Finished testing bullets for the 450 Marlin Today. Also applicable for the 45-70, 457 Mag or 450-348. My test media was a 4L Milk Jug filled with water followed by a mix of wet and dry hard packed paper. This is a fairly rough test on bullets. The 325 Hornady Flex Tip offers the least penetration and weight retention. The ballistic coefficient isn't superior enough to warrant it's use. The 350 grain FP Hornady is a much better bet, and holds together very well. The 405 Rem almost always loses it's core or just about but the jacket is so thin that the 350 grain remaining lead makes jacket retention nearly irrelevant.

The 400 Barnes Original has a much thicker jacket but also core separates unless you trick it out with an extra cannelure at the bullet base like I do. I have been doing this with Barnes originals (using a Corbin Hand Cannelure tool) for many years and it works very well. Both the 400 Barnes and 405 Remington create a huge mushroom at 1700+ fps (over an inch). This likely limits penetration as the slug sized bullet creates a lot of drag. Huge wound channel though.

Both the 405 Woodleigh and 350 Hornady lose some mass which limits the mushroom to about .80 caliber but allows for better penetration. I wish Nosler still made their 300 grain partition as these penetrated like crazy, and had a useful jolt of hydrostatic shock. That said all these bullets do nasty things to the water jugs. See the video if you want to see evidence of that!

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Video if interested, first 30 seconds has some extreme water jug explosions...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5nd2uuhaMA

Last edited by North61; 07/03/16.