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yes round noses and slow twists work...but do you want what is the best by todays research?

even a %5 diff will make you chose one over the other.

quote:

Originally posted by boom stick:
yes round noses and slow twists work...but do you want what is the best by todays research?

even a %5 diff will make you chose one over the other.

Don't forget price and availibilty as well.

ALF one of these days we need to get together with some 18 y/o single malts and review history for my benefit.

I pity all those old timers as they did not have chronographs and self appointed, anonomous internet ballistics experts to tell them that their bullets were no good. All they had were ample hunting opportunities and piles of dead animals on which to judge whether or not their bullets worked.

quote:

Originally posted by 458Win:
I pity all those old timers as they did not have chronographs and self appointed, anonomous internet ballistics experts to tell them that their bullets were no good. All they had were ample hunting opportunities and piles of dead animals on which to judge whether or not their bullets worked.

Poor Taylor, Anderson, Sutherland, Finch-Hatton, Blixen, Powell-Cotten, Boyes, et al. Poor bastards never knew how many times they got killed shooting all those elephants with ordinary nickel-jacketed round nose solids. They were all well and truly dead (none by game) by the time the first steel jacketed solids were introduced. Yep, those guys proved that a man has a death wish if he doesn't use mono flat nosed solids out of a fast twist barrel!
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"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

Forgot to add, thanks for the article ALF. Honestly I enjoy reading about history.

quote:

So the question is, have we collectively gone mad in our descent into the minutua of the quest for perfection?

I can't speak for those that hunted many years ago but I'd like to assume that they did the same as we do.....they looked for the best they could get at the time.....same as us!

I cannot speak about bullets for DG hunting as I've not done this but there is another argument that is totally valid and that is for hunting animals under 350 pounds. Deer for instance.....and it goes like this...yesterday's bullets are completely and totally adequate for the game as dead is dead and yesterday's corelokts, interlocks, hot cores, power points etc do the job very well. One gains little or nothing by shooting a "buck-a-piece" bullet at them.

The game changes however when we start talking big and dangerous game. I want a premium bullet for this as I have to shellout a bundle to hunt this stuff. The best may be only marginally better than yesterday's stuff but I'm willing to pay for the best in these instances. This means even if it's proven that the best is minimally better......as the cost is insignificant compared to the hunt.

hello Vapodog
I went through your area on my way to Pueblo on a job.
Sometimes we want the bullet to tumble, it does more damage

quote:

Originally posted by hyena:
hello Vapodog
I went through your area on my way to Pueblo on a job.
Sometimes we want the bullet to tumble, it does more damage

I was probably in Wisconsin shooting whitetails!

Hey Alf!

Thanks for the artical..

Yes...I am sure many of the old times were happy not knowing that they used inferior bullets ..

However...John Taylor does mention that some bullets were better than others in his book.
Sir samuel Baker also knew which type of leadbullets that worked best...so the awareness
of bulletmatierial and design have been on some of the ol`timers mind from the beginning.
I think today people are a little to "picky" about their choice...only Tungsten uranium bullet work on rabbits and upwards

quote:

Originally posted by boom stick:
yes round noses and slow twists work...but do you want what is the best by todays research?

even a %5 diff will make you chose one over the other.

boomy,
round noses and STANDARD twist works, and works with bridger, barnes, northfork and GS custom bullets... everyday.

"5%" .... Heh, not even 5% of the shooting folks will ever shoot a 375 or bigger, and of those, not 1% will shoot big game... and of those that shooting big game, LESS THAN 1% will shoot an elephant or hippo ... .05*.01*.01 or, 0.0005 PERCENT of all guns will shoot a bullet into a hippo or elephant... and 1/2 of THOSE will be softs. 0.00025 ... or about 1500 americans (.0005*300,000,000) a year.

PII, if you ask me.

jeffe

The round nose steel jacketed solids we enjoy today do the job. The flat nose solids do it better. I'll take the ones that do it better. Makes a given adequate rifle more than it is with round nose solids, whats wrong with that?

JPK

JPK,

where is the test data that shows incontrovertible evidence that the FN mono-metal bullets do, indeed, work better than the old, proven on thousands of elephant, RN original FMJ designs? For some reason, none of the rifle or ammunition makers as of December, 2006 recognize this theory by production.

The "proven" fast twist "stuff" posted here is 100% M16 ammunition focused. They want to shoot knitting needles 10,000fps AND have it begin to tumble on impact. They never mention big bore rifles and dangerous game hunting.
The desired result on the fast twist, long heavy bullet projects is to build a better "wounding" system.

Rich

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quote:

So the question is, have we collectively gone mad in our descent into the minutua of the quest for perfection?

I think we have indeed gone too far. As one of the 0.0005%, I have been completely happy with RN steel jacketed solids of modern persuasion on elephant and buffalo. I have never seen any indication of bullets verying off course. As far as I have seen all have been straight line penetrators.

If I were a ballistic god my perfect solid would be a tungsten cored, FN design with a copper jacket. It would be short (no need to worry about twist), heavy for caliber like 550 grains in .458 caliber and have the dubious benefits of a flat nosed design.

465H&H

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quote:

Originally posted by ALF:


From The American Rifleman September 1955:

In a almost complete collection of 60 years worth of American gun magazines such as American rifleman, rifle, Guns and ammo, Shooting times, Guns etc a number of articles on dangerous game guns and ammo, some by unknown authors, some by the very gurus of the American gun scene...........

In not one does anyone recognize or acknowledge that these round nosed solids actually tumble in target! Today here on AR the consensus seems to be that this constitutes bullet failure !

The advertisement above shows that this in fact happened in spite of killing that fine elephant pictures stone dead.

And contrary to this there are many including the great Finn Agaard that sang the praises of the old style Hornady bullet. There are a number of references to this that I have found.

So the question is, have we collectively gone mad in our descent into the minutua of the quest for perfection?

( As an added observation: it illustrates to a large degree what Fackler and other modern ballisticians have been claiming about the validity and current state of data presented in the lay gun and shooting literature)

The thread is titled old style hornady 458 FMJ but the picture shows an elephant shot with a barnes bullet

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IdahoSarpshooter,

The evidence was discovered when I dug bullets out of elephants this Sept and Oct. The penetration of the flat nose solids far exceeded that of the round nose solids. Impact effect was not noticably different. Both types of bullets tracked straight but I did find a curve in the path of a flat nose solid after four feet of the nearly six feet it penetrated.

None of the bullets showed evidence of tumbling, though in the past I have seen a bullet track made by a round nose clearly show the bullet tumbled, but again it was after the bullet had done its job and some. This year one Woodleigh was split but still together, found imbeded in an offside zygomatic arch it had done its job too.

The flat nose bullets penetrate significantly better in my experience.

JPK

The flat nosed vrs round nosed solid argument intrigued me so I set about testing all I could find and in all of my testing the round nosed bullets outpenetrated the flat nosed ones in every test while the flat nosed ones maintained their direction better.
If flat nosed anything penetrated better then shouldn't it reason that dull knives would cut better, blunt arrows penetrate better than field tips, fighter planes, submarines and speed boats should have flat noses and when you belly flop off the high board you should go deeper ?

When talking about solids:

Testing penetration on building material favours round nosed bullets over FN bullets.

Testing penetration in water favours FN bullets over round nose bullets.

Testing in animals shows that, on average, FN bullets go deeper and bullet paths remain straighter, for longer, than what is seen with RN bullets.

The above three facts have been known for as long as man has been shooting animals with cast lead bullets. I started making bullets in 1993, driven by the frustration of having to use the "time proven products" that failed with monotonous regularity, when I knew there was a better way. The first FN / RN tests I did in 1996 were done with a handgun, after which we progressed to rifles and the results were so clear, I remain amazed that it is still debated.

Why did round nosed solids persist as solid bullet of choice for so long? (This is my personal take on this and holds true for expanding monos as well.)
1. If it seems like a new idea, it cannot be better because then we would have started using it long ago.
2. We have been using the round nosed gizzmos for as long as Grandpa can remember, how can any other shape gizzmo be better?
3. Flat nosed bullets are more expensive to produce than round nosed bullets, especially if you have all the tooling and technology to make round nosed bullets.

Technology and traditional moral values are two separate issues. By all means adhere to the moral values of time gone by but do not apply the same thinking to technology. It frequently advances and changes for the better.

If you could cut with a blunt knife at 2000fps, it would work very well. That is why you can mow a lawn with a nylon string. Nobody denies that, for penetration in air, aerodynamic shapes are better, but penetrating softs and solids are two different things. As for submarines, if serious speed is required under water, guess what, they use a flat nose to get some supercavitation going. Belly flopping off the high board is just a tumbling bullet and we know that that is all bad.

quote:

Originally posted by 458Win:
The flat nosed vrs round nosed solid argument intrigued me so I set about testing all I could find and in all of my testing the round nosed bullets outpenetrated the flat nosed ones in every test while the flat nosed ones maintained their direction better.
If flat nosed anything penetrated better then shouldn't it reason that dull knives would cut better, blunt arrows penetrate better than field tips, fighter planes, submarines and speed boats should have flat noses and when you belly flop off the high board you should go deeper ?

Phil,

My testing in game animals (not drywall or cinder blocks) has shown that FN solids on average penetrate at least 20% deeper than RN solids for body shots.

Also, your RN is a dull knife. If you want a sharp knife, then an FMJ spitzer is what you want.

Gerald, As much as I respect both your integrity and experience, I am not fully convinced that flat nosed anythings penetrate better. How about the flat nosed blunt arrows compared with pointed ones?
I am convinced that flat nosed bullets most definately impact and kill much quicker than round nosed ones, penetrate straighter and that your bullets are amazingly accurate and tough.
I also agree with you that belly flops are probably are more like tumbling bullets and both tend to distort the projectile.

Flat nose arrows are not going fast enough to develop a supercavitation bubble.

But using your analogy, shouldn't we be shooting broadheads from our rifles rather than arrows??

Broad heads in rifles is sort of a streached analogy but I suppose is similiar to what the barnes X bullets do when they open up. And they do cut a much wider channel.
Since we are trying to be scientific about this exactly what velocity would allow a flat nosed arrow to outpenetrate a pointed one? And how can this be proven?
Are there any engineers out there who can explain why fluid dynamics do not apply to air?

My theory why FN solids outpenetrate RN solids has to do with the fact that the FN must/may? have less of an overturning moment and less yaw.

In my limited shooting of elephants The North Fork 450FN seems to penetrate deeper on head shots than the 480 Woodleigh Solid both being shot out of my 450 No2.

What would be interesting would be to make a solid with the Woodleigh nose profile on BOTH ends, to see if that would increase its penetration

In the RWS TUG the rear penetrater piece is cone shaped on both ends. I say this "balances" the projectile lessening the thedency for the bullet to overturn.

The problem with a flat nosed arrow is that it lacks the momentum/frontal area to overcome the resistance it meets on impact. Bullets do not have this problem. Broadheads are nose heavy, have an incredibly high momentum/frontal area and that is why they penetrate well. On impact there is not much of an overturning moment generated and it tends to travel point first into the target. A bullet that is pointy and sharp enough to pierce skin and tissue as effectively as a broadhead, will have a centre of gravity so far back that it will need massive gyroscopic stability to transition from air to target without turning sideways. Imagine shooting the broadhead without the shaft attached. Once in the target, such a pointy bullet will have further problems, as Alf has pointed out. Any bullet that mushrooms and retains close to 100% weight is again nose heavy and will tend to travel heavy side forwards.

FN bullets penetrate straight because they are shoulder stabilised and it helps if the nose sets back somewhat and if it has a boat tail. This is the main reason why I add a boat tail to a bullet if it is at all possible.

Picture courtesy of Andy.

Gerard, I'm not sure I followed you on that explaniation. you have to keep thing simple for me.
I am still at a loss to understand how a flat nosed projectile that rapidly sheds it's energy - which is why they are so effective - can penetrate farther than a projectile that maintains more of it's energy. Where does that energy go? It has to go somewhere.

The effectiveness of a bullet is not related to the amount of energy it has or sheds. It's effectiveness lies in how wide and how deep a hole it makes in the animal. To a lesser extent, it also lies with how wide the temporary cavity reaches from the bullet path.

The bullet is slowed by the drag that is created when it penetrates. The momentum it carries, determines for how long it will overcome the drag that is slowing it down. In any medium denser than air, the drag is determined by the surface area of the bullet in contact with the medium. As the angle of the surface goes from the vertical at the nose of the bullet, to horizontal where the nose meets the shaft, the drag generated by that point, at that angle, reduces. There is a complicated formula by which the drag that is generated by the shape of the nose can be calculated but the bottom line is that, at speeds over 1800 or so fps, a cylinder generates less drag than any other shape. The surface area is a circle the diameter of the caliber. Roll a cone of paper that fits the top of a can of a soft drink and then spread it out and compare the surface area of that cone to the circle that forms the top of the can. Big difference and the drop off in drag, because of the angle of the cone, cannot come close to making it up.

I know this is counter-intuitive and I did not believe it either, initially. I had to believe what my observation of the shooting of animals showed me though. It was only when I read Bullet Penetration by Duncan MacPherson that it became clear why I was seeing the result that completely stumped me at the time. This is all described in Chapter 6 of the book and many other more obscure works.

Steel jacketed solids were available for the Rigby rounds like the 400/350, 450 ,3,1/4" and 416 , according to Pondoro...............The old timers were relly interested in what was new and if it worked and sometimes why it worked..African Rifles and Cartridges is full of "minute" about all things available to the knowledge of the author.. Concerning killing Heavy and Dangerous game...................With as much money as they spent on rifles , had an affordable chronograph been available,I garantee Bell would have had one Taylor also , same with Lyell...As I understand Harry Selby does and uses it............ And who , thats walking around now ,knows how many people got killed by dangerous game because the solid they shot failed......... Or the softs didn,t hold together...Selous said the 425 Westly Richards was wonderful compared to the old black powder rounds.. Now everyone wants to say the 425 is no good ?..............All the fancy new things we enjoy now came about because the right [apparantly]people said ,that don,t work and this does . Or what if we changed that.. Lets try and see...........A bunch of people should start doing that with top fuel dragsters,because they haven,t gotten much faster in the past 20 years and its getting boreing watching them..........It seems we are in the time of the Large Bore Expansion.......A time that has brought the greatest advances in the worlds best big bire rifles and the ammo they shoot......... We all should enjoy it and be Thankful for it...............gumboot out

quote:

In a almost complete collection of 60 years worth of American gun magazines such as American rifleman, rifle, Guns and ammo, Shooting times, Guns etc a number of articles on dangerous game guns and ammo, some by unknown authors, some by the very gurus of the American gun scene...........

Hey Alf ... ever consider contributing to the Nickudu Files?

quote:

Originally posted by 458Win:

I am still at a loss to understand how a flat nosed projectile that rapidly sheds it's energy - which is why they are so effective -

Why would you think that a flat nose solid sheds its energy more rapidly than a round nose solids?

Are animals in Alaska shot with solids or softs?

quote:

Originally posted by gumboot458:
Steel jacketed solids were available for the Rigby rounds like the 400/350, 450 ,3,1/4" and 416

I was speaking of the .40+ flanged nitros, not small and medium bores. The large flanged nitros, including the .450 3 1/4", were not offered with steel jacketed solids until after WWII. Indeed some of the flanged nitros that were dropped in the late 40s and early 50s, like .450 No. 2 and .500/.450 NE, were discontinued without ever having been offered with steel jacketed solids. Some of the HV smallbores and HV medium bores, like .350 No. 2 and .375 Magnum, were offered with Cupro-Nickel Covered Steel and Gilding Metal Covered Steel in the years between the wars, but these were almost entirely soft nose, not solids. Steel solids in the .400/.350 were rare even after WWII, and don't appear to have been offered prior. Being a HV round, the .416 could have been, but was so rare and little used it's hard to say.

With regard to technical specs, Taylor got a lot of things wrong.
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"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

Gerard, I follow your line of reasoning but remain a skeptic since aeronautical and nautical engineers, plus everything I have witnessed in the hunting and shooting field don't support your theory. I also do not think that just because a knife may be traveling 1800fps that a dull one would cut better than a sharp one at the same speed.
You may be right and certainly have my curiosity up. I have a client/friend who is a physics & engineering professor at Cornell and a NASA consultant who I'll ask to get his opinion as well.
While I respectfully remain a skeptic I will admit you make one of the best bullets in the world, which I attribute to the fact that they impart their energy towards doing what they are intended to do; rather than being hydrodynamicly advanced.

500 Grain, Alaskan game is shot primarily with soft nosed bullets however there are plenty of hunters, myself included, who often choose solids. I'm not sure what that has to do with this discusion however.
My wife and I are headed back to our cabin at Circle Hot Springs today where the connections are slow, slow, slow and cost 25 cents per minute so I won't be on here very often but will look foreward to seeing what transpires and will contact my physics professor and rocket scientist friend.

Phil,

Do you notice much difference in the time it takes a bear to expire with a RN solid compared to an FN solid?

Yes ,Taylor was incorrect in some areas or rather on small points.. However, the shape ,material used and quantity of metal used .Were very important to him and he pushed for better............Ive shot a few humdred Hornady solids and my complaint with them is they are still not available in 338 and 358 dia.. I know a guy who summers on POW that killed a charging bull elephant in Kenya in the 70,s with the 338 win mag and a 250gr hornady solid.. Obviously it worked for him. Would a Monolithic Solid Or Barnes super solid have worked better......Probably not as the one killed the bull...........how on that over...