Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Speer Hot Cor Mag Tip

I always wanted to try these. I cut my teeth reloading with a Speer manual that came with my Rockchucker master kit. I had it it set up on a utility workbench in the bedroom of my apartment when I was still in the military. I used to read over all the flavors of the Speer line and listen to others bicker about bullets at the gun shops. The mag-tip was always highly touted. I could never get grandslams to shoot worth a darm. Hot cors were okay, boat-tails a little bit better. I recently picked up some 150 hot cors for a 270 on sale, hope they do better than past experiences with them. The one hot cor that always shot well for me was the 7mm 145. It worked well in a couple of 280's. What kind of accuracy did the Mag-tip produce for those who tried them?

The 180 gr Mag Tips I mentioned shot very well in my old 308 Norma with several powders, almost anything went under 1" from what I remember. My cousin shot the 160's in his 280 Rem and they shot well too. Looks like they still make the 150 gr 30 cal Mag Tip, I remember it was a pretty tough bullet out of my 30-06 back in the day.

Have some 150 Hot Cor's as well that hopefully will bag a deer this fall for me in a 270 Win.

Yeah, gonna have to give them a whirl. Some online sources still have the 30 cal 180's available. Let me know how the 150's do in the 270 for you.

The 7mm ones worked great out of a 7RM on smaller deer. In shooting into a clay bank the bullets performed similarly to Nosler Partitions. I would not hesitate to use them on deer or elk sized game. The jackets are the same as the old grand slam it just does not have the dual core of the grand slam but I heard that Speer has omitted this on at least the smaller caliber bullets now. Curiously they did not reduce the price of the GS to that of the mag tip.

These worked well on hogs too and I like to use a slightly tougher bullet on them. I don't think they give up all that much in the ballistic coefficient department as the air friction at the tip is turbulent flow anyway. I think the hot core process helps keep the lead in the jacket too. It does not bond them but it is an air tight fit and there are no residual lubricants either like swaged bullets can have.

Per Speer's website in the FAQs: Speer Bullets - FAQs



In the Speer Reloading Manual #14, they go into a little further description than that answer above and added that "Further research showed that the jacket profile was more important to terminal performance" ... and that they redesigned the jacket to beef up the shank, and made heel folds between the base and sidewalls to create a pocket. The ternary Hot Core is then added and flows into the heel pocket for a combination of a mechanical and friction grip. These changes improved retained weights in test media by ten percent compared to dual-core Grand Slams and improved accuracy overall. Grand Slams are finished with a long protected tip so the ballistic coefficients are higher than the Mag-Tip.

When I read the description of the Mag-Tip in Speer #14 and compare to the Grand Slam, the only differences I see are the the Grand Slam has the mechanical heel lock (sounds similar to Hornady's InterLock) and a higher BC, longer protected tip.

ternary-alloy core

What is this? I am pretty gun geeky but have never run across this term before?

Three component. If I were guessing, they would be lead, antimony and tin. Be a good time for someone in the know like Mule Deer to chime in. Incidentally, I've wondered if there is a difference in Speer's antimony content vs other manufacturers and whether their lead cores are any harder. The reason why is it seems like Speer's manual lists lower velocities for equal weight bullets for a given cartridge than other manufacturers like Nosler and Hornady. That and I've seen posts here and there that Speer's bullets tend to generate a little more pressure. Maybe that is more a function of Speer's bullet profile and bearing surface though.

One other peculiar detail about the Mag-Tip I notice is that in the pic shown for its description in Chapter 3 of Speer #14, where they describe all their bullets, above the cannelure is another, narrower groove ring just before the nose begins its taper. However, when I look at load data in the back where they show pics of all the bullets in each weight for each cartridge, only the 30 cal 180 gr Mag-Tip exhibits that extra groove. One other bullet I see that second groove ring on is the .35 cal 250 gr Grand Slam. I think that bullet has been discontinued though. All the other Grand Slam and Mag-Tip bullets just have the regular cannelure.

Found a pic of it:

.[/quote] Maybe that is more a function of Speer's bullet profile and bearing surface though.[/quote]

I think longer bearing surface is it and possibly a higher copper content (stickier) jacket. Some data show the Hot Core separately from the boat tail which I assume have similar alloys but different bearing surfaces.

The old 7mm mag tips in 160 & 175 had the double cannelure or cannelure and crimp. You could see ridges inside of the jacket so looks like a mechanical means of holding the jacket in. It seemed to work as the mushroom would frequently stop at the fold/crimp.

When Speer announced they were being discontinued I bought up as many boxes of 175gr 7mm as I could find. Always wanted to hunt with the classic load that Bell, etc used.

From my research that machine cut is a physical barrier to over-expansion. The Mag Tip is designed to easily initiate expansion on impact, open to its design maximum then stop at that point & plow on thru.

Beautifully designed bullet, I use them in my .308 Savage 99E carbine.

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Hi,

Old thread indeed!
I can say I used, and use, in my 7mm Mauser rifles the 160 and 175 Mag Tip bullets. At 2750 and 2650 p/s respectively. Great bullets for big game in the 7x57! In my experience they work very much like the Nosler Partition on big red deer and wild boar around here. Never recovered one! Always exited with a good damage inside the animals.

PatagoniaHunter, yes it's an oldie. The Speer bullet thread got me going, as I've chosen the 180 grain .308" Speer Mag Tip as my close range hunting bullet on my peep sighted carbine. I'm hoping to recover a bullet this fall out of a black bear or elk if I'm so fortunate.

With it's thicker walled lower shank and that machine cut to stop over-expansion it should make a picture perfect mushroom. My muzzle Velocity will be in the 2400- 2500 fps range running Varget in the .308 Winchester.

I'll fine tune the load over my chronograph once the range opens back up this summer.

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Sounds like a good bullet for low recoil loads in an '06.

In my -06, the150gr HC MT has been my go-to for years. It seems to be "just right". A lot of critters have sure come to it.

hackleback, have you recovered a few bullets?

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I wish I had bought a whole lot more then I did. I used the 180 grain 30 cal in 30-06, 300 Win and 308 Winchester and my friend Don used the 165 grain in 30-06 and 300H&H.
In all the game shot with them by the 2 of us I never saw a bad result. Some better then others, but no bad ones.
Now they are gone. I wish I'd bought about 4000 of the 165s and maybe about 1000 180s now. As good as any cup and core bullet I ever used and better then probably 90% of them and in our rifles all of them would shoot sub-MOA with Don's 300H&H shooting the best at 7/16" with his best load.

Interesting read from a German hunting forum.


https://jasw.de/speer.html


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