Karl,
It was in fact someone else who spoke of visualising (not seeing) a cloud of rifling following the bullet out the bore. That will teach me to check quotes before attributing them in future. I wrongly gave you credit for it and I should not have.
The distortion of the 500gr GSC FN in your photo is of no concern as it is in the top half of the nose and not in the shaft. The nose of the bullet is leaning slightly and would not have affected linear penetration. Did it?
What you need to do is to take one of these "slightly too soft" GSC FNs and shoot the heaviest bones you know of in a downed ele. While you are at it, shoot those bones with a bronze/brass solid as well. What would it be? The top of the femur I guess. The strong point of a copper solid is that, if it meets extreme resistance, it may deform some but it will hang together and finish the job. Brass solids have been known to fail and, when they fail, they fail catastrophically. I would recommend that you use the 450gr FN and not the 500gr FN. However, if the 500 is what you have, use it for a test, bearing in mind that it is not ideal.
As a matter of interest, if the bullets in your photo are readily available, a picture of the base surfaces of 1, 3, 4 and 5 would be interesting to see.
If your 450 Rigby is built on a WM barrel, it may well be a 1:14" and that can only be good. The 450gr FN is still better to use as the additional speed you can get from it, will be worth more than the extra 50gr of the 500gr bullet.
When you say: "Funny enough, my point of view on that specific issue has now been published by the Magnum magazine, confirming what I have said then. Coincedence?" I take it that you are referring to the meat damage question and your opinion that GSC HV bullets is a "sales gimmick". Let me clarify that once again. I have stated repeatedly that HV bullets cause less meat damage than jacketed lead bullets. Not "no meat damage" but less meat damage. By this I mean that, if you have shot 50 animals with HVs and 50 with cup and core bullets, all else equal, you will have more meat in the freezer from the HV shot carcasses.
I have taken clean shots with cup and core bullets. Less damage than what I have experienced with some HV shots. I have also seen incredible destruction caused with cup and core bullets - far worse than what I have ever experienced with any HVs. That is the unpredictability of terminal ballistics. One fact remains and that is that HV bullets bring a greater measure of reliable and predictable performance to the table that is good to have in a hunting bullet.
Your implication of the time was that the pages on our site that deal with meat damage and terminal reliability are less than honest. Then, as now, I say that the statements on those pages are from users of the product and not from us. The comments we get are edited for grammar and spelling, but not for content. Afrikaans and other language contributions are translated into English. At that time I stated that anyone who has sent us a contribution and feels that our editing has changed the content in letter or spirit, is welcome to tell us, so that we can correct the statement or remove it. If a contribution is or becomes suspect, we do not use it or remove it automatically. After your allegation, I asked customers whose contributions are published, as we made contact with them on technical matters or when they re-ordered if their comments are good. We received no requests to change or remove anything, so I must conclude that everyone is happy with what we published.
As for the Magnum examples of meat damage and impact velocity, we are talking of a sample of two, one of which is debatable as to what exactly happened. The collective experience of the hunters showcased on our Gallery and They Say pages number several thousand animals and simply carries vastly more weight as a valid opinion. Speaking of opinion, it is each to his own and it is good when one can back up an opinion with some fact or a substantial body of research or record spanning an acceptable length of time.
The starter of this thread asked about solids available as factory ammo so discussion of GSC, Rhino, or any other make available as components only, is out of line anyway. I have imposed enough, I am out of line and I apologise for that. I am out of here.
