I know it is accepted practice to use pointed bullets in the .357 Maximum, but how about anyone using them in the .357 Magnum? Is there enough horsepower in the shorter case to allow expansion for hunting purposes?

The 150 grain Remington PSP for the 35 remington performs very well in my contender, very accurate, but never shot anything other than paper with it. Of course, don't put them in a tubular magazine!

graycg

You won't get any significant expansion at .357 Mag velocities. You're much better off sticking to bullets designed specifically for the .357 Magnum.

Remington said that the 35 Cal 150gr bullet is good for 2500fps to 1200fps

Remington is very "optimistic" in its claim for low-end velocity performance. WHile I no longer shoot any "35s", I have put enough of these into game and test medium over the years to comfortably say that this bullet, while no doubt one of the best deer droppers in the Max and .35 Rem., is ill-suited for game when launched from the more pedestrian velocities of the .357 Magnum.

I shot some of the Rem 150s out of a 357 Mag into wet newsprint several years ago. When recovered from a 35 caliber hole, the lead nose was smeared slightly and other than the apparent rifling marks I could not tell they had been fired. I always wanted to load them again just to prove a point.
I did not chronograph the load so velocity is unknown though at 25 yards I would guess about it was moseying along at about 1200 fps.
I was down to a low supply of the bullet which could not be replaced at that time so I never tested them out of the Max or Herrett.

BobbyT:
Lets hear more about using the Remington 150s in the Max on deer. I am loading for next year and would love to try some of Paul's Remington bullets on deer here.
LouisB

[ 02-17-2003, 22:16: Message edited by: TCLouis ]

LouisB-
Using the 150 grain Remington in the Max (top-end loads), I preferred to take shoulder shots to initiate and ensure proper expansion. Even so, I generally always had an exit, so penetration was never an issue. But my favored bullet back then was the Nosler 180 grain silhouette (I am not sure if it is even produced anymore). This bullet would open on behind-the-shoulder shots and do sufficient damage to put deer or small hogs down rather quickly. It also was constructed well enough to break a shoulder and plow through the vitals. And, it was always among the most accurate of any bullets I used.

Now you've gone and got me wanting another .357 Max.....

I have one more thing to add on the bullet expansion issue: there's a huge difference between a bullet that impacts a 25 yard target at 1200 fps and the same bullet launched at 2000 fps which impacts a target "way out there" but at the same 1200 fps velocity. The pent-up centrifugal force of a bullet that has been in flight for a while is apt to make the bullet expand much more quickly upon impact. You can test this for yourself. Take a 45 grain Hornady "Hornet" bullet and put together a reduced load (1600-1700 fps). Shoot it into test medium at 50 yards. More than likely, it will look like a big game bullet with classic expansion. But now take that same bullet, load it at top speeds in a .223 or 22-250 and, using ballistic tables to calculate velocity, back off far enough from the test medium so that the impact velocity is in the 1500-1600 fps range. When you recover the bullet (or pieces thereof), you'll see it came unglued much more violently than the one launched at more pedestrian speed.

Pent-up centrifugal force? I am curious about this new concept. From what I remember from my engineering physics courses, there is no such thing as centrifugal force. It is inertia.

Second, dice have no memory and neither do bullets. You can describe the state of the bullet at any given time (mass, velocity, angular rotation, position) like a snapshot. It does not matter how far the bullet had traveled nor how long it has been in the air.

The energy of the system can be broken down into kinetic energy (1/2 mv^2 plus 1/2 Iw^2) and potential energy (mgh). The bullet is not a battery. It starts to lose energy once it leaves the muzzle (due to drag) until it hits the target, where it sheds the rest of the energy.

However, bullet fatigue is a different matter entirely. I don't know how a tenth of a second of high rotational velocity and high drag forces affects the fatigue of the copper jacket. Knowing the Young's Modulus of pure copper (17 million psi or so) I wouldn't think that we were stressing the metal too much. I have heard of blowing up bullets at too high rotational velocity (beyond their construction limits) but that should happen very close to the muzzle.

Not trying to start a fight. I just wanted to correct a statement that I believed to be innacurate.

Thanks,
Mike

Having re-read your post, I can see what you're alluding to. The hornet bullet wasn't designed for the angular velocity (rotation) that you're putting it through when you fire it out of a 22-250. For example: at 1700 ft/sec, 1 in 12" twist barrel, you're looking at 1700 revolutions per second, or 102,000 rpm. The same barrel, at 4,000 ft/sec, produces 240,000 rpm. The bullet is spinning much faster than it was designed for, so it won't hold together once it hits something.

However, it still has nothing to do with pent-up anything. It doesn't matter how far the bullet traveled or how long it took to get there. Each bullet has appropriate velocities and rotational speeds, depending on the construction. Too slow, and it won't expand. Too fast, and it disintegrates.

Thanks,
Mike

Mike-
I beg to differ -- and I shouldn't have used the Hornet bullet as an example.

Without getting into any lengthy physics debate, let me simply say the the kintic energy has a minimal impact (pardon the pun) upon the bullet's expansion properties. Take one gun/cartridge combo, say a .308 WCF. Put together a reduced load with the Hornady 165 grain BTSP, one that generates around 1900 fps.

Fire it into test medium at point blank range.

Now, load that same bullet to 2700 or 2800 fps, back off enough so that the actual impact velocity is in the 1900 fps range -- and then fire into the same type medium.

Compare the results for yourself. Or if you'd like, I'll do it for you. I speak not from numbers but from years of real-world experience. Any by the way, the recent heated MatchKing thread netted me a nice $100 because a poster was quite adamant in his claim that a MK could not be fired so that it would not expand. And he really jumped on the bandwagon when I said I had quite a few recovered MKs that failed to expand in 200 yard medium.

So trust me on this one. Or, test it for yourself...and you'll see that the cumulative affects of a bullet's flight weigh heavily in its terminal performance.

Oilfield Mike-
I have one more way of explaining this, and this one is much more simple (and one anyone can do in their living room).

Take a child's top, spin it and, using an object such as a pencil, tip it over right after it gets going. It simply topples over with very minimal secondary movement. Then spin it again, this time allowing it to get going for at least 5 seconds. Then tip it over in the same way you previously did. It'll bounce around and recoil off the surface much more so than it did the first time around.