24hourcampfire.com
24hourcampfire.com
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Hop To
Page 4 of 5 1 2 3 4 5
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 1,220
M
Campfire Regular
Offline
Campfire Regular
M
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 1,220
i use them all the time great bullets, wish they'd quite dropping fine bullets out of their line up

BP-B2

Joined: Dec 2016
Posts: 5,460
S
Campfire Tracker
Online Content
Campfire Tracker
S
Joined: Dec 2016
Posts: 5,460
I ran Cast Performance Bullet Co. and in the early 90s we did a LOT of testing, not only of our bullets but also of every other bullet we could. It was very interesting and fun as well.
"Cup-and-Core" bullets are all made from 2 components, the jacket, made from materiel called "strip" and the lead core alloy.
Strip was made by Kennecott and Alcoa and could be ordered in various alloys of gilding metal (Copper/Zink alloy) and rolled onto a spool as a long strip (hummmm wonder why they call it that smile
The lead cores are made from alloyed metal too with lead and tin being the 2 metals used in all, and some having a small % of Antimony also.

Strip is used for certain bullets at certain thicknesses. As an example, Hornady used to use the same strip for bullets from the 130 gr 270 to the 225 grain 338. (if my memory is correct)
So you can see that all would have the same thickness of jacket at the shank, but the .277 would have a thicker jacket in comparison to it's diameter. If that strip was .022" (as an example only) you would have a total shank diameter of .044" in jacket and .233" in lead. So the jacket will comprise close to 15% of the thickness of the bullet shank. But step up to a .338 you still have only .044" of jacket and the other .294" is lead. that means the 338 bullet would have a shank thickness of jacket to lead of about 12% jacket and 88% lead. So jacket thickness should be increased to get thicker as the bullets get larger in diameter, but it can't be done for every bullet and every weight of bullet, as the cost of the tooling would be prohibitive. Every bullet would have to be made on a dedicated set of cupping dies for every diameter and every different weight to be perfect. None of us could afford the bullets if any company did that because of the cost of tooling.
So they take averages. Most generally, Hornady did well in it's averages in their old Inner-Lock line. Not all, but most I have tried were good enough and some are very good. The ones I have seen that were sub-standard to my way of thinking were in fact the 338s they make, because their jackets were too thin for the diameter of the bullets and that causes them to break up badly and not penetrate well.

The thinner the strip, the easier it is to make the jackets accurate and even. But the thicker the jacket the more force is needed to form it, and the more likely "memory" of the metal is to cause slight differences in the cups.

The ideal cup and core big game bullet has a jacket of 25% to 30% of it's diameter at the 3/4 point up it's shank, and going down to the base. From that 3/4 point, (from base to 3/4 ways up the shank) it should taper evenly in thickness to the tip with the jacket being only .004 to .007" at the tip
That's the ideal, but it doesn't exist in industry for the reasons above.

In effect a 243 bullet should have a jacket at the shank of ..031 to .040
A 257 should have .032 to .043
A 264 should have a shank jacket thickness of .033 to .044
A 277 should have a shank jacket thickness of .035 to .046
A 284 should have a shank jacket thickness of .035 to .047
A 308 Should have a shank jacket thickness of between .038 and .051

And so on and so on.....and the reason for the different thicknesses is the proposed striking velocity of the bullets. so faster round should be thicker then a slower round and so on and so on. All of which taper to a thickness of thin paper at the nose and thicken to that point 3/4 up the shank of the bullet to full thickness.
Now if you think....just imagine how many different dies and tapering swedes there would have to be in a bullet makers factory to do this and get it all the that theoretical ideal.

It is not going to happen in industry as we have it today.

I think the old Remington Core-Lokt, Winchester Power Points and many of the Hornady Inner-Lock bullets are about as good as we have seen in the past, and going up to today, for cup and core bullets. Only a custom shop can make the "ideal" bullets and the cost would be higher than most of us could pay. If a bullet is good enough to work, kill well, even if it's not ideal, no one is going to pay a super high price for something better that doesn't offer some real world advantage. If Speer and Sierra would simply double their strip thickness on their hunting bullets it would help them a lot, but bullet companies don't really want to know what we'd like. They only want to know what we'll accept and pay for. They advertise accuracy as the mecca of bullet n design and it's not for any bullet but varmint and target bullets, but the average American shooter has accepted this marketing ploy.

For me, I'll take a good hunting bullet that expands and doesn't loose more then about 45% of it's weight that holds 1.25 MOA every time over a bullet that sheds 70-85% of it's weight even if that bullet shoots one hole. I have never shot at an animal or man ever that was smaller than 1.25 MOA. I want 1/3 to 1/8 MOA for target bullets and varmint bullets but for big game I want good performance, and about anything under 1.5 MOA is just fine.

OK....rabbit trail followed --------------- no rabbit here...

Last edited by szihn; 07/15/17.
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 1,966
L
Campfire Regular
Offline
Campfire Regular
L
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 1,966
This is an example of one, so take it for what it's worth...I used the Hornady 225 gr. .338 Interlock SP in a .338-06 to take my first bull elk in '91. I seldom recover a bullet from a game animal, but this bullet traveled lengthwise through a lot of elk. Core was still in the jacket and there was some mushrooming , but not the textbook kind. Bullet weighed 181 grs.

Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 36,824
D
Campfire 'Bwana
Online Content
Campfire 'Bwana
D
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 36,824
I have Interlocks and Interbonds, have not used either on animals. Am working up loads, will be shooting both.

How do those two compare?

DF

Joined: May 2007
Posts: 5,730
F
Campfire Tracker
Offline
Campfire Tracker
F
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 5,730
Originally Posted by Dirtfarmer
I have Interlocks and Interbonds, have not used either on animals. Am working up loads, will be shooting both.

How do those two compare?

DF


I've used both on game at '06 velocities, and found them indistinguishable.

FC


"Every day is a holiday, and every meal is a banquet."

- Mrs. FC
IC B2

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
M
Campfire Kahuna
Online Content
Campfire Kahuna
M
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
Steve,

Based on conversations with a number of bullet makers, plus some testing of core hardness, MOST manufacturers of swaged, jacketed rifle bullets use a significant amount of antimony in their core lead. In fact the average percentage is similar to that in most "chilled" shot, about 3-4%, but can vary from 2.5% to 6% depending on the specific bullet. Some companies, in fact, often tweak the percentage of antimony, due to performance reports, accuracy, etc. In fact, back before Hornady developed the Interlock jacket-ring, their Spire Points had a better reputation for penetration than some other cup-and-cores, and I later found out that their big game bullets had a higher-than-average percentage of antimony in the cores than most other brands.


“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
Joined: Aug 2013
Posts: 120
Campfire Member
Offline
Campfire Member
Joined: Aug 2013
Posts: 120

From reading the replies it seems that interlock generates mainly positive feedback. On more than one occasion though, I've heard "they work well at 30-06 velocities".
My question is how do they work on elk sized game at .30 magnum velocities?
I shoot a .300 Weatherby and I'm currently using Hornady factory ammo that's loaded with the 180gr Interlock projectile at a reported 3140fps - but my brutally honest chronograph suggests that they're doing a fraction over 3000fps.
Is this too fast for the 180gr Interlock on elk sized game?

Cheers,

Russ.


You'll probably never NEED a gun. In fact I hope you never do. BUT IF you do, you will probably need it worse than anything you've ever needed before in your life...
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 5,730
F
Campfire Tracker
Offline
Campfire Tracker
F
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 5,730
Originally Posted by BadboyMelvin

From reading the replies it seems that interlock generates mainly positive feedback. On more than one occasion though, I've heard "they work well at 30-06 velocities".
My question is how do they work on elk sized game at .30 magnum velocities?
I shoot a .300 Weatherby and I'm currently using Hornady factory ammo that's loaded with the 180gr Interlock projectile at a reported 3140fps - but my brutally honest chronograph suggests that they're doing a fraction over 3000fps.
Is this too fast for the 180gr Interlock on elk sized game?

Cheers,

Russ.


Here's your thread (and only 2 years old, too!)


FWIW, here's what Hornady has to say:

Originally Posted by Hornday's Website
InterLock® (RN, SP, SP-RP, FP, HP)
The aerodynamic secant ogive of the Hornady InterLock® delivers flat trajectories and great accuracy. It's tapered jacket allows for deep penetration and controlled expansion while the InterLock ring locks core and jacket together.
More about InterLock Rifle products...
More about InterLock Handgun products...

Controlled expansion with deep penetration.
Recommended muzzle velocity range: 2000 to 3300 fps


FC


"Every day is a holiday, and every meal is a banquet."

- Mrs. FC
Joined: Dec 2016
Posts: 5,460
S
Campfire Tracker
Online Content
Campfire Tracker
S
Joined: Dec 2016
Posts: 5,460
Hi John.
That's interesting. Antimony is found in most of the core metal fro most manufacturers, but 6% surprises me. I would have guessed it to be around 3.5%. I have been out of the bullet making business now since 2000, so some changes have probably been made in the last 17 years. I have a 1973 copy of Hornady's manual and their interlock bullets were all through it, but now I hear the lead cores are not the dame alloy as they were in the early 70s. I bought many thousands of the interlocks in the 70s, but I never tried to test their alloy back then, so I can only guess what the changes are that Hornady made from 1973 to today.

I do remember when Speer first brought out it's Grand Slam line, and the rear core was at 6.5%, but that was later changed. I suspect the whole core was then made with a high-antimony content. But what alloy I have no idea.

In eutectic lead based alloys the addition of antimony brings the hardness up but also the brittleness, so I would not think it wise to go above 6% ever in a rifle bullet. The addition of Tin can buffer that brittleness a small amount, but Tin actually is not for hardening as most men think. What Tin does it to make the alloy flow easier. In casting it acts as soap does to water. It makes the molten lead flow far easier and fill out the molds. In the process of swedging Tin adds a lubricity to the lead wire to make it form better. There is a down side however, in that tin can also cause the core to be slippery enough to make them more prone to jump their jackets on impact too.
Speer tried to solve that problem with it's "Hot-Core" line, but it's largely ineffective because their jackets are not tinned on the inside and no flux is used to cause the molten lead to bond. Cost wise, it's probably not something they can do.
I have done the same thing on custom made bullets to see if it will work and it does work wonderfully. What i did in 1994 was to take some stip and tin one side with 50-50 Bar solder and slick it off with steel wool. That left only a wash coat of solder on one side of the metal. Next I formed the cups with the tinned side being inside and poured lead cores into the jackets. The jackets were set on a piece of 1-1/4" bar stock heated to 750 degrees so the lead cores would stay molten for a few minutes and bond to the solder on the inside of the jackets. I then swedged the ogives and made the bullets ready to load. What I didn't do was to taper the jackets towards the tip and that would have been a lot better, but my experiment worked pretty well anyway. The strip I used was .028" thick so it was not too think to open up.
When fired at velocities as low as 1450 FPS from a 30-30 they still expanded well enough that I would have hunted with them and at velocities as fast as 3100 FPS form a 300 Win Mag, they shed only about 15% of the weight and held together very well. They were not ideal because of the lack of a thicker jacket with a taper of that jacket to .006" at the tip, but even knowing they were not perfect, they did a lot better than most commercial bullets I tested them against.
The down side was time... Such bullets, made right are very time consuming and could not be done with existing machinery at any price people could afford to pay.
I believe the next giant step forward in bullet will probably follow this lead or this basic idea. Cup and core bullets with thick enough jackets and thin enough noses would be very good and if they were bonded they would be super good. What the industry needs to do is to invent machines that can do it accurately and cheap. Today the hunter has a better selection of bullets than any hunter has had before in all history, but the technology has not come full circle to a point that such a bullet can be made for the price we need it to be for the average teenager to shoot barrels out of his rifles as we had in the 60s and 70s. If some company (I hope Speer and Sierra are listening) can come up with the machines to make this bullet at the cost of a standard cup and core, or maybe even cheaper, they would revolutionize the industry. It can't be done..................yet.
Flying machines, accurate semi-auto rifles and lap-top computers could not be done either...........until they were.
I have hopes that the engineers of tomorrow can and will come up with such machinery. I did write to Sierra about this very thing, but never heard back.

Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 15,262
B
Campfire Ranger
Offline
Campfire Ranger
B
Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 15,262
That process sounds like the root cause for a Bitterroot being so expensive and time consuming to make but danged they are good Bullets.


Semper Fi
IC B3

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
M
Campfire Kahuna
Online Content
Campfire Kahuna
M
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
Steve,

Yep, 3.5% is probably just about the average percentage of antimony in cup-and-core bullets. Amounts varying from that are for specialized uses--but some bullet-makers aren't convinced that 100% weight retention is the ideal.

There have been a number of relatively recent attempts to produce inexpensive cup-and-core bullets that consistently hold together. About 15 years ago Federal tried with the Deep Shok bullet, by making the jacket thicker in the middle of the shank section (as Remington implied Core-Lokts were made) in order to hold the rear 2/3 of the bullet together. They worked very well, but unfortunately turned out to be more expensive to make than they anticipated, the reason they only lasted a couple of years on the market. (Core-Lokts actually just had a thicker jacket along the shank, but it wasn't tapered to lock the core in. More recent Core-Lokts are pretty much basic cup-and-cores, with thinner jackets to reduce production costs, or sometimes actually Interlocks.) The only Deep Shok I ever managed to recover from a big game animal retained over 90% of its weight--but they were gone not long afterward.

Right now one technique that seems to hold the most promise for relatively inexpensive bullets that hold together is electro-plating the jacket around the lead core, the process used in Speer Gold Dot handgun bullets and Federal Fusion rifle bullets. However, Speer tried to make their DeepCurl rifle bullets (basically the same as Fusions) at the same price as Hot-Cors and also failed. The big trick is varying the thickness of the jacket to get exactly the taper desired. Fusions hold together but tend to expand very widely, probably due to a combination of relatively thin jackets and soft cores. And of course to make the jackets thicker, the electro-plating takes longer, one problem in cost of production.

I have run into a lot of hunters who think Hot-Cores are bonded bullets, and even one or two gun writers, but as you note they are not, which can be easily proven by putting one in a vise, nose-up, then hacksawing it down the middle. The jacket can be just as easily pried away from the core as with any swaged cup-and-core. I've had Hot-Cors completely separate jacket and core even on deer.


“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 651
S
Campfire Regular
Offline
Campfire Regular
S
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 651
Great thread.

Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 18,158
R
Campfire Ranger
Offline
Campfire Ranger
R
Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 18,158
[Linked Image]
Accurate

[Linked Image]

Deadly


TRUMP- GABBARD 2024
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 228
N
Campfire Member
Offline
Campfire Member
N
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 228
Alot is said in that post !


You will not make peace with the Blue Coats, you are free to go
Joined: Nov 2014
Posts: 1,373
L
Campfire Regular
Offline
Campfire Regular
L
Joined: Nov 2014
Posts: 1,373
What seems to be the best loading depth from the rifling that works best for these bullets?

Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 3,188
T
Campfire Tracker
Offline
Campfire Tracker
T
Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 3,188
Originally Posted by JP_Lucas
What seems to be the best loading depth from the rifling that works best for these bullets?



Thats another plus for the interlock, really no seating depth to mess with, just seat them to the cannelure and call it good.


Stuck in airports, Terrorized
Sent to meetings, Hypnotized
Over-exposed, Commercialized
Handle me with Care...
-Traveling Wilbury's
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 1,966
L
Campfire Regular
Offline
Campfire Regular
L
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 1,966
I've found they require the same work as any other bullet as to best seating depth. Sometimes, best depth may have the cannelure well above the top of the case neck.

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
M
Campfire Kahuna
Online Content
Campfire Kahuna
M
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
If seated to the cannelure, most commercial rounds will be about the SAAMI maximum overall length for that cartridge, which makes it simple if you don't want to experiment. But as lotech noted, they will often shoot noticeably more accurately after some experimentation with seating depth. In a number of the rounds I load for, the cannelure is well ahead of the case mouth in the rifle's most accurate load, even in long-time standard factory rounds.


“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 19,179
J
Campfire Ranger
Offline
Campfire Ranger
J
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 19,179
Originally Posted by TomM1

That's another plus for the interlock, really no seating depth to mess with, just seat them to the cannelure and call it good.


I have been surprised that ^^^^^^ has worked for me MORE than I expected. I have been surprised how many Xs the SAAMI 'overall
cartridge length' has worked very well.... HOWEVER....

I can assure you it's NOT always the case. ONE opposite example was my 1st XTR FTWT in 270 Win. The bullets had to be seated so deep that the case mouth was AT the break point of the S O (secant ogive). *** I despised the LOOK of the cartridge but it shot well.

OTOH - more than 1 or 2 rifles PREFERRED the bullet seated OUT beyond the cannelure.

By NO means am I trying contradict M D, it's just that every rifle has ITS preferences.

Jerry


jwall- *** 3100 guy***

A Flat Trajectory is Never a Handicap

Speed is Trajectory's Friend !!
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
M
Campfire Kahuna
Online Content
Campfire Kahuna
M
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 59,910
Interesting. My present .270, a new Model 70 Featherweight, likes 150 Interlocks seated with the cannelure about 1/8" in front of the case mouth.


“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
Page 4 of 5 1 2 3 4 5

Moderated by  RickBin 

Link Copied to Clipboard
YB23

Who's Online Now
731 members (09wingates, 007FJ, 10gaugemag, 12344mag, 10Glocks, 17CalFan, 73 invisible), 2,922 guests, and 1,293 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Forum Statistics
Forums81
Topics1,187,774
Posts18,401,552
Members73,823
Most Online11,491
Jul 7th, 2023


 







Fish & Game Departments | Solunar Tables | Mission Statement | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | DMCA
Hunting | Fishing | Camping | Backpacking | Reloading | Campfire Forums | Gear Shop
Copyright © 2000-2024 24hourcampfire.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5
(Release build 20201027)
Responsive Width:

PHP: 7.3.33 Page Time: 0.072s Queries: 15 (0.003s) Memory: 0.9160 MB (Peak: 1.1003 MB) Data Comp: Zlib Server Time: 2024-03-29 15:45:06 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS