Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Failsafe bullets

Way back when, when I joined the forum, there was a Sticky about Failsafe bullets. I couldn't find the sticky by using the search function here.
I didn't read a whole bunch of the posts because I didn't have any Failsafe bullets (and had never come across any to buy)
I recently picked up 100, .150-grain .308 Failsafes and am finding data for loading them in my .30-06 difficult to find.

My question is: Will these bullets perform well out to 300 yards if I can get them moving 2900 - 3000 fps from my rifle?

Anybody have info/results that they're willing to share?

Thanks in advance,

sniper58

Failsafes always performed well in the game fields

My wife and I used a bunch of Fail Safes back when they were available, in .270, 7mm, .30 and .338. They usually worked very well, being easy to get to shoot and penetrating very similarly to Barnes X's.

But once in a while one would fail to expand much or at all, which can also happen with hollow-point X's, and the problem seemed to get worse toward the end of the Fail Safe's production life. You might want to shoot a couple into wet newspaper as a test, because wet paper is far more gentle on bullets than dry paper. If they don't expand well in wet paper, they might not expand on broadside rib shots.

I dug back through my correspondence with Winchester. I could not find any data for 150s, only 180s. I did find a letter from Chris Herzog, Technical Marketing Specialist that contained the following: "DO NOT seat less than .015" from barrel lands. The data that we have collected indicates that optimum accuracy is usually obtained between .020" and .025"." Also included in the letter is the phone# (618) 258-3568. This letter is from January of 1996, so I don't know if that number would be current; if it is, perhaps it would get you some information for the 150s.

Thanks Gentlemen!

My searching online has indicated that the Failsafe bullet is quite similar to the Barnes MRX in construction. Because of the moly coating on the Failsafe bullets, pressures using MRX data "should" be lower (?)

Barnes data says that a max load of H414 should provide just over 3000 fps.

I'll start them at 0.025" off the lands and see how it goes.

180 grain 308 Failsafes are my favorite 30 cal bullet in almost any 30 cal I own.I was lucky enough to buy a bunch of them from a guy who quit hand loading.They were the old style 50 to a box.I also have some 140`s in .277 but for some reason never got around to using them.

The coating is the Lubaloy not moly. I loaded them with the same data you would use for a Swift A frame or any other bullet that produces slightly more pressure like the original Barnes X not the TSX.

No, it's moly.

A friend of mine who has shot a boatload of deer tried the Failsafe (150 grain in 308 Win. IIRC) for a while and said he got more runners than he was accustomed to. He went back to vanilla cup and cores for that application.

This is from a 2001 Winchester components publication:

308 Winchester 150FS 43gr Win748 powder WLR primer yields 2540fps @ 45,100psi peak pressure

John, I believe that the true Winchester bullets are Lubalox-coated, and the Combined Technology ones are contaminated with moly.

5sdad,

You may be right. I just dig into my GUN DIGEST collection to refresh my memory. The Fail Safes were first announced in the 1994 issue, which means 1993, since GD is published the year before the cover date. But Fail Safes were called Black Talons then, like the handgun bullet Winchester introduced a little while before. The Black Talon didn't last long, because of the "cop killer" BS the mainstream media came out with about the handgun bullets, and the same of the rifle bullet was changed to Fail Safe.

I went on my first safari in '93 and my companion used 180 "Black Talons" in his .30-06. I still have the one we recovered from a blue wildebeest, and the coating between the land-grooves could be Lubalox. Though in that 1994 GD, Ed Matunas (who worked in the industry for many years) calls it a "unique black coating." If it was Lubalox, why didn't he say so? Lubalox wasn't a secret.

I started using Fail Safes after that 1993 Safari and among other animals, took an Alaskan moose with the new 230-grain .338 in 1996, which was the first 230 that Winchester heard had been recovered. Winchester was very interested in seeing it, so I sent it along, and they examined it and sent it back. I also have it, along with one of the unfired bullets used in my handloads, and they are definitely moly-coated.

Nosler and Winchester started teaming up around then, and the 1998 GD states the new Partition Golds were moly-coated. (Or the black ones were, since hey also offered an uncoated version.) By the way, the Nosler folks told me at the time they didn't see any reason to introduce the Partition Gold, that it was all Winchester's idea, including the steel cup over the rear core. But Winchester was willing to pay for it, so they did it.

So if anybody runs across some "Black Talons" or very early Winchester Fail Safes, they may be Lubalox-coated. But by the mid-1990's they were moly-coated.

Here's a photo of the bullets and paper that came with them.

I guess I could call Nosler and talk to them.
I did find an older (2006) Winchester pamphlet in my "stuff" box that gives 1 load for 150 grain Failsafe bullets in .30-06. Says 55.1 grains of WW 760 gives 2810 fps at 52,100 psi from 24" barrel.



Don't know if the phone number is current, but I'll check on Monday.

I still have almost 2 boxes of Partition Gold moly-free bullets and 1 box of the moly-coated ones.

Great bullets for black bears from my .308. Haven't recovered a bullet yet!

I am not fond of moly, not because there's anything inherently wrong with it, but I typically need to shoot a bunch of different bullets from my rifles for testing. Moly fouling tends to make non-coated bullets do screwy things, at least for the first few shots, so I don't use it much.

When I went to Botswana in 2002 on a buffalo/plains game hunt, one of my rifles was a Ruger No. 1 .375 H&H. I wanted to use three different bullets, all 300-grain, the Fail Safe, Nosler Partition and Speer Grand Slam tungsten-cored solid. Since the rifle was a single-shot, a round loaded with any of those bullets could easily chambered depending on the game, I removed the moly-coating and found it didn't make any noticeable difference in velocity. With the same charge of H4350 all three shot to the same point of impact, instead of varying due to moly-fouling in the bore.

Did use an Uncle Mike's buttstock cartridge carrier on that trip, which Ingwe calls a "bubba buddy." But it sure was handy, and I ended up using all three bullets on game from impala to buffalo.

I would love to get my hands on some 7mm 140g fail safes.

I managed to accumulate a fair supply of the old Winchester 180s in .308. Later on, I came by a box of the CT version. The older, Winchester, ones that I have are very black and I am sure are Lubalox. The CTs, which I know are moly, are much more of a silver color and the coating will come off in your hands if rubbed hard (unlike M&Ms and the Lubalox ones. )

I stand corrected both Lubalux and Moly coated versions exist. Not only that I have used both. For some reason I thought the moly version was done as an aftermarket thing for bulk bullets.

I really didn't see much difference between the two but I removed the moly with solvent for the reasons that Mule Deer stated. I don't think solvents would have removed the Lubalox as it is more of a plating.

Ross Seyfried thought highly of the 140gr. .270 for Elk, me I think there are better ones out there now but won't hesitate to to shoot the rest I have at game.

Just curious, how did you remove the moly and was the bullet "normal" looking afterwards (copper color, not black)?

I have a bunch of the 230gr .338 Failsafes and they are coated - not sure if it is moly or lubalox. They shoot pretty accurate in my M70 338WM.

I still have few boxes of the Fail Safe and purchased them for Elk Hunting at the time but never got around to using them. I have 50 loaded at the moment for my 280 Ack.

TXRam,

By the time the 230 .338 Fail Safe was introduced, they were using moly.

I removed the moly with a product from Bore Tech called Moly Magic, designed for cleaning moly buildup from barrels. At first I tried rubbing alcohol and acetone. They didn't do much to the bullets I had, but other people have reported them working, probably because of differences in how firmly the moly was attached. (Some insist on calling it "moly plating," but to me plating means a hard coatings, and moly isn't hard.)

I'd dump a box of bullets in a small Zip-Lock bag and squirt a little Moly Magic inside, then let the bullets soak overnight. The next day most of the moly wiped off easily with a paper towel, though on some bullets rubbing with XXXX steel wool was necessary (the reason I believe moly-coating attaches more firmly to some bullets than others). Afterward the bullets were copper-colored, but often retained a slight hint of gray.