.

Generally they maintained their straight path, very slight deviation that does not make that much of a difference.

The test box is 6 feet long - non so far have gone even half that!

6mm MDF board
2 inch silicone sand mix.
6mm MDF
1.5 inch modelling clay
6mm MDF
2 inch silicone sand mix
6mm MDF
1.5 inch modeling clay
6mm MDF
1 inch silicone sand mix
6mm MDF
1.5 inch modeling clay

And so on.

I have been asked to test other bullets too, including factory ammo.

I might do that, time permitting.

There is a possibility that 6 feet of the
Dubai Box
might stop a .375/ 300-gr FN copper solid
at 2700 to 2800 fps.

The lower velocity bullets appear to be in peak, expanded form.

I suspect that may be because of the tough, sandy test media. It really tears up the high velocity bullets.

It will be interesting to find out if the variation in penetration is irregular, or is proportional to velocity.

Choice of test media is an interesting subject in itself. I believe it was Ross Seyfried who once tested bullet penetration using ballistic gelatin in which he embedded large cattle bones during the curing process!

I wonder if annealing your bullets after turning would make them mushroom and hold together better without fragmenting at low velocities.
Anneal, tumble and then moly coat.