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Lots of good info here on the subject, especially with the larger calibers. B&M

I don't remember the whole article but Ross Seyfreid years ago did a test on various calibers on brush busting. Before we had bean field or sendero rifles you use to hear allot about if a bullet could bust brush. If I remember right he piled up a brush screen and fired through it and the 338 came out on top in his un-scientific test. In a way when we fire a bullet into a game animal we are working through paunch and bone which is sort of like this experiment.
Can a bullet be pushed too fast in a particular twist to affect straight line penatraion in a hunting cartridge?

Gyroscopic effects; target composition; bullet mass, velocity, and shape all have an effect on terminal ballistics.

The trick would be figuring out the physics and coming up with a formula that would encompass all variables.

I'm not sure I even want someone to do that. Tinkering is too much fun.

Ed
Besides, just using a 16" naval gun would fulfill the requirements of long-range precision, straight-line travel through obstructing brush, and terminal performance.

Sharpsguy

It was the Lyman 457125 round nose. The nose is a "flatter" round than I thought it would be. I lent the mould to a friend who dropped it in the river. I use the Lee 500gr flat point now.
Randy

lol that is one neat rifle.....definitely put together by someone that understood hunting rifles but aint no way your getting me to touch off that beast with 400 grains of powder...

Some friend. PM me your mailing address and I will send you another 457125. I have an extra one I can spare around here somewhere.

I have seen a 38 special 158 grainer hit the head just in front of the temple, travel around the skull and exit the skin on the other side looking like it was a brain shot pass-through. Guy sure had a headache though!

Have see 22 LR bullets ricochet around inside a skull and come out nearly the same place they went in. 22s are almost always fatal on headshots- on people!

Hope Gunner doesn't mind me posting...



It...ummm...made my teeth hurt It was rather astonishing.

I've understood that John Linebaugh did a bunch of testing, and found that a heavy hardcast at ~1300 fps gave the most penetration - out of anything, revolvers or rifles. Even a big solid from a Nitro Express didn't match them.

When I did some penetration testing with my .454 and several rifles, including G.s.Custom 265 grain .375 at 3,050 feet per second, none of the rifles matched the .454 with a 260 grain "solid" at 1,925 feet per second. The 265 beat the Nosler 300 grain Partition. The 300 grain Partition beat the 260 grain Partition.

In the case of the 375, the 300 grain Partition has never failed me. DRT is the norm. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

Wayne

No way. Him and that other guy who's big on levr actions cooked the books to do that. Over on Accurate Reloading there's a thread going on several hundred pages now where Michael458 has done extensive research on this stuff and monometal flat nosed solids are by far the penetration kings. In the 45 cal bores, the 460 Weatherby beat them all, but again how much is too much and at the price of huge recoil?

jorge--I don't think that is entirely correct. It is true that the current generation of monometal solids are the penetration kings, but Michael 458 had(has) a big hand in their development. This has occurred only recently, within the last year or so. Back when cup and core bullets were the standard, the big cast bullets often out penetrated them. Michael 458 ran extensive tests for years chasing the monometal solid, and after several years of effort has finally succeeded in making the bullet he was looking for. He is just now bringing the monometal bullets to market.

As a point of interest, I sent four different bullets to Michael 458 to be tested, all loaded with black powder, and one was the round nosed 500 grain Govt. bullet. Another was my round nosed 511 grain paper patched bullet. These two bullets gave 37 and 39 inches of penetration in his test medium, which at that time ranked two and three for penetration of the dozens of load and bullet combinations he tested. This stayed up on thread on AR for nearly two years. All the while Michael continued to improve the performance of the monometal solid. Then my computer crashed, and when I got my new (present) computer and pulled up that test thread on AR, I discovered that the books HAD been cooked, only by Michael 458. He had downgraded the penetration data of the Sharps by a bit. Not a lot, but enough to give some of his monometal bullets the lead. Frankly, it pissed me off, but what can I say or do? And, frankly, what does it really matter? The 45-70 properly loaded still gives penetration into next week.

I'm NOT saying that the 45 caliber Sharps is the all time penetration king, but I am saying it is a long way from being a weak sister, and until the advent of the new monometal solids would out penetrate most hunting bullets and calibers in common use.

I am in complete agreement with your last paragraph Bill and saddened that Michael would do that. That said, in my mind and simple logic tells me a 500 grain monometal, the faster you drive it the more it will penetrate. It works in military applications and there the data is incontrovertible. It wasn't Linebaugh but that other guy with the 45/70 and his hardcast bullets that I know cooked the books. There's just not way a 45/70 can run with the NE cartridges and certainly not a Lott or Weatherby when it comes to penetration and shock. Believe me, hit a buffalo with a 500gr pill at 2300 plus and one at 1200 or so and the difference is noticeable.

jorgeI,

Your last post reminds me of hunting with two different calibers on the same game. I am hesitant to mention the game but I certainly saw the .44 Magnum occasionally wound an animal and the .454 never did. Higher velocity certainly played a role in my opinion.

I dont' doubt that one bit Ringman but the key is matching the bullet to the velocities. If you rake one of those 500grain lead bullets at BP velocities, they will penetrate to Kingdom Come. Take that same bullet and up the velocity by 1000 fps or more and they will fail miserably. Then again take a 500grain monometal and push it fast and it will leave that lead slug in the dust. The question is, just how much penetration does one need? Personally I have no issues with someone taking a buffalo, lion etc with one of those huge lead pills, hell, I've done it myself on a bison, but a head shot on an elephant, I'll take a flat nosed mono or a conventional steel copper clad solid any day.

So boring though Wayne! Taking a well proven cartridge with 100 years of use, coupling it with arguably the best soft-nose bullet ever built for that cartridge... And you say it never failed you? Dang... Use what works? Awesome! What a concept!

Regards, Guy

jorge--there is a lot of this that defies logic. Like my 45-70 with a 480 grain FN at 1242 fps going through and through both shoulders of a 2000 pound bison, and a week later a 505 Gibbs with a factory soft not giving a pass through on an identical animal on the same hit.

I can't speak for cooked books at a Linebaugh seminar, but I can tell you this. I have two friends, one from San Antonio and another from Boerne, TX. They attended a Linebaugh seminar where Randy Garret of Garret cartridges has arranged a penetration test with wet newspaper as a test medium. The newspaper was contained in a trough made of 2x10 lumber, 72 inches long. A 375 H&H went 38 inches into the medium, a 458 Win shooting 450 TSXs went 46 inches, and a Marlin 45-70 loaded with Garret's Sledgehammer solids at 1550 fps went 55 inches into the wet newspaper. This result was posted on the Garret website. I asked my friend from San Antonio what they thought about the Garret 45-70 being the penetration champion of the event. He THEN SAID THIS: " It wasn't the penetration champion." I asked what was, and he said that his 45-70 Sharps shooting the 520 grain round nosed bullet driven by black powder shot all the way through the 72 inch wooden trough of wet newspaper and came out the other end. The bullet was hanging by its base band and was recovered. My other friend from Boerne shot his 45-70 CPA Stevens 44 1/2 loaded with the same bullet and powder and it went 71 inches up in the wet newspaper."But the penetration champ was John Wooters shooting a 416 Rigby with a monometal solid. That bullet exited the box and was not recovered."

It is of interest that nothing was said about either of the 45-70s shooting the round nosed Govt. bullet driven by black powder, or about John Wooters' 416 Rigby. Both of my friends tell exactly the same story in separate conversations, and I have no reason to doubt either one of them.

Penetration is about bullet construction, nose shape, and weight coupled with the right velocity for a specific bullet. The various variables interact and the results are what they are. I will say this: If it is flesh and blood, it doesn't want to stand in front of a big bore handgun shooting cast bullets, or in front of a 45 caliber rifle shooting the same.

Bill: The TSX is not a solid it's a soft and I would fully expect a hard cast to penetrate more. ANd especially with the 505 Gibbs, that was a soft and a Woodleigh at that which are not known for holding together much above 2100 fps.

If you were to take the 450 TSX and slow it down to 1550 THEN tried the penetration test, I can guarantee you penetration would be significantly less had the same bullet traveling at 2200 plus.
Garrett, that's the guy who did the cooking and he did it by comparing one of his solids with a SOFT pointed cup and core. Apples and oranges. I will gurantee you that a 458 cal 500gr Flat nosed monometal solid like the CEB or the Woodleigh Hydro bullet at 2100-2600 fps will leave any lead bullet hardcast or otherwise in the dust when it comes to penetration. Is it needed? well that begs the question, but a friend of mine who recently returned from an elephant hunt shot one in the head with a 480gr CEB solid from his Wilkes 450NE 3 1/4" double and the bullet exited at the base of the tail and kept going. There's a reason that 400gr 416 solid penetrated as far as it did, superb sectional density AND velocity. Again the key is one must match the correct bullet construction with velocity and that is why nothing comes close to a 460 Weatherby monometal at 2600 plus. It's not needed but there it is.

Edited to add: Next time you are up at Gunner's place and if he has the equipment to do it, pick your hardest hard cast out of a 45/70 and do a comparison penetration test with one of his 458s (or even that Gibbs) using a CEB solid. Then compare.

THis is why the Woodleigh SOFT did not penetrate like your hard cast but I guarantee you it did a lot more damage inside and that is why outside of elephant, rhino and hippo on dry land, hardly anybody uses solids anymore:



And a solid when it comes to penetration and good velocity:


And why it's an apples and oranges comparing a soft (which is what a TSX is) to a hard cast:

Frontal area also plays a roll. Less surface area, less resistance.