Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Old bullets = more fragile bullets??

I was reading a review that was written by Terminal Ballistics Research on their website ballisticstudies.com. The author is one I have followed for a while. I respect most of his opinions and feel they are based on considerable practical experience. He mentioned one aspect of bullet performance that I have never considered before: how old the bullets are / how long since they were manufactured. His observation written in an article on the .35 Whelen is as follows:

"please understand this; projectile performance varies with age. The older the projectile, the more it will have naturally annealed, while the core may have become somewhat powdery. It is quite common to come across such old projectiles for the .358’s at auction because this caliber suffers from fad buying. Rifles are purchased on a whim, tried but not fully utilized and then cast aside. Generally speaking, if the projectile packet is sun bleached and completely faded, the projectiles will be akin to varmint bullets."

I find this surprising, and not a match to my own limited experience. Is this a real thing? I understand that cast bullets can vary somewhat in bullet hardness and malleability over time due to changes in the crystalline structure of the lead alloys and may lose "hardness". But never heard of or experienced anything similar with jacketed bullets. Your comments and opinions please!

I am standing by for a answer because I inherited about 1500 Winchester Power Point 150 grain in .270 that are several decades old. Maybe from the 1970s. Would like to use them since there is no cost attached.

Shoot a few into water jugs... might not be scientifically perfect but you’ll get a decent idea of how they hold up.

I’d not turn away that many at no cost myself!

I think they would need to be very old, close to a century old, to have any real effects. I only say this based on having no issues using lots of bullets that were 30,40, or 50 years old. And the only real issue I recall that would be somewhat related is WWI era brass that had weakened with age, though it becomes brittle as opposed to annealed.

Also remember that back 50 years ago there were no really tough bullets for the most part as we know them today. Bonded bullets were in their infancy, and the Partition was the main premium and they have a pretty soft front half. So someone used to using the excellent bullets we have today and expecting those types of results might be disappointed.

I've got some old .25 cal Remington 87 grain SP designed for the 250-3000 from the early 60's. I tested them in water jugs and they performed about the same as newer Speer and Nosler 87-85 gr bullets. Haven't taken any game with them yet.

Been using them in the one .270 my daughter owns and my brother in law's .270 to good effect. Loaded them with about 58.5 of IMR 7828 and have shot a few hogs and deer. At the rate we're using them they will last decades more. I'll do a water jug test.

Sounds like they work pretty well.

I can't imagine a firearms "expert" would take a semi-informed idea and promulgate it as fact.

I like the idea of your hog and deer test more than a water jug test!

15 years ago on AR, Seafire was shooting rifle bullets into wood to test them.

Terrible test, but a lot better than nothing.

20 years ago I was shooting handgun bullets into wood.

Terrible test, but a lot better than nothing.

Hastings. I've used the Winchester bullet enough to know it's a great bullet for medium-range stuff. Not so much for stuff past 300 (maybe 400) yards or so because it's B.C. sucks.

Same here!

"Natural annealing" and lead turning "powdery" strikes me as being fake news. Lead will oxidize, and given enough time it'll develop a white coating which is nothing more than oxidization, and is limited to the outside surface. Once a layer of it has formed, that's it - the main body underneath is still good old lead, the whole thing doesn't slowly turn to powder (at least for a millenium or two). That oxidizing needs air to make happen which negates the cores of jacketed bullets oxidizing out of sight inside the jackets.

Any shift in the hardness of the copper/gilding metal jackets on ancient bullets is so slight as to not matter a hill of diddly-squat for our purposes.

If the bullets in question were ever viable, accuracy and performance-wise, when new will be equally so now. I would be more concerned about concentricity and balance of said bullets if made a few generations ago effecting accuracy as compared to the technological marvels we enjoy today.

+1

Not the first time I’ve seen bits of misinformation on that site.

This by no means empirical with a test sampling of just two bullets, but here's my limited experience.

We had a brother and sister from our church stay with us while they finished college. Their parents jobs took them out of state but both wanted to stay to finish their school as they both had scholarships in Alaska. While they were with us they expressed an interest in hunting as both had been several times with their dad but had never been the hunter, only tagged along. Both loved to shoot. I worked with both of them and they applied for tags for caribou and moose. The sister drew a cow moose tag. I offered her the pick of any rifle in the safe. She chose the 1908 Mannlicher Schoenauer 8x56.

I had four boxes of Western 200 grain Lubaloy ammo I had picked up shortly after buying the rifle. Being Bullseye boxes I believe dates them to 1939-1945 putting the ammunition in the 75+ year range. I sacrificed one partial box to make sure they were still good and decided to hunt with them. I was going to be right beside her to back her up.

She spent several hours at the range with me shooting to get used to the rifle and work on her shooting skills from various field positions. When the time came on a cow just 50 yards away she got a galloping case of buck fever. Fortunately she had shot enough to know not to break the shot if it didn't look right. Her first shot was a bit high after what seemed like an eternity of fighting the shakes. I had her using a monopod and not sure if that helped or hindered. Her second shot was freehand as she had dropped the monopod in the excitement of the first shot. That one was a good heart/lung shot and the cow quickly dropped.

We found both bullets, with nearly perfect expansion under the skin on the far side. So two bullets doesn't really settle the question but it worked perfectly in this instance.

Mart, that is one of the coolest stories in awhile. Great pictures as well! That MS is one cool rifle!

My Uncle Harold handloaded back in the 50’s for his JC Higgins.270 (he worked for Sears and everything he owned came from there.) I can still remember the conversation in his den (that’s what you young guys refer to as a “man cave”) when he was telling me what a great bullet those Nosler Partitions were, the proof being how far they shot through a cherry log he had out behind the house.

I agree completely. It’s the sort of thing we come here for.

Thanks guys. It’s worth noting that the sister ended up marrying a young man from McCarthy and is staying in Alaska. The brother finished school and moved to Pennsylvania and is a diesel mechanic apprentice with the railroad. He loves it.

That’s very neat Mart.