I have been testing 35 caliber bullets since the early 90's and am still learning. Today I did some impromptu wood testing with two bullets. I have read the 35 caliber 225 Nosler BTip is a heavy jacketed model that is capable of really big game.
Tested them at 2850 into 2' wood baffles and a telephone pole and I wouldn't trust them. Penetration is poorer than a 6.5, 129 grain at the same speed and there is zero mechanism to hold onto the core. The jacket did hold together well and averaged 122 grains in weight but the core would either be missing or sitting loosely in the bottom of the bullet (weighing 16-29 grains). Reminds me of the 225 Sierra which is also a core shedding bastard.
Average penetration 1 telephone pole and 6" of baffles.
The 275 Hawk Semi-spitzer is a different animal. At 2500ft/sec penetrated the telephone pole, 8" of baffles and another backing telephone pole. Holes in the wood suggest that expansion was pretty decent too.
Testing the entire range of bullets in wet newsprint in the early 90's suggests to me that I will focus on the 250 Speer Spitzer at 2750 for long range and the 250 Nosler Partition at the same speed for really big game use. These 275 Hawks and my last remaining 300 Barnes Originals can't be beat for pure penetration though.
let me know your experiences with 35 caliber bullets. I am working up the ultimate 358 Norma load
Trying to get you a picture of my bullet testing from 1992. This board won't let me post it. It's a 58K JPEG. Any suggestions?
Some of the lighter bullets are violent expanders obviously made for the 35 Rem but the light Speers and the Hornady and Rem pointed bullets do ok. They core separate but only after a bit of penetration.
My further tests in the 90's suggested that the Nosler Partition had the best mix of long range expansion and short range integrity. I only tested the 225 grainers but I have some 250's on order and they should be even better.
Barnes X bullets of this era wouldn't expand much lower than 2000ft/sec. I have heard they are better today but I hesitate to pay the bucks to retest.
225 Sierra shed cores in heterogenuous media and didn't expand well at low velocity. Today's test of the 225 Nosler BT has me about convinced it is a bad core shedder too. These boat-tail bullets with no core lock mechanism seem well designed to squirt out their cores.
Speer bullets were great at low speed expansion (down to 1700ft/sec) but could be made to core separate. The 250 Speer has also been wonderfully accurate in all 35's I have tried it in.
The 250 Hornady Spire was pretty tough the interlock usually worked unless bullet expanded past shank. Not as good at low speed expansion as the big 250 Speer nor as accurate in any of my rifles.
Haven't tried the grand slam but 7mm grandslam tests left me unimpressed with this design.
Other than high price semi-customs what have I missed? Any other opinions based on hunting other than wet paper targets? results of my tests seemed to correlate pretty well with caribou but I haven't collecetd a lot of bigger tougher animals with caliber 35.
Doesn't the Nosler BT retain about 60% of it''s original weight even if it squirts it's core? If so, that's about the same a Partition will weigh after losing it's nose so it seems it would work fine if it sheds the core or not.
Penetration of the BT was pretty poor in wood. Basically you have a 125 grain (55% )empty copper cup of about 60 calibre. At some point in travel I'd bet the caliber is more like .70 until separation.
The 225, .358 partition generally keeps 175-200 grains of it's weight in my tests and penetrates about 15-25% better at about .62 caliber. Notice that the belt in calibre 35 is fairly far forward and the jacket is immensely strong.
I guess though that the big 125 grain BT copper cup will penetrate better than the somewhat lighter Sierra jacket. It would also be hard to fragment it but I wonder how well it would drill through bone?
I have a huge amount of respect for your knowledge, particularly with the 35 caliber bore. But, I'm not convinced that firing bullets into solid wood is a good indicator of what to expect on game. I recall your days on Shooters.com when you would post results of your experiments on wet paper. This seemed to me a close approximation of game densities, but solid wood just seems a bit too far from flesh to be a good indicator, in my books.
I just recovered a 35 cal Hornady 250 gr RN from a moose I killed with my 350. I'll prepare a post once the pictures are available, but basically it still weighed 248 grains upon recovery. I'm sure if I fired it into a block of wood, that would not be the case. In fact, I may try it for comparison.
But, my main point is that just because a bullet sheds it's core point blank into solid wood doesn't mean it won't potentially work just fine on non-dangerous game.
Model 600s in 308 Win and 6mm Rem, nuther one rebarreled to 22-250, matched pair of Model 660's in 6.5mm Rem Mag and 350 Rem Mag, NEED a 660 in 222.
In the 1960's I read an article by a guy who fired 350 Mag rounds into a big water tank from the open top. He engraved the bullet bases for identitiy later and downloaded them to simulate 100, 200 and 300 yard ranges as well as using point blank full loads. Then he donned a mask and fins and picked the pearls. Very interesting experiment. He postulated that since flesh was mostly water anyway, that was a fine low budget test medium. I wish I still had the article but it's long since gone.
Model 600s in 308 Win and 6mm Rem, nuther one rebarreled to 22-250, matched pair of Model 660's in 6.5mm Rem Mag and 350 Rem Mag, NEED a 660 in 222.
350 Mag: Actually I found that wet newsprint tended to make most bullets look better than they are. Even the 200 and 250 grain steel jacketed Norma's looked worthy of a magazine ad. I well remember using the 200 Norma's hitting a small Iqaluit caribou broadside three times with my 350 Rem Mag at a range of about 200 yards. Only one exit hole and three entrance holes ( I am proud to say only about a 5 inch group on a moving caribou)
Anyway these bullets were pretty soft and yet they looked very good in the wet newsprint.
I reasoned at the time that the consistent deceleration of the bullet pressed the core into the jacket and gave idealized results. The bullets in the first picture attachement in this string were from wet newsprint. Only the 200 Sierra at 2700 or so lost it's core.
I found that leaving a few airspaces and some dry magazines every 3 inches or so stressed the bullet in a way that resembled more closely results on caribou.
I have found water to be an extremely tough medium. Probably more so than wood. Soft wood is actually not all that tough. I'll do more work with the BT but I am pretty skeptical. Given it's construction I don't see how it can hold it's core.
However, with it's thick well tapered jacket I think that if you bonded this 225 grain BT bullet you would have one hell of a projectile.
FWIW , I did quite a bit of bullet "testing" out of my Whelen a couple of years ago , with the Speer and Hornaday 250 spitzers and the Nosler and Sierra boat tails . The 250 s were loaded to 2630 at the muzzle and the 225 s to 2780 .
I tried the Barsness method of dry packed magazines first . With the 250 gr spitzers , I got about 80% of the pentration J.B. claims you can get with .30 caliber failsafes or X bullets. The Speer appears somewhat softer and more ductile , expanding to a larger frontal area than the Hornaday , which appears to have a more brittle type of alloy . Both held together in one piece.
The 2 lighter boattails , while not exactly blowing to smithereens , gave penetration way less than the 250 s. They both also consistently slipped the cores . In spite of the very heavy jacket on the Nosler bal. tip , it didn't penetrate any better than the Sierra .
I then tried some water soaked magazines . I also had some shoulder and pelvis bones off of a dead 1400lb cow and shot thru these into the magazines. When shooting thru the heavy bone , the Hornaday(spitzer) had a consistent edge over the Speer . The Hornaday really looked good here , retaining about 75% of starting weight and expanding to over .70 caliber. The Speer would retain about 60 to 65 percent and expand to .60 caliber plus . The boatails would get 40 to 50 % weight retention at best,if you gathered up the core and weighed it with the jacket. All this shooting was done at about 25 steps .
Then I had a 600 lb steer tip over in my feedlot , so being a sick sob , I tried out some of the Whelen loads before he froze up . By this time I had a supply of 225 gr Nos partitions , so I tried them along with the heavy Speers and Hornadays .
I sort of propped him up and shot with the muzzle nearly touching his hide .
The big Hornaday spitzer blew right thru both shoulders and buried itself in the frozen dirt and snow . I dug some but never did find it. The partiton got thru both shoulders and stuck under the hide on the off side. I recovered it and it had mostly blown off the nose and resembled a .35 caliber wadcutter. The Speer got thru the onside shoulder , the chest cavity and lodged in the off shoulder . It retained about 50% of starting weight .
Again , FWIW and I would guess that the bone on a 600 lb beef steer is about as heavy as bone on most adult elk .
South Dakota: Fantastic! Your results seem to mirror my findings. I am very tempted to adopt the 250 Speer in my 358 Norma as it shoots .5" groups and would be great at a distance. Despite the success that Yukoner has had with this bullet I worry about penetration if encountering heavy moose bone. Your animal results at close range are pretty encouraging though.
My only problem with the 250 Hornady Spire is that I do think it is a harder alloy with a very small lead opening. Low speed expansion is a bit suspect and I wonder how reliable she would be at 300 yards?
I figure it's time to do some further testing at the greater speeds of the NORMA. Unlike the 350 Rem Mag in which 225 Partitions seemed to be the most efficient bullet the Norma seems to be at it's best with 250 weight bullets.
I am assembling 250 bullets from Speer, Hornady, Barnes, Nosler and Norma. I'll let you all know. I am biased towards the Nosler Partition but at $1.00 a pop I'll be delighted to be wrong.
I have a few 35 cal bullets I've recovered after firing them in my 358 Win into live targets.
With the exception of the unfired Hornady on the left these came from the same animal, a moose, at around 300 yards. The second from left was the same type of 250 as that to its left. As near as I can tell it glanced off the humorus below the ball joint and stopped in the flesh without breaking the bone. The third bullet is another Hornady, a 300 XTP mag fired from a 45 Colt carbine at close range, the far right bullet is a 225 Barnes X also from long distance.
I have also recovered a Speer which I don't presently have a pic of. It lost most of the tip back to the shank after hitting a moose at around 40 yards. No bones were hit.
Probably my favorite bullet in the 35 cal was the uncoated 225 X which shot just fine in my Shilen barrel. It made a fine lower priced premium bullet. I haven't recovered other but have seen them kill with much more speed, breaking bones with great authority while creating minal meat loss. I'm neither a huge user nor big fan of the Nosler Partition, not because it has done me wrong, but more because I have liked what the X has done when I want a premium. I'm sure it would be another good modestly priced premium.
For the really big, heavy duties I can thing of nothing better in the 35 cal than the 280 Swift or 310 Woodleighs. Both bullets have fared well in the testing I have done of them though I have never actually put them to real use.
In terms of test media I would make a couple of observations from my own experience. Wood, gravel, and water are all equally destructive but in somewhat different ways and don't especially lend themselves to making meaningful real world conclusions other than to see which projectiles are really difficult to break apart. (Try the Barnes Solids sometime!) They give very little indication of how bullets will actually expand and work when fired into live flesh. I happen to like a test media which will consistently give fairly realistic results to those commonly similar to shooting flesh. Obviously shooting live animals gives the best results but they have many more variables and the lack of volume precludes the gathering of data on various projectiles in a very meaningful way. There are very few who get to see the volumes of real bullet performances needed to draw statistically meaningful conclusions. For this reason I resort to fake media when doing bullet tests and like wet newsprint since it is repeatable. Like you point out, however, it is also subject to freezing which makes it difficult to use during many months of the year. I don't begrudge your choice of media. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
On another note, I have another 35 cal bullet pic; this one a favorite <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> of yours! Yep, a 35 BT. This pic I apologize for as I have posted it here a couple (or more) of times before. I recovered it from a fox - or, I should say, I found it a few yards beyond a fox after it blew apart.
Unlike the 33 caliber bullets which were designed, I believe, for the 338 Win Mag mainly, the 35 cals were often designed for somewhat lesser velocities of cartridges no larger than the Whelen or 350 Rem Mag. The data that is, or at least was, packed with the 225 Nosler BT bears evidence to this as does the fact that Sierra publishes data for no cases larger in the 35 cal than the two listed above. I like the 35 cal a lot but I believe that one needs to choose a bit more carefully, especially at higher velocities and into tougher targets.
Unfortunately I can't open your pictures on my iMac. Like to see a fellow Northerner slinging 35 caliber bullets at stuff.
How did the 225 X fair at long range? My 92 tests suggested low velocity expansion problems but I have read that these problems have been solved long ago and that X bullets now expand reliably to 1700ft/sec or so.
I know the Nosler partition does so I have become quite loyal to this design.
I am in the process of buying some discontinued Barnes O bullets in 250 grains at a good price. The 200 and 300 O's I have tested have their own low velocity expansion issues but the price is good.
I will use my 358 Norma on many if not all of this years caribou. Should have some new data soon.
I'm not sure why they aren't working - they show up fine for me on my iMac but then I'm no compu-guru either. The hosting site may have issues from time to time. I was goin to try to get pics of one or two others last night but our weather created some extra chores for me. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
Sometimes, the air you 'let in'matters less than the air you 'let out'.
Kliktarik, Thanks: Link down. I'll try again later. Went back and read some of your older coments on the 225 BT.
I Note Barsness (at least I hope I got the right muledeer this time) noted that the jacket material was heavy enough to act as a penetrator even with no core.
I'd have to disagree as the sectional density of a 120 grain empty cup of 60-70 caliber just doesn't cut it IMO. Very interested in having you expand on your 225 X experience as this bullet has some obvious penetration and trajectory advantages if it opens up at long range.
Yukoner: I called Tuesday night but you were out. Last night so me caught up in the drama of the U.S. election and fighting the flu. Will give you a call soon to chat about the NORMA. So far I am getting a bit fanatical in my appreciation of this round. Thanks for the sound advice.
Can't think of a better Moose round and so far 250 grain Speers and H4895 go 0.5-1.0 MOA depending on the charge. Best accuracy is at the top of the pressure scale.
Yukoner: Can't think of a better Moose round and so far 250 grain Speers and H4895 go 0.5-1.0 MOA depending on the charge. Best accuracy is at the top of the pressure scale.
TED: I stupidly put a hole in my chronograph last year and so I have stopped at 65.0 of H4895 until my replacement chrony arrives.
With no factory ammo this is a lot like working up pressure on a wildcat and I have never trusted flattened primers, bolt lift and other voodoo methods of pressure testing.
The 65.0 load has given me .5-.6 inch groups and evidence of real power! If it is at 2700ft/sec or more I am going to call it a day.
IMR 4350 is giving me spreads 2-3 times as big and a noticeable increase in recoil. More powder jet effect I guess.
RL 15 is also promising as is RL 19 for 275's though the published RL 19 data is very variable.
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