Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters AccuBonds vs. A-Frames in Africa............

I have several un-opened boxes of Accubonds for sale; 225-338s and some 30 cals...

Really

Nolser wouldn't elaborate on the bonding. Their response was don't even ask for a bonded partition,we tried it and it was a disaster. They responded to the poly tipped partition idea as being financially unfeasable at the time,but were definately interested. I believe the poly tip would be a money issue,you'd have to continue to build the standard partition plus the poly tipped and it would cost you extra to produce the poly tipped version. I believe that nosler originally looked at putting a poly tip on the partition,but knew it would just add cost to an already spendy bullet,plus add more steps to the manufacturing process. Hence the accubond. Cheaper to build and still petains 60% weight retention like the partition.

I just tried a small test of the 140 .277 Accubond and 150 Partition in the same .270 Win. Now before anyone jumps to conclusions, I'm not doubting Allen or anyone else who's had trouble with the Accubond. I just had time to kill and curiosity about the bullet. I set a gallon plastic jug in front of a 5 gal. bucket of wet packed sand with a 4x6 oak beam behind that. Theory was that the water jug would initiate expansion, the sand slow or stop the bullet and the oak would get it stopped if it made it out of the sand. Now I know wet sand isn't an ideal medium, but it's what I could get my hands on quickly. Shot one shot each, max loads of H4831 out of my M700 with Pac-Nor 22" barrel at 100 yards off the backyard bench. Neither bullet made it out of the sand and I have no way of knowing if one out penetrated the other. The bucket was poured out in the driveway and sifted through looking for the bullets. Found them both and washed and cleaned them up.
As expected the Pt. lost it's front core just as it's designed to do. There is no sign of any loosening of the rear core or of tumbleing. The petals are folded back along the shank uniformly.
The Accubond mushroomed down the shank to just about the same length as the Partition. A thin layer of lead still sticking to the jacket material on the folded area. No hint of blowup, or tumbleing with a slightly larger frontal area.
Remaining weight
Accubond= 102 gr. for 72.8%
Partition= 93 gr. for 62% about what we've all come to expect from this bullet.
One bullet apiece means next to nothing, and the reports of failures in the field are disturbing. As Jorge said consistancy is the key, and it's starting to look like the AB is having trouble in that regard.
Still trying to make up my mind which to take on the cow hunt this fall.
YMMV

Allen,
Thanks for an awesome thread! Finally, a thread that was/is both informative AND civil!

Welcome home and congrat's on a wonderful safari! I have a friend here that just came back from SA, where he took his 3 grandson's on their first SA safari. I believe over 20 head of game were taken....all with the TSX out of .243, 30-06, 416 Rem. including an awesome lion! He said his PH asks every client to bring rifles sighted with TSX's....

Ole 270,

I shot an Elk a few years ago with my 270. I used a 140 Trophy Bonded. Weight from the recovered bullet was 138 grains.

I personally wasn't impressed with killing power of the 270 for Elk, but know that it's used every year and I won't criticise those who use it.

Bonded bullets with no way to limit expansion support a very wide mushroom that limits penetration. When the bullets failed did they simply not penetrate deep enough?

An example is here where I tested some bullets out of a bolt action 30-30 and a 223. The bullet at the bottom right with the X shaped profile was a Hornady Interbond. It was only going 2300ft/sec and yet it expanded so greatly that it was beat by every other bullet except the 125 Sierra Spitz which is a varmint type bullet and even here penetration was close



Bullet at Top Right is a 225 Sierra 225 grain bullet used as control

I always assumed the lack of bonding in the front section of the Partition was more a legal than a technical diffculty. Speculatively, a two-lead-section, front-bonded bullet sounds like an A-Frame to me, and possibly also to Swift's lawyers. I have no factual knowledge of this, however.

Jaywalker

Because the front of the partition is not bonded it has limited expansion capability. Bits of copper and lead break off and do not support each other to make a large mushroom.

Because of this the Partition will penetrate deeply as it doesn't reach a huge diameter. It might not be as pretty a mushroom in the magazine add but it sure is effective.

I agree with those observations. The Partition may not retain as much weight or look as pretty when recovered as some of the other premium bonded bullets, such as North Fork, but it surely does kill well, and in may cases the smaller frontal area allows the Partition to penetrate deeper than some of the others.

There's really no point in wishing that Nosler would offer a bonded version of the Partition, since the Swift A-Frame fills that role very well indeed, while the Partition or Partition Gold is good enough as-is.

Beginning with the old Remington Bronze Point, I haven't yet found a tipped bullet that I really trust as a hunting bullet, and I have my suspicions that the polymer tip may just be the culprit in terms of inconsistent performance with the AccuBond. A bonded version of Nosler's Solid Base, however, might just prove to be a better bullet.

It'll be interesting to hear the reports on the new Winchester and Barnes tipped hunting bullets. They may prove to be absolutely outstanding.......

I don't want to give the impression that those AccuBonds were nothing more than a complete failure. They didn't always fail, especially on lung shots on stuff like impala. But they were not at all optimal on the bigger stuff, and performance was a grab-bag of results. Any time a bullet blows up without getting inside on an animals the size of bushbuck at something over 200 yds., something is seriously wrong.

Someone can try to rationalize it any way they want to, but on this safari those Swifts totally and completely out-performed the AccuBonds, and that disparity was simply too great to sweep under the rug or to somehow wish away.

I asked a Nosler rep at a hunting convention a few years ago as to why I'd ever want to go with the Ballistic Tip over the Partition as a hunting bullet, and I didn't get back an answer. That lack of response didn't exactly surprise me.............

AD

Hmmm.... an interesting point. Several of the new American-made bonded core bullets (cup and core bonded) have plastic tips; the Accubond, Interbond, and Scirocco as examples. I find it interesting that Woodleigh Weldcores don't have a plastic tip. I believe Woodleighs have an excellent reputation, in general, in the game fields. Hmmmmm..... something to ponder...

I have used the following handloads on plains game in South Africa and had excellent results:

.30-06 -- 220 gr Woodleigh RN at 2460 fps
8x57JS -- 220 gr Woodleigh RN at 2400 fps
9.3x62 -- 286 gr Woodleigh RN at 2390 fps

http://www.woodleighbullets.com.au/

My two cents.....
-Bob F.

The Partition Gold wasn't bonded, as I recall.

You're right, the Partition Gold wasn't bonded. It had the partition further forward for more weight retained when the front core was lost.

Great article Allen but some what troubling for me as one
of my favorite rifles a weatherbu ultralight in .280 rem is
very fond of the federal accubond my job and obligations
prevent me at this time from reloading. so are there any
factory loads in swift A-frame for .280 rem available.
I have had great accuracy and performance on whitetails
with the above mentioned accubonds in .280rem &270wsm
and they where large whitetails but I have elk hunts in
the up coming months and now I am concerned. My .280
also shot the trophy bonded bearclaw 140gr very well but
I believe they are only available in 160 gr now which is ok
for elk but I would prefer the 140gr for deer. Thanks again
for sharing some great and very usefull information.

The partition gold also has a metal liner/insert in the lower half in addition to lead.

I have only shot 2 deer and a bear with the Accubond. All three were pass throughs that left pencil size holes. The deer were smallish blacktails at 50 and 125yds. The bear was at 200 yds. The bear was shot in the head. In the ear out the off side eye. Nothing solid was hit but the intire skull was smashes into guarter and nickle sized bits. One of the deer shot was hit in the spine. Bullet hole in , bullet hole out. With baseball sized damage to spine area. My son shot a buck in the same spot with a partition out of an 7-08. Bullet hole in, half dollor size hole out with baseball size damage to spine area. The accubond and partition did the same exact amount of damage once inside. But for some reason the AB is leaving pencil size exit wounds?? I had been pretty impressed with the AB.
But after hearing all this I will be hitting the range with some partitions for my -06. I put way to much time, money and effort into scouting and hunting to even take a chance. I'm not a big gambler. I've talked my partner into shooting AB'S out of his 7mag and now I gotta call him and let him know to bag the AB's. Thanks to the original poster on this one. Cdeath

Mark, it's hard to say what Nosler's reaction will be, but I suspect they'll point to all of the wonderful successes that other hunters have enjoyed with the AccuBond, the superlative accuracy it provides, and they might even state that they've not heard of such failures as I've described, etc.......

We'll see! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

AD

Well this subject's generated quite a few responses as I expected it would. For most of us, we took it as a "Lesson Learned" and move on, but it is not surprising to see the usual volley "well it works for me" posts and I'm not going to let facts get in my way.

Forget the notion the original poster is arguably the most experienced big game hunter here. I have no doubt folks who posted success with ABs are truthful, but often-times people fail to see the forests for the trees. The locus of this whole thread is CONSISTENCY, and while your AB use on your local game met with success, the fact that ABs FAILED on a diminutive animal like a bushbuck in an area where LIONS, LEOPARDS and Buffalo make *YOU* part of the food chain should serve as an express train in the night coming straight at you kind of warning and if you can't see that, well I guess it's Social Darwinism at work. jorge

Jorge, the thing that your posts fail to realize is that maybe Allen's reports are the exception rather than the rule. True Allen is one of the most repected people on this forum and I don't doubt the veracity of his reports, but perhaps he had a bad lot of bullets etc.. Yes consistancy if critical but maybe this is a rare exception, maybe not. IMHO a definate conclusion is not yet ready to be reached. There are African reports on another forum that gave an exemplary report on Accubonds. I tend wo weight Allen's report ahead of most but think that it's best to look at as many reports as possible before reaching an overall conclusion, your "facts getting in the way" may be the dozens of factual reports of good performance!
I've shot 2 Elk with Accubonds including 1 with 225gr 338 Accubonds and they performed perfectly. Am I supposed to completely reject my personal experiences because of Allen's report?
I won't quit using Accubonds for much of my hunting, but if I was headed for Africa tommorow it would be with TSX's or Swifts, especially in 338 caliber................DJ

The fact his bullets failed to perform even 5% of the time DEFINES consitency or a lack thereof.

Further, lots of other posters piped up with AB issues and over on AR, JohnS, yet another extremely experienced world-wide hunter also had abysmal performance from the ABs.

There's an old saying that goes like this: "Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance but thrice is ENEMY ACTION." I thnk with the ABs we are way beyond that. jorge

The TSX, Partition, and whatever junkies are eager to believe anything bad about any other bullet, and to discount the "failures" of their current favorite. Allen offers a good report, of comparisons between two bullets in the same environment with different performance. As noted, others have found the Accubond (and almost every other bullet) to work just great on their safari.

The unanswered question is why the Accubond performed this way or that way, good and bad. I don't think anyone is going to be disappointed with the Swift A-Frame or Trophy Bonded on any big, tough animals.