After all these days I have my doubts that he will answer any questions. Not a good way to build your customer base IMO. I'll keep watching and see what happens. As you said, you never know he might be busy. But like you I also seen him reply numerous times to that other thread.
Bullet Construction vs Lethality
- Thread starter nralifer
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This! It ruins for people wanting to learn and share information.
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Yep, another opportunity to learn gone down the toilet.
this is why i mentioned in another tread that the OP should be able to block certain members on a tread to tread basis, leaving the rest to have an honest discussion.
This!
nralifer
Well-Known Member
It's not my last post on this thread I started. I would like to see it continue without all the nonsense and accusations. It was my last response to that one guy who simply was hellbent on ruining the thread. Thank you all for your understanding.
nralifer
Well-Known Member
Beeman, I sincerely apologize for not answering your questions on this thread. I simply was too busy responding to accusations and simply missed them. Feel free to ask them again and I will do my best to answer them.
Thanks for the reply. Appreciate it. I was asking why you went with a mushrooming design instead of a bullet that sheds nose petals.
What type of testing you ran to come to this conclusion and the test results. Gel tests or animals? Also material type, as in soft or hard copper? How many different types of copper did you try? This wasn't my question, but another one I seen asked. I'm quite new to copper bullets and very interested in the different designs.
nralifer
Well-Known Member
Thank you for your post. I'm glad you feel the way you do. Sounds like you would be interested in the thread continuing as originally intended . I am more than willing to help that happen.
nralifer
Well-Known Member
You really got to the heart of the matter with your questions. I'll address the materials choice first.
Lead is quite dense and soft with a rather low melting point and thus was the best material for making musket balls. Its softness would not damage iron and steel barrels, and could be molded easily into various shapes. Copper is about 20% less dense than lead, is much harder but still much softer than steel and in its pure form (C110 alloy) less ductile than lead and not nearly as easily shaped as lead. Cutting lead in a lathe is impossible where as cutting C110 copper is readily done, but its ductility causes these long ribbon like "chips" to be made which can tangle into a huge ball around the tooling in an automatic Swiss lathe damaging the tools and guide bushing. This bird's nesting is avoided by using a program in the lathe that cuts off the chip before they get too long.
As a bullet material copper has several advantages. It is hard enough to resist the enormous compression forces of bullet impacts on soft targets without splattering, so weight retention is very high (85-95%), whereas lead can and will splatter at high impact velocities. Weight retention obviously improves penetration. Additionally, with proper hollow point design, the C110 copper bullet can be made to petal, creating "blades" that can make use of the rotational motion and energy of the bullet imparted to it by the rifling. Once expanded, these blades are sharp, and act like a high speed cutter (rotating at over 200,000 rpm from a 1:10 twist barrel) liquifying the tissue it is passing through. This also aids penetration. Finally, the hollow point can be tipped, reducing meplat size and improving BC. With a properly designed and cut hollow point and tip the bullet will have much lower nose drag, improved BC and energy at impact, efficient transfer of energy to the target causing a large temporary wound channel, and extremely good penetration enabling quartering shots that damage more organs.
Harder copper alloys such as free machining copper, will make chips that break off as the bullet is cut, but the bullets made of this material don't petal well at all and have to have larger holes as meplats to reliably expand, which reduce BC and thus terminal impact energy. Their manufacturers have to design a petal shedding type design with petals that have enough mass that they travel radially away from the bullet path. They are touted as inducing more damage, but that claim comes from intuitive speculation since the weight of each of the shedded petals is only a few grains. Additionally, the retained weight of the bullet is less and the blunt lighter shank does not penetrate as deeply. The petaling design I have seen in hunted animals allows at least 32" of penetration in bullets weighing 150 gr and less and several feet in yhe heavier 338 Bulldozers. Manufacturers of petal shedding bullets try to compensate by increasing MV by adding multiple groves to the shank in an effort to reduce the bearing surface in contact with the barrel. The groves, though, significantly increase skin or surface drag, further reducing BC and ultimately bullet impact energy. Our testing has shown that the increases in MV due to the groves is not large (30-70 fps or so), and when one factors in the difference in drag, the higher BC bullet will make up the difference in speed within 100 yds with the higher BC bullet passing the lower BC bullet for the duration of the flight. These differences in BC of bullets of the same weight can be large enough that by 500 yds the higher BC bullet can retain 45-50% more energy.
This answer is getting rater long, so I'll save a discussion about bullet groves for another time.
Thank you for the long explanation. It was VERY educational to me
hunterbob
Well-Known Member
The smart way.Skip the popcorn boys! I'm digging out the MREs for this one!
I personally think terminal ballistics of a bullet outweigh the BC aspect of a bullet. I know BC is a part of the equation, but I bullet drop test my stuff before the hunt. You know, like enter the data into the ballistics calculator and then shoot it and see what differences are observable.
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More like common sense and a standard practice.The smart way.
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hunterbob
Well-Known Member
Sounds interesting but if the round is accurate is all need. I have seen animsls hit in the vitals and keep going. To me BC means nothing. It's just a number to me. I hunt , not just try to shoot a animal off the other mountain. A few can do it, but most cannot.
Hold on to your seat
This Forum is named Long Range Hunting. No surprises if a lot of the content is focused on bullets and other equipment in common use by hunters that shoot animals off the adjacent mountain.
Bullets used in Long Range Hunting have to shoot with equal or greater accuracy / precision than bullets used for Close Range Hunting. It is harder to hit a target or animal at long range than at close range.
Pretty safe to presume any bullet enjoying popular use for Long Range Hunting (mountainside to mountainside) would shoot accurately enough for your Close Range Hunting. So no worries...
