The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Rifles Big Bores weekend test resultsGo | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| One of Us |
It's taken me awhile to put all the pieces together for this, but finally did it! I made 3 sets of newspaper holders, bolts welded onto lengths of rebar for the 4 corners. Pieces of angle-iron with holes for the bolts at each end. A piece if 1/2 rubber mat, then 3/4" ply, 30" of newspaper and a final piece of 3/4 plywood, all sandwiched together with my crude contraption, times 3. OK, here's the test. Hawk bullets, all roundnose, all 400 grn. Calibers, .423 shot in one of my 10.75x68 .440 shot in my 11.2x60 .458 shot in a 458. all with .035 jacket thickness All were loaded to 2150 fps, the old magic number of various Nitro rounds. 5 shot from each fired into their target frame, one in each corner-ish and one in the middle. I did add one extra shot with a 401 grn Woodleigh at 2150 from the 11.2 The difference was ....... very, very little. It seemed one shot from each batch would penetrate a little (2 inches) more then the other 4. Maybe didn't get packed as tight, and little wetter, held my breath wrong, don't know Expansion for all three calibers were between .750 and 1.00", some lost a little more weight then others, but averaged 65% and no core separation. Penetration was a low of 18" for two each of the 11.2 and .458 to a max of 23" of which all three calibers reached with at least 1 bullet. The Woodleigh expanded less. but still had a nice mushroom and penetrated 28" Rather fun, don't know if I learned a whole lot. At that modest veleocity, 3 calibers quite close together in dia, same weight, should preform very similar. Composting the old newspaper, start gathering a new pile and think about what to try next! | ||
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Keep it up! Though it is impossible to really equate such tests results to what happens in game animals, they are interesting for the relativity between makes. Your discovery that the Woodleigh bullets expanded less should be aired on the thread devoted to their alleged softness. | |||
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| One of Us |
Love you test setup! I hear over and over about bullet performance. Your test shows very little difference. The one factor, that to me, makes a lot more difference that is never talked about it the mental state of the animal! Over the years with whitetails I have seen the mind set of the animal make a world of difference in how fast they go down. This fall I am going to redo my pumpkin test with a good video camera! | |||
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theback40, Thanks for sharing your results. 
Bravo! Encore! (Holding up my flicked Bic here.) You answered your question about which of your specific three rifle loads will work best for you. Any one of those three that you like best, and shoot most accurately.  Rip ... | |||
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Not so fast! The Woodleigh soft was being compared to a Hawk "supersoft." Rip ... | |||
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Thankyou Rip for your extra input, you can express things far better then I. I got the Hawks because I wanted some soft bullets for the 10.75 and 11.2 in case I wanted to use them on deer, moose or, if I have to, bear. I don't like bear meat, and even less like processing them. They can be a PITA so have to shoot one now and then, might as well use something interesting. The 458's were added simply to round out this test. SD in itself would appear to be only one part of things, all else being equell or similar in the case of .423 to .458 dia. Velocity, bullet shape and construction would play a bigger role in that narrow a window. The rubber mat, and all the rest of the stuff was what I had on hand. The mat was fairly soft, something that was in the "hospital" pen for cattle to cover the concrete floor. It did help from blowing chunks out of the plywood. My next test won't be as much interest to the folks here. I want to test the 30 carbine vs the 9mm carbine with the hot subgun ammo used in them. The carbine has more vel and energy, but the 30 carbine cartridge is long gone and the 9mm is still in use. Thank you everyone for your interest in my little test. | |||
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| One of Us |
I haven't used Hawk bullets, RIP, but did have some idea that they were soft, though the OP did not state this. However, everything is relative and if Hawks are super soft then it does suggest Woodleighs are at least one step up the ladder from there. Looking at the 9.3x74x74 v 404J thread, I noticed Jeffery warning that over-hard soft-points were less reliable than those with softer cores. They argued that the hard ones either penetrated too well or broke up on impact, while the softer ones gave more predictable results. Metallurgy has doubtless improved since 1905 but that of pure lead should not have got any worse.  If there is any bullet I do wonder about it is the DGX Hornady use in their .450/.400 loads. They mushroomed well enough for me but only gave about eight inches penetration of muscle in NT scrub cattle and one was stopped dead by the spine of a sambar stag. So, when I went out after Timor buffalo, I put solids in both barrels. | |||
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| one of us |
Was that the original DGX factory ammo you were shooting or the newer DGX-Bonded? There may be some subtle difference between the .410 and .458 bullet jackets that are not proportional to caliber. The lower SD of the 480-gr/.458 bullet will make it mushroom less at any given impact velocity than the 400-gr/.410 bullet. I am hoping the Bonded versions will give Goldilocks performance in both calibers. But, the 500-gr/.458 and 400-gr/.410 DGX bullets are going to be most comparable at 2150 fps impact. Might get less expansion and similar penetration from the 480-gr/.458 bullet at 2150 fps. Stepping up the 480-gr/.458 velocity of impact will increase expansion of the bullet, and increase resistance of the test medium/critter. Might it thus give less penetration and a wider wound channel? Artificial test media could quickly give a clue or two. Or, go shoot hundreds of game animals and do good necropsies and keep good records with wildly varying impact velocities for the various loads being compared.  Media such as theback40's "Rebar Rhino" and even my "Iron WaterBoard Buffalo" are not worthless. Rip ... | |||
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Rip For the mission: 200 lb protein tubs are great soft point bullet catchers. You can throw anything you want in front of the for hide and most bullets will be found just at the hide, plastic, on the far side. Best part is they are $60 and are reusable by just repacking the protein and letting be rained on. Just turn the plastic tub to get new holes. Very repeatable media and much like an animal in content. No bones of course. Orschlin, tractor supply for sources. I can explain how I know but it would only be for The Mission!!! "The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights." ~George Washington - 1789 | |||
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| One of Us |
Hawk bullets are simple copper tubing and soft lead squeezed into them. At modest velocities, they work quite well, maybe a step up from a paper patched lead bullet. A few steps behind woodleighs. I sent a pal in Namibia some Hawk 300 grn .338's with the .035 jacket. He shot a number of eland and a giraffe bull with them. He thought they were to heavy a bullet for kudu, so stayed with his 200 grn speers for them. Everyone has their own ideas of what's best, if what you are using works, it's the best! | |||
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 Fury01, Have you tested any .458 WIN-fired cast bullets in one of those? That would certainly be a worthy addition to THE MISSION. Rip ... | |||
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That would be a pretty darn good. Let us say that paper-patched soft lead is excellent at 1400 fps as an upper limit for MV or impact. What velocity would be best with a .338/300-grain Hawk bullet? SD = 0.375 Selous worked wonders with a paper-patched .461/540-grainer, SD = 0.363, at about 1350 fps MV. He used paper-patched, hardened lead for elephant, rhino, and buffalo. Paper-patched, soft lead was fine for lion and leopard. Rip ... | |||
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Yes sir. I can send you a picture. It looks like a Woodleigh picture. I think the bullet is still on my bureau. There are a couple of different tub styles. The one I have is shorter and wider. I caught some 358 250 grains running 2600 with it. They too are pretty wicked looking.
"The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights." ~George Washington - 1789 | |||
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As reloaders an experimenters we tend to push the envelope of everything. Paperpatched bullets worked, in the vel range of the day. The same can be said of cup and core bullets. I doubt my Namibian pal loaded those bullets past 2100, maybe up to 2200fps, but I would be very surprised. My friend for years had the meat supply contract to several prison systems. He shoots on farmers cull permits given by the nature conservancy. He buys the hanging weight and processes the meat for the prison. I'm not sure he ever used a premium bullet on anything up through eland and giraffe. To soft a bullet is relative to velocity. | |||
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My ammo was about 10 years old, and I can't see any reference to being bonded, so I guess it is the old stuff. I've bought some more s/h since but the boxes are similar. The solids say DGS but the softs are just labelled RN. I'm now reloading with Woodleighs SPs but can't comment on their performance yet. | |||
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| Administrator |
We tested bullet penetration in test media composed of 3/4 inch wood panels separated with books in between. Our results were consistent with what we get in the field. We only tried penetration versus velocity. And in our case, trying our Walterhog bullets, a velocity of around 2700-2800 FPS works best. I loaded some ammo last week for our safari later this month. Sighting the rifles I got an average of 2751 FPS. | |||
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Saeed's test media sounds like it is pretty much a first order one where resistance is a linear function, directly proportional to velocity. Resistance acting on bullet does not increase exponentially with velocity. He has shown that the remnants of his bullet shanks start to expand at 2700 to 2800 fps and penetration goes down as those increase in diameter. In my Iron WaterBoard Buffalo, at 2700 fps the monometal copper FN solids made by GSC were bulging their meplats at 2700 fps. The brass FN solids made by S&H did not start expanding their meplats until about 2800 fps. This is very much supporting Saeed's claim of seeing a fall-off in penetration over 2800 fps. His Walterhog .375/300-grainers become FN solids of monometal copper when they blow off their hollow points. Rip ... | |||
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Hmmm, I have about a half dozed of protein tubs even larger than those pictured, thanks for the idea.. Keep in mind that PP Woodleighs are tougher than the same bullet in RN by design..RN to herd hunt and PP for Dagga boys out of the herd.. Ray Atkinson Atkinson Hunting Adventures 10 Ward Lane, Filer, Idaho, 83328 208-731-4120 rayatkinsonhunting@gmail.com | |||
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My dear old mother would not be impressed to know you use books, Saeed, but I guess there are some worthless ones out there: old phone directories, the works of Peter Singer et al. Hopefully your copy of Light at the Start of the Tunnel didn't get a guernsey PS: if it doesn't increase your 'power bill', could I suggest that any posts mentioning the 458 Winchester Magnum be duplicated in the thread of that name, for the record and The Mission? | |||
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