Subsonic expansion testing
- Thread starter Spindrift
- Start date
Ian
Notorious member
I don't think it would be in the "spirit" of the ASSRA.
The SASS folks who think "King Ranch Edition" qualifies their 4x4 dually as a horse and "Wilderness" brand qualifies their 5th wheel RV as a covered wagon shouldn't bitch about plastic-coated bullets, especially if it's Eastwood clear.
The SASS folks who think "King Ranch Edition" qualifies their 4x4 dually as a horse and "Wilderness" brand qualifies their 5th wheel RV as a covered wagon shouldn't bitch about plastic-coated bullets, especially if it's Eastwood clear.
CWLONGSHOT
Well-Known Member
I know I shot a pile! This is DEFINITELY a seek forgiveness over permission deal!! Colors can be near identical to naked lead. So no one would ever know if ya made them so.
My theory here is we get very set in our ways having spent a lifetime "trying" things. We stick to what works. So many of these folks are ahem.. ol timers and aint likely interested in changing what works. Couple this with the facts that young folks aint getting involved to bring these "new" things to the sport.
CW
My theory here is we get very set in our ways having spent a lifetime "trying" things. We stick to what works. So many of these folks are ahem.. ol timers and aint likely interested in changing what works. Couple this with the facts that young folks aint getting involved to bring these "new" things to the sport.
CW
Bret4207
At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Could I ask, What is the goal of expansion at sub-sonic speeds? I mean, most of this looks to be 35 cal rifles. IME, whatever you hit with a 35 anything is generally going to fall over and stop moving poste-haste given a FN or SWC profile, or even a blunt RN. What are the goals of the members looking into this? And I understand if it's one of those, "I wonder..." things.
Snakeoil
Well-Known Member
Yup, it was started by guys that were sick of the gamers and the technology race. If you won, all you got were braggin' rights. We started a CAS club in Saratoga and I (reluctantly) ran it for 3 years. It was a ball at first. Half the fun was getting all "the stuff". Had my boots made by JR Reyes, who made Kurt Russell's boots for Tombstone. Still have those. Found derbies in antique shops, hats at garage sales and even ordered the biggest hat that Stetson made at the time. For those early years, having to dress like a cowboy kept all the macho-types and gamers out. We would have one show up now and then, having made a minimal effort to look the part and they would get pissed off about something and never come back. Nobody shed a tear over the loss. But over time, the gamers started to infiltrate. When I stepped down, a couple that had been there from the start, but who I'd kept in check, managed to take over and for them it was all about winning. All the fun and goofy stuff we would do disappeared and basically it was the same old stage time after time, with the only difference being the placement of the targets. I shot it for one more year after I stepped down and then just stopped going entirely.
The other negative aspect was if you added up your actually shooting time, and entire days' worth of shooting might be 3 or 4 minutes, total. Standing in the hot sun with long pants, longsleeved shirt, vest, hat, boots and 10 lbs of guns and bullets hanging off you started to get old.
When I first got into the sport, I thought that half the fun was the story behind the scenarios you shot at each stage. I wrote 4 stages for the first shoot and learned quickly that nobody wanted to listen to somebody read a story. We still kept our scenarios fun and different with things like having to light a stick of dynamite with a cigar (piece of licorice) and then having to hold your fingers in your ears as you departed the bank. Penalty points were assigned if you forgot to put your fingers in your ears. We had a stuffed dummy named Floyd that was frequently dragged to safety or pushed off a stagecoach before you started to shoot. We had a lot of fun. Then we didn't anymore.
Missionary
Well-Known Member
That was sure wrote correct. As soon as winning something gets involved beyond just having a good day with the club members the outsiders who never lifted a finger to help take over.
Rockydoc
Well-Known Member
I like your new avatar, Missionary Mike.
RBHarter
West Central AR
I remember a pilots association like that . Once a month a quarter elect would set up transportation and 4-12 airplanes would go 45 minutes to 2 hours away for breakfast or brunch on Sunday....... They had 2-3 fundraisers for MDA or local service groups .... Something happened, I guess about 4-5th member passed or crashed and it stopped being fun . The first 10 years had many amazing play days and vacation trips . The association is completely gone now I think fewer than 5 of the 5 yr 35 left around .
That is one of the really cool things about things like the NCBS over there is getting together with those guys you saw last year swapping stuff , hanging out, etc for a weekend. It's only one weekend a year , there's 5 or 6 matches at your leisure from 8:00 Saturday morning to 3ish Sunday afternoon 2 team games Sunday morning , 2 dinners , and a potluck lunch . It doesn't get old , there's no whining, and it's just fun .
I go to a couple here every year but it just isn't quite the same .
That is one of the really cool things about things like the NCBS over there is getting together with those guys you saw last year swapping stuff , hanging out, etc for a weekend. It's only one weekend a year , there's 5 or 6 matches at your leisure from 8:00 Saturday morning to 3ish Sunday afternoon 2 team games Sunday morning , 2 dinners , and a potluck lunch . It doesn't get old , there's no whining, and it's just fun .
I go to a couple here every year but it just isn't quite the same .
RBHarter
West Central AR
Noise damping . That's what the sub thing is about .
How heavy, how much BC , 0 net pressure at the muzzle, retained energy . It's really a different level of the game that almost anyone can play .
Funny thing those smoking 250-300 gr tipped wonders in 45-70 actually aren't all that much flatter than the 1100 fps MV 530s . Which are subs 50 ft from the muzzle .
How heavy, how much BC , 0 net pressure at the muzzle, retained energy . It's really a different level of the game that almost anyone can play .
Funny thing those smoking 250-300 gr tipped wonders in 45-70 actually aren't all that much flatter than the 1100 fps MV 530s . Which are subs 50 ft from the muzzle .
L Ross
Well-Known Member
I put on a couple of shoots at my place for like minded friends. For one of the stages we had a female manakin completely dressed 1876. She was a saloon girl who dealt poker and entertained, named "Poker Fanny". She had a small pocket pistol stuck in her sash waist band. The shooter was sitting at a card table and four cards were dealt with Fanny "standing" at the shooter's right shoulder. The target was a frame of swingers with the card suits hanging on arms set about 7 yards away. When the timer started at the turn of the fourth card, the shooter was instructed that his card playing opponent was going for a knife. The unarmed shooter rose, stepped behind Fanny, took her pocket pistol, pushed her to safety and shot the card suit targets. All black powder, the only propellant in 1976. You wanna shoot smokeless, go shoot trap. The gun was an American Standard spur trigger break top single action loaded with 4 rounds of .360 round ball over a case of 3 fg in the .38 S&W. You just cannot get "gamers" to play and have any fun at all.
Snakeoil
Well-Known Member
Okay, at the risk of being accused of being a bit full of myself, attached is a PDF with the 4 stage stories I wrote back in the 90's when we started the whole Cowboy thing at Kayaderosseras Gun Club. We called the CAS club The Circle K Regulators. I think they still hold the NYS national every year. I'm attaching these because they were intended to be entertaining. I figure Mitty can use a new diversion while he recovers.
Bret4207
At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I get that part. It's the expansion part that I find kind of mystifying. Maybe I'm not too smart, but a 35 or 45 cal hole in about anything is going to cause a big leak. Maybe it's just that I haven't had a whole lotta luck getting alloys in HP bullets running kinda soft to expand consistently. I kinda gave up worrying about it I guess and decided a FN is a lot more reliable. But that's just me, have at it if that's what you find interesting. I was just wondering about the "why".
fiver
Well-Known Member
i think he is doing it to just make water sploosh every where.
quietly.
kind of the opposite of me taking the AR-30, or the XCB rifle down to the range and jamming a cast bullet out of it at 24-25-2700 fps just so the muzzle brake blows all the targets off the bench next to me.
they usually look a bit crossways when they see the rifle, then they get a big laugh out of the cast bullets laying on the bench.
then they are confused as to what just happened, and want to know exactly what i'm doing,,,, then they wanna shoot it.
quietly.
kind of the opposite of me taking the AR-30, or the XCB rifle down to the range and jamming a cast bullet out of it at 24-25-2700 fps just so the muzzle brake blows all the targets off the bench next to me.
they usually look a bit crossways when they see the rifle, then they get a big laugh out of the cast bullets laying on the bench.
then they are confused as to what just happened, and want to know exactly what i'm doing,,,, then they wanna shoot it.
1) For "fun." I'm well beyond feeling a need for a practical reason for the guns I choose and what I shoot in them and simply do a lot of what I do to entertain myself. I'm making up for some early days of my youth, when smiling was considered aberrant and devious behavior.
2) On a more pragmatic note, in reference to the bullet on the left in my post #16, there is more to it than fun. THAT same 35 caliber bullet, fired from a carbine at maybe 450 or 500 fps entered a big woodchuck, between the shoulder blades - at thirty feet, and did not exit. Even a BIG woodchuck isn't all that big - or "thick." IT likely did not open up as much as shown in post 16, but I'd bet it smushed out a fair bit. The stack of clay tile he was peeking over (in the wrong direction, obviously) was unscathed and I had no concerns about where the bullet went. That's actually a practical concern I have for the 1% of "work" my guns do. Some varmint or vermin always manages to position itself such that shooting it will yield collateral damage that I'll be stuck patching up.
I can't answer for anyone else, but that's why I mess with this stuff.
Ian
Notorious member
Why to many .22 LR bullets have hollow points?
There is a pragmatic reason to experimenting with hollow pointed bullets which will never exceed the speed of sound, but to me it mostly involves trying to improve the fundamental weakness of such ammunition which its distinct lack of shock value at impact. Having experienced putting 11 witnessed holes through a wild pig and it running off through a hole in the game fence, I can tell you that there are some limitations to non-expanding projectiles. Also having put another pig right down with a single 500-grain RFN lead bullet, I can say that those limitations are indeed about hole size. If I could make a 230-grain blackout bullet become 50 caliber and dump its energy instead of penciling straight through, it would doubtless be a better game bullet. I even made some 500-grain bullets with several different, huge hollow point cavities and experimented with that, but it was an abject failure as far as expansion goes because I needed too hard of an alloy to shoot well without a gas check.
There is a pragmatic reason to experimenting with hollow pointed bullets which will never exceed the speed of sound, but to me it mostly involves trying to improve the fundamental weakness of such ammunition which its distinct lack of shock value at impact. Having experienced putting 11 witnessed holes through a wild pig and it running off through a hole in the game fence, I can tell you that there are some limitations to non-expanding projectiles. Also having put another pig right down with a single 500-grain RFN lead bullet, I can say that those limitations are indeed about hole size. If I could make a 230-grain blackout bullet become 50 caliber and dump its energy instead of penciling straight through, it would doubtless be a better game bullet. I even made some 500-grain bullets with several different, huge hollow point cavities and experimented with that, but it was an abject failure as far as expansion goes because I needed too hard of an alloy to shoot well without a gas check.
RBHarter
West Central AR
Which should make the 10ish bhn 45-500 swell up like a balloon needing only 18kpsi on the gas check .
A.400-.650 hole in most anything with a pulse is going to make a substantial leak .
We shoot smaller calibers to reduce the frontal area .......then we structure them so they will swell up to make a bigger hole and with any luck set up incidental tissue damage via energy exchange . A 12 ga RB weighs 545 gr (round numbers) and dead soft I bet it'll leave a .800+ exit hole . Typical speeds are what 1250-1325 fps and what like a .160 BC ? Point of hold to what 100-110 yd ? Slow it down to 1100 MV and you're back to maybe 80 yd .
Choke 540 gr down the 460 from 690 and your flirting with .200 even if it's a WC and at 1100 fps MV , a150 yd zero , you hold bottom half under 100 , dead on to 175 and spine if you think it's past that and under 230 yd . Dead soft it'll still make a .500 plus hole at 300 yd because it's still north of 1000 ftlb.
The question becomes where does mass/bc become inadequate for a ........well in my application, clean harvest ? A .320 BC 200 gr 30 cal needs 1900 fps MV to have 1000 ftlb past 100 yd ( because that's the min energy requirement I hunted with my whole life) . I agree it's just silly to turn a 358 Win , 9×57 , or 35 Whelen into a 38 Special ....... I do have a 95 gr RNFP and a .360 RB that might be fun in the 358 ........I wonder how fast that RB or 95 gr would go PC'd ........ Heck it could probably be turned down to a 380 with 2 gr of Red Dot.
I guess the expansion comes in because a WC will only fly so far .
We want a tool to be more than it is .......300-350 gr 45 Colts and 165 gr collar buttons for 458 Lott and 45-120s .
A.400-.650 hole in most anything with a pulse is going to make a substantial leak .
We shoot smaller calibers to reduce the frontal area .......then we structure them so they will swell up to make a bigger hole and with any luck set up incidental tissue damage via energy exchange . A 12 ga RB weighs 545 gr (round numbers) and dead soft I bet it'll leave a .800+ exit hole . Typical speeds are what 1250-1325 fps and what like a .160 BC ? Point of hold to what 100-110 yd ? Slow it down to 1100 MV and you're back to maybe 80 yd .
Choke 540 gr down the 460 from 690 and your flirting with .200 even if it's a WC and at 1100 fps MV , a150 yd zero , you hold bottom half under 100 , dead on to 175 and spine if you think it's past that and under 230 yd . Dead soft it'll still make a .500 plus hole at 300 yd because it's still north of 1000 ftlb.
The question becomes where does mass/bc become inadequate for a ........well in my application, clean harvest ? A .320 BC 200 gr 30 cal needs 1900 fps MV to have 1000 ftlb past 100 yd ( because that's the min energy requirement I hunted with my whole life) . I agree it's just silly to turn a 358 Win , 9×57 , or 35 Whelen into a 38 Special ....... I do have a 95 gr RNFP and a .360 RB that might be fun in the 358 ........I wonder how fast that RB or 95 gr would go PC'd ........ Heck it could probably be turned down to a 380 with 2 gr of Red Dot.
I guess the expansion comes in because a WC will only fly so far .
We want a tool to be more than it is .......300-350 gr 45 Colts and 165 gr collar buttons for 458 Lott and 45-120s .