Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Penetration of heavy and light cast bullets

Sometimes I amuse myself by doing bullet tests. I’ll cut a piece of old carpet and set it upright in a box and behind it I use soaked magazines and catalogues. I did that recently with two cast bullets fired from a .44 magnum. Bullet no. 1 was a 260 grain Cast Performance WFNGC in front of 14.0 grains Blue Dot, chronoed at 1137 fps. No. 2 was a CheyCast 200 grn RNFP with 16.9 grns Blue Dot at 1420 fps. I knew from my experience hunting big game animals as well as tests like this on expanding rifle bullets that the heavier bullet would penetrate deeper. But to my surprise they both penetrated 10”, both comimg to rest against the same Burpee Seed catalogue.

So I calculated the momentum for each load and there’s only a 4% difference. For non-expanding bullets are these results expected?

My other surprise is that the cheap CheyCast bullet held its shape about as well as the much higher priced one from Cast Performance. The coloration you see on the CheyCast bullet is from the polymer coating they use.

I like carrying rnfp bullets for extra ammo to reload with. The shape chambers easier than SWC's, and I figured a smaller flat metplat is still pretty good on impact in comparison to it's larger cousin.

Much less resistance from the RN design plus the polymer coating adds some toughness to the Chey cast bullet. If the Cast Performance bullet had been a LFN style it would have given more penetration also. That WFN is a real hammer, Nice test.

Dick

Momentum determines the amount of work the bullet will do. Were you really running that 200gr at 1475fps? Which bullet had 4% more momentum?

If the 200gr had 4% higher momentum then I could believe the penetration would be close.

However, I think there is something off with your test media as the greater sectional density of the 260gr should have resulted in a noticeable increase in penetration. So when you say "came to rest against" - you're telling us that the burpee seed catalog is made from AR500 steel. When you use a test medium that stops a 260gr WFN @1137fps in 10", you're going to have trouble eyeballing the results. That's why folks use test media with less resistance.

Were it a living flesh medium, guaranteed the wide flat nose would have cut and crushed more material along it's path unlike the rounded nose which pushes more material aside without causing permanent damage. Poking a hole vs cutting a hole. That's also causing more resistance which explains the equal penetration to the lighter, slicker bullet.

Oops, I left out some info in my original post. I just edited it to say the 200 grain bullet had a velocity of 1420 fps. So it had 4% less momentum than the heavier bullet.

The Burpee catalogue was wet paper, like the 10 inches of wet paper in front of it.