Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Huge .264 bullet test Part Deux!

Awesome work! Thanks for taking the time to do it.


100gr TTSX interests me too.

Always interesting to see these results. I ran 140 bergers on game from antelope bucks and doe, whitetail buck and mountain goat this year. I was completely satisfied with the performance on game and had very little lost meat.

That said, I have some of the 160 Woodleighs shooting great and would like to take a run with those 120 TTSX bullets now that I have seen this.

.............Then when it comes to bone, you under-estimate the VLDs penetrating capability. John Burns has done so many times.

Using a 30 cal 190 VLD from 328 yards fired from my 300 WSM Ruger compact, not only did the VLD penetrate the right shoulder bone of my bull elk, but continued on doing the normal devastating VLD damage with fragments found just below the hide on the opposite side.

The est MV at altitude was about 2820-2850 fps.

Excellent! Thanks for doing this. That 120TTSX is looking like a really good choice.

Barnes 120gr TTSX
Average Penetration (inches): 17.2
Average Weight Retained (grain): 119.2
Average Weight Retained (%): 99.3
Average Expansion (inches): 0.547




What's not to like here? As uniform as they get, and basically the only weight loss is the tip. I'd like to see them launched at about 3300fps and see the results.

Thanks for all the work Steve.

i was surprised the Hornady 129 SP IL (first test) retained way more weight than the 140 accubond? the accubond is bonded and at a heavier weight hsoulda had lower impact velocity

Sako75, only the rear portion of the Accubond is "bonded". The front portion is not and the bullet acts like a partition loosing the front third of the bullet and the rear portion penetrating on.

Thanks for this report,really good work here.

I have never heard of the Accubond being described like that. They are designed to act in a similar fashion as the Partition but I'm pretty sure the whole think is bonded.

A few months back I developed a load for my 264 using the 120 ttsx and 68 gr of Ramshot magnum, it's running at just under 3300, can't wait to try it on an antelope.

I seem to recall JB being the one who mentioned that only the rear half or so of the Accubond is bonded. I may be mistaken though. Perhaps he could chime in.

JB has described it thus on more than one occasion. That's HOW it achieves it's partition-like performance. The unbonded front acts like the front portion of a partition while the bonded rear continues to penetrate.

"The front section of AccuBonds isn't bonded, so it fragments much like the front end of a Partition. This is done deliberately to approximate the terminal performance of a Partition. How much weight is retained depends on the particular bullet; as with Partitions, many of the heavier AB's are designed to retain a higher percentage of weight. But the front end definitely fragments."

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt..._Bullet_weight_Who_downsized#Post4097091

its still weird that a 129 cup and core retained significantly more weight than a 140 bonded

The front portion of the Accubond is not bonded. If I receall someone here sectioned one and found the front part of the core and jacket were easily seperated as oposed to the back. Hopefully I didn't dream this...

Good to know about the Accubond.

I sure appreciate your efforts Steve.

I'm sure glad I use the Barnes products too.

If you ever want to do a 7mm roundup - I'll send you all the bullets you want.

Thanks for taking the time. Good post!

BCSteve,
As a side note, I put the weight, diameter, penetration, etc, of your recovered bullets into a spread sheet. I happened to have it calculate the SD of the recovered bullets and when sorted by that SD, vice the published SD, it very closely matched the penetration results. The only bullets really out of place were the two Partitions. They penetrated better than the recovered SD indicated. May be that they had some small pieces sticking out making the recovered diameter larger than it really was as far as penetration is considered. Sorting by published SD had almost no correlation to penetration. Cool stuff, fun to play with numbers, thanks.

Interesting about your finding regarding penetration vs. SD. Just shows that with modern bullets, construction is more important than SD.

BCSTEVE-

I can send yo ua few 100 grain TTSX's.... would be interested to see results launched with around 3000 fps impact velocity