Two New Hammers

[RockyMtnMT]

Here is a couple new ones in .270 and .284. They are designed for 1-8" twist. The .284 is 177g and the .270 is 156g. These have not been shot yet, so I don't have any ballistics to report. Just want you guys to know that we are working on some longer bullets for faster than standard twist.

http://www.longrangehunting.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59060&stc=1&d=1458140641

Steve

 

[can1010]

when will the .277 be available.

 

[Varminator 911]

Steve:

How about building a long range bullet with a longer ogive? Something like Sierra's 7mm 183 grain with 27 ogive. That would meaningfully increase BC.

Your bullets to me are short on the ogive and too long on bearing surface.

Would the longer ogive make the bullet too difficult to tune for accuracy? Wouldn't the slimmer nose, assuming it has the same diameter hollow point, expand easier at low velocity?

 

[RockyMtnMT]

Steve:

How about building a long range bullet with a longer ogive? Something like Sierra's 7mm 183 grain with 27 ogive. That would meaningfully increase BC.

Your bullets to me are short on the ogive and too long on bearing surface.

Would the longer ogive make the bullet too difficult to tune for accuracy? Wouldn't the slimmer nose, assuming it has the same diameter hollow point, expand easier at low velocity?

What you are asking for is going to be the next phase. Our greatest concern now as we get ready to start taking orders is accuracy first. Our bullet design now is very forgiving and easy to load. Pretty much been no tuning needed. Just load to mag length or just off the lands, get to velocity, and you are good to go.

We had that exact discussion this morning when I cut these two proto types. Shorter bearing surface/longer ogive. They will have to get lighter but should still gain in bc. Lighter always loses bc and it has to be made up in form. The question is if the better form can get better than the heavier bullet. I think it can, and we will get after it.

The smaller meplat is what we started with. 1mm. We did all of our hunting last fall with that design. Killed 25 big game animals perfectly. We started testing low velocity impacts and found that the 1mm hole is just not reliable at this time. There will be more testing in the future with other alloys to try and make it work. Better bc will always be a goal for us. Terminal ballistics will never be sacrificed for bc in a hunting bullet. We changed to a 1.5mm hollow pt and a more aggressive ogive. In testing last weekend we found little or no change in bc, but much better low velocity impact terminal ballistics. Accuracy had no change. We will also work on a target line of bullets that will have bc and accuracy as the primary goals.

Bare with us, we will get you what you want.

Steve

 

[Varminator 911]

Sounds good. I'll be looking forward to those.

 

[deno]

Steve are these designed to shed the petals like CEB or retain a mushroom like the GS Custom bullets?

 

[Rich Coyle]

tag

 

[RockyMtnMT]

Steve are these designed to shed the petals like CEB or retain a mushroom like the GS Custom bullets?

Neither GS Custom or CEB are designed to keep petals. If all the planets are lined up and the ballistic gel works perfectly at just the right impact speed you can get the petals to stay on. The only time they will stay on is low velocity impact without any bone contact. What they do do is shed to the depth of the hollow pt and become a square front like a dangerous game bullet. As a square front they displace soft tissue perpendicular to the bullet travel creating a larger permanent wound channel than a rounded front of a mushroomed lead core bullet does.

The quest for the bullet maker is to find the right copper alloy. There is the highly machinable alloy that CEB uses. And the very low machinable alloy that GS uses. The CEB alloy is too brittle. It works well until low vel. The alloy that GS uses works very well at all velocities but is very labor intensive to make bullets from. We have found an alloy that is fairly machinable and works at low and high velocity. We have literally spent the last three months figuring this out. We were ready to launch our line at the 1st of the year and had to pull the plug when we found out that the low vel impacts were not as we wanted them. We just today received a load of copper that will have us ready to take orders on bullets from 7mm up through .338. I will be taking care of some changes to our web site that have to be made due to the change in material and meplat design that we have been working on. Then we will be able to offer the .17cal through 6.5mm when that material gets here. It has been difficult holding back on launching our bullets, but we had to. My partner Brian and I truly have a goal to make the best bullet possible. We just could not take orders for a bullet that was not exactly what we would want if we were purchasing them. We are there, its been a long time coming. I anticipate the web site to be able to start taking orders on Saturday.

Steve

 

[deno]

Kudos for trying to get it right from the beginning.
I was testing some bullets for a company in AUS here and always suspected that there was a difference in the temper of the alloys they were using. Gathered this by the way the different batches of bullets behaved terminally and their finish.
There was a very noticeable difference going from a 0.9mm and 1mm hollow point to a 1.2mm. Better again with a 1.5mm like you are using. This with 257, 6.5 and 270 and 338 cals.
I was modifying the HP myself.
Petals would stay on with pretty hard impacts I found. Like pig shoulder pads at close ranges and cattle at various ranges and angles depending on the alloy.
The wound channels with retained petals were obviously much greater but surprisingly not much less penetration than shanks without the petals.
Regards
Denton