New Alloy

[Kurt]

For about a year now I been working on a alloy for the light .40 caliber and the heavier .45's to get a alloy that will hold the 2/3 of the bullet from upsetting into the groove. I was looking for a alloy that is hard but malleable so it just expands the 1/3 of the base but hold the front at bore diameter with out distortion. Last winter I ran out of snow so what little we got so far this winter I shot a bunch and I just found three so far and they sure look like I'm in the ball park from what I'm after but I still need the .45 bullets and also the different mixes.
The dimple you see is the end of the shank and the start of the ogive where I hold my patch. The land impressions show full rotation with out a sign of stripping and a lack of gas cuts and they are at full groove depth.
Now to find the rest and get then making holes through paper. I hope the holes will look as good as the recovered bullets.


   

[MikeR]

That’s very impressive! I’m curious, will that allow a shorter patch?

[Kurt]

Mike the patch is needed for the bore riding to keep it straight.
What made me to try this alloy work is when I shoot my HP rifles and I see those 1/2" groups at the 200 yards and I look at the chronograph tapes and I see those high ES and SD's 50 fps or more for the ES and when shooting my powder rifles with the ES's below 10 fps and SD's down in the low single digits and I cant hold those 1/2" groups @200 this makes me scratch my head. When I stop to mull it over one thing that comes to mind and that is the jacketed bullets hold the integrity of the ogive and the rest of the bullet to get kneaded out of shape like donut doe like a lead bullet with the wrong alloy temper throwing it out of balance. I might be wrong but I don't think barrel harmonics of the wrong primers alone causes it not when I look at the low es and sd's
But I might be wrong, been so before
But when you look at what a wrong alloy like the bullet below with a slumped nose the alloy most use might be something to look into.

   

[rdnck]

I have always felt that for best accuracy you should use the hardest alloy that will upset and seal the bore. If you need an effective hunting bullet, use a flat nose design rather than a softer alloy that will mushroom. The harder flat nosed bullet will drive all the way through and give complete pass through that results in an air leak that collapses the lungs and gives a quick kill, while at the same time giving top accuracy. Shoot straight, rdnck.

[Don McDowell]

Depending on the nose shape, I've found that 18-1 is about as soft as a person can get away with and still shoot long range with patched. 16-1 works just as good now as it did back when all this stuff we are discovering now was common knowledge.

[MikeR]

Kurt
I believe that your assessment is correct. This is from some one that nearly 40 years ago, when the wisdom was, Sharps rifles used pure lead bullets, built his first long range load using 103 grains of DuPont Fg powder and a 30/1 PP bullet with a felt wad. I know all about nose slump and base cupping. When I tried that load with 2Fg powder my 500 yard group size nearly doubled and I could hardly keep my shots on the 22" 500 meter gong. I returned to Fg powder but started using 20/1 alloy.
How is the patch separating from the bullet? Is the rifling cutting long strips even though the rifling is not marking the bullet, unwrapping, or just blowing into pieces?

[Kurt]

Michael I was using thin 1.5 Thousands paper for the bullets your looking at and they patched 1/2 thousands over bore and the blowing in my face at 8 degrees F and I did not look for the patches blowing over the snow so I cant say.
I did find a couple of the .45 bullets that had the same mix as the three .40's above and the land cuts are not deep enough to use. The more massive bullets like the .444 diameter 500 plus grain weight don't bump up as much as the lighter .40 caliber even using 30 grains less powder for the .40-65 then the .45-90.
One alloy temper does not react the same between heavy and light bullets.
This alloy mix I see that it will take a little more snow flake work, but I still have a bunch to find to tell the whole story and the final test will be through the paper.
I have some that just have a thin OJ carton wad between the powder and bullet and one I found today and it sealed the bore just fine with no gas cuts, so this is promising that a .023" thick wad protects this alloy in fine shape so far.

[Kurt]

We had a January thaw and it surfaced some more bullets and I see some interesting results in this alloy that is not the usual lead/tin/antimony alloy mostly used but I see that I will have to add a little lead to soften it some, especially for the .45 calibers. If they were sast as a GG I would leave it as it is. The left 121 bullets I shot loaded in a .45-70 case and shot with a .45-90 just to see how they react and it shows slight gas cuts and a start of stripping but not bad. The second from the right is a PJ .44 GG creedmoor what is good with this recovered bullet is that the bore riding section on the ogive did not get land cuts and it rode down the bore fully engraving the depth of the grooves, a big plus to reduce smears and holding the nose. All of the GG bullets were shot loaded with no wads under the bullets and this alloy did not deform the base like 1/20 or 1/16 would have been and there is no finning of the bullets PP or GG.
Now for the interesting part. The bullets were all shot using the same alloy mix but look at the .45 and .40 PP. The .45's did not bump up far enough to get full rotation in fact they look unfired almost except for the light land marks and they were shot from the .45-90 and the .40's were shot using the .40-65 and the base got almost the bump up I'm looking for but they filled the grooves at the base enough that they got full rotation with out any sign of stripping.
They could be tempered just slightly more. But for the GG I would not change anything........Kurt
       

[Don McDowell]

What is the as cast diameter of the 45 bullets?

[Kurt]

.444 Don and wrapped with 1.5 paper