Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Speer handloading book said do not use TNT in a 220 Swift

Any one tell me why
Bill

The swift will push them to fast and their not designed to stay together at those speeds. They basicly fly apart. My pap shot some of them in a 220 weatherby rocket, we went out west prairie dog hunting. He couldn't figure out why some would either kill or you would see nothing. I started watching you could see some of them just flew apart around 250 yds or some stayed together.

The TNTs are designed to operate in the 3400fps range (222/223 family), and do a FANTASTIC job of making those cartridges perform with dramatic effect. There's nothing to loose by trying them in a Swift, but there's a fair chance that they may fly apart before reaching the target. A smooth, matchgrade bore is less likely to do so than a rougher factory bore. It'll either work or it won't.

Mouse studder. Sorry.

Yeah, I love TNTs in my two .223 rifles, but I use Ballistic Tips or V-Maxs in my .22-250.

They call them TNT for a reason <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I used to shoot the TNT out of a 40XB 220 Swift at about 3600 FPS (faster than recomended) Man...you talk about explosive!!! Whew... shot a Magpie one time, that looked like it ate a handgranade!
The "deadest" bird I ever shot... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Virgil B.

I've personally seen the 50 TNTs pushed to 3950 in a great barrel, but haven't gone past 3450 myself.

TNTs don't get a lot of press and hype like thier plastic tipped cousins, but they seem to sell themselves very well through word of mouth. Once you try them, you're often a customer for life. Accurate, violent, economical.
222

I'm using them in two different 22-250's, a Ruger M77 and my sons M70 Featherweight, both factory barreled. While I haven't tried them past 250 yards or so, they work very well in these rifles. Load is running 3613 in the Ruger. They are the bullet of choice in my pair of .223's. Once took out a ferral cat at about 150 yards with one of the .223's and there was no exit, the cat went straight down and hardly moved. Prairie dogs however show a dramatic exit!

I once used a similar bullet (Sierra Blitz?) in my 22-250. It worked in spectacular fashion on summer prairie dogs, but the bullets failed in dense winter air when I tried the load on coyotes. A trip to the range showed they didn't make it 50 yards before becoming a blue puff of lead mist. The shredded jackets made a "shotgun" pattern on the 50 yard paper target.

Yes they do! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

In fact, I wanted my photo taken with my very first PD (a 275yd hit with a .223). Even at that range, the bullet was so "effective" that it was hard to find a good side to the PD for the photo.

About 12 yrs ago my folks had a problem with feral cats------big snaggle-toothed suckers. My dad started carrying his .222 to the barn while feeding the cattle. I was home one weekend, and while visiting in the barnyard near dusk, he shot a large tom at about 50yds (the cat didn't think we saw him). I got my blinks out of the way so I could see the impact. When the 50gr Sierra Blitz hit the cat broadside I saw vapor exit from the entrance hole. The bullet didn't exit even though it was a broadside shot. It was a picturebook bang-flop. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />
222

It is the rate of twist that causes them to explode at high speed, if you could get a swift with say a 1-18 twist then you could shoot them 4000fps or faster. The gyroscopic spin is in such a high rpm they literally explode in mid air as the TNTs jackets are too thin. If you could find a ultra light solid say 40gns it would not explode. Seen the blue streak phenomenon in a 22-250 many times when fellas loaded the 40 and 45 gn bullets made for the hornet.

Posters have quoted bullets flying apart at 50 and 250 yards. How do they make it that far? I would expect failure to occur near the muzzle, at the highest velocity, rpm, and turbulence.

The stress builds up to the breaking point, just like spinning a bowl of liquid - it gets higher up the wall of the bowl the longer it spins. While the lead inside is a solid, the pressure still builds up like a ball rolling downhill gets faster.

It takes a little time for things to come unglued enough to see the gray smoke.
I have found jackets from disintegrated bullets a couple times, and they appear to have failed along the rifling marks.
Whiule not exactly the same, a 230 gr bullet designed for .45 ACP comes apart pretty badly in game when fired from a .45 Win mag. The same splitting along the rifling marks shows up.
proabbly from stress concentrationinthe jacket material.

Varmint Al did an FE analysis of bullet failure, here:

http://www.varmintal.com/aengr.htm

tq

Remember that whole "coming apart at the seams" thing happens in milliseconds. The actual time from primer ignition to bullet disintegration might be as short as 3 milliseconds. That's not much less than it takes a PD to do the same thing!