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Further to my adventures in getting started in bullet casting, by picking possibly the most difficult style of bullet to mould, I have finally got some bullets I can load up and experiment with...

With thanks to the guidance, knowledge and kindness of a few guys from Castboolits I managed to get a mould that casts a sort of bullet from the Depression era US that has a hollow point like a flying soup can which I am hoping solves the biggest problem of subsonic 308 field loads, being the ricochet potential.
The trouble was that upon sixing them in the lubrsizer they would become squashed like this:
(that nose measures ~0.330"...)

I experimented with alloys but even straight linotype deformed, which given that I want this bullet soft as possible was rather disappointing.

The solution was a lee push through sizer and I finally ended up with some shootable bullets!
All up weight of 148 grains cast from 2%antimony 1%tin and the balance lead.

I have a few loaded with trailboss to try when the gales die down a bit.

After much buggering around building a PID controller for the lead pot, another for the mould preheating hotplate, messing around with timing, etc, I cast up a few of these from a normal Lee mould to play around with, easy by comparison!

The Lord Flashheart wrote:

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308 lead for subsonic wow well done.

Sent from my SM-G901F using "An application"

I look forward to hearing how they shoot, what distances will you be using them at?

greybeard wrote:

The Lord Flashheart wrote:

IMG_5483.JPG

IMG_5482.JPG

308 lead for subsonic wow well done.

Sent from my SM-G901F using "An application"

Those were so straightforward compared to the hollow points I just knocked them up to prove to myself that there was light at the end of the tunnel rather than as a demonstration of skill...

To get those hollowpoints to fill out and not stick to the pin was epic, really bloody epic...

Ovenpaa wrote:I look forward to hearing how they shoot, what distances will you be using them at?

Given the trajectory probably not much than .22 ranges, say out to about 60 metres or so.

I need to test to find an accurate load and I need to test to find the best alloy for the job.

It would be great if these would either fragment entirely or hold together to expand so much they don't exit or they exit but are so expanded they don't ricochet.

More than half the fun is experimentation, should be able to get the first batch tested next week.

Will report back.

The original Ness bullet was never intended to be a subsonic load.

It needed to be driven at at least 1700 fps for it to fragment properly with the high antimony bearing (brittle)alloys they were using. Ness, Miller and Mathis were using them mainly on woodchucks for their results

My own experiences with this bullet and linotype agree with this. Used on feral cats and foxes.

They were designed to fragment and not exit the quarry or fragment and not ricochet off external surfaces. Effective ranges at the 1700-1900 fps were out to 100 yrds.

dromia wrote:The original Ness bullet was never intended to be a subsonic load.

It needed to be driven at at least 1700 fps for it to fragment properly with the high antimony bearing (brittle)alloys they were using. Ness, Miller and Mathis were using them mainly on woodchucks for their results

My own experiences with this bullet and linotype agree with this. Used on feral cats and foxes.

They were designed to fragment and not exit the quarry or fragment and not ricochet off external surfaces. Effective ranges at the 1700-1900 fps were out to 100 yrds.

My thoughts too on fragmentation. After all the most notorious ricochet producers are the various low velocity .22 rimfires with their combination of a soft lead bullets and subsonic MVs. (I suspect that larger calibre 19th century lead bullet rounds such as the rook rifle numbers had similar characteristics, although I've never seen it said anywhere.) The conventional field shooting answer to ricochet safety concerns is to switch to a high velocity smallbore centrefire round that is more likely to break up.

Laurie wrote:
My thoughts too on fragmentation. After all the most notorious ricochet producers are the various low velocity .22 rimfires with their combination of a soft lead bullets and subsonic MVs. (I suspect that larger calibre 19th century lead bullet rounds such as the rook rifle numbers had similar characteristics, although I've never seen it said anywhere.) The conventional field shooting answer to ricochet safety concerns is to switch to a high velocity smallbore centrefire round that is more likely to break up.

The bit in bold was what set me down this path in the first place, I thought I'd spend a bit of time and money to do some experimentation to find out. :)

I am going to try, now that I am nose first sizing, a few different alloys from pure lead to solid linotype and shoot a few types of test medium ( milk jugs full of water, wet newspaper, etc) to test the bullets before trying them in the field, be interesting to see the results as the write-ups on this bullet are a bit thin on the ground for what I want.

I do use a high velocity centrefire for this sort of work at the moment ( 55 gr BT at around 4000fps with H4895 in my 243) but want a quieter option for where the noise would be a bad idea.

Mine is a specific usuage though, I wouldn't suggest this for general use. :)

Have fun! ......... an interesting experiment.