Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Two Tipped TSX's recovered in a row

Exactly, steelhead is spot on. Of course lost is Palidun' ability to realize that the Partion has undergone several changes in its time as well.

I'm with you on the concept but disagree about the 300gr .375s or 250gr .338s (although I do use 225s now instead). I've had nary a problem in 15 or so elk/moose.

I have had weird stuff happen with:

150gr .270
180gr .30
160gr .284

The depth of the hollow point is the same the difference is in the shank length meaning a faster twist us needed to remain stabile after impact. The added velocity is also a plus.

There is no such thing as a stable bullet after impact.

But does an 81 expand more reliably than a 67? (I would assume they are more accurate. )


No one else has made the frequent and significant changes that Barnes has. That's not saying they shouldn't seek to improve, but they've changed so often that it's been a challenge to chase the version you like when you find one. I suspect the TTSX is probably helping them achieve the reliability they've been seeking so that they can focus on consistency�..hopefully.

I found the 180 gr TTSX to be too long for the mag box on my Savage .300 wsm. Anyone else have this issue? I keep meaning to try them in one of the '06s but haven't got around to it yet.

Really? I saw a test with a flat point solid shot down an oversize bore with no rifling at all viable on the recovered bullets penetrate dead straight, every time tested. It has been demonstrated that higher twist aids in stability after impact and that the bullets continue to spin as they penetrate. A stability factor of 2 or more is needed to maintain stabilization after impact. The cartridge was the 470 Capstick

A mono metal solid of 400 grains in 416 with a 16" twist has penchant to tumble, not evry time but a good bit of the time, also with a 14 twist it happens time to time, but increase the twist to 12 and they rarely if ever tumble.

Really.

Straight doesn't mean stable, just because it doesn't tumble doesn't mean it is 'stable'.

True twist helps them not tumble on impact but they are still far from stable, coming out the other end they almost all tumble, i.e. not stable.

There are a lot of high speed videos of bullets exiting test media that do no tumble and straight line penetration is a good indication of stability.

A lot also depends on what they hit. Shooting either expanding bullets or solids into uniform media, whether ballistics gelatin or wet newspapers or whatever, isn't like shooting them into big animals made out of bone, muscle and various internal organs.

Flat-tipped solids, however, are pretty damn good. Though I've also seen old-fashioned round-nose solids penetrate a long ways and leave a nice, round exit hole on the other side of a buffalo, just where the hole should have been.

The 320 grain 9.3 Woodliegh solid is a very good straight line penetrator.

I have not recovered any TSX/TTSX our of my 270 or 30-06.
Here is a heart from this years Mulie at 110 yards. 270, 130 gr, TTSX. Thing still ran 40 yards, So I wouldn't always blame the bullet if thing don't drop right there..

The problem with the heart shot shown is the entire pump was removed, especially the suction side. Leave that heart pumping while just removing the power side and an average animal will be down in less than 7 heartbeats.

I have seen essentially the same thing many, many times and some critters go a long way with no functional heart, living seconds longer on the O2 stored in the stagnant blood. They can cover a lot of ground in seconds.

I finally caught a couple TSX bullets in June while in South Africa. These two bullets were the first I've ever collected and I've used from the 80 gr TTSX in a 243 Win to a 300 gr TSX in a 375 H&H. The interesting thing is they were both collected on the same day. I never caught another on throughout the trip.

I've shot somewhere around 30-35 animals from duiker to zebra and bull elk with TSX/TTSX bullets and finally recovered a bullet.

You'll notice the petals sheared off on both bullets with the exception of one petal on the blesbok, which was at 326 yards when shot, yet that bullet still traveled the entire length of the animal being found in the opposite rear hing quarter.

I've just about switched all of my rifles over to either a TSX or TTSX.

Funny Steelhead. The problems the early X's had cost me a lot of money and it appeared that Barnes was having us pay to test and evaluate their bullets. Barnes should have done their own homework.

Has twist even been considered a factor in getting monos to expand?

When I started shooting the 40gr vmax in a 1x7 twist AR vs 1-12 twist things seemed more explosive. I know SW also changed the twist on the M&P in the .40 because a faster twist kept bullet deflected less in the FBI protocols than the slower twist. In particular they tracked straighter through the angled windshield and steel panel test.

^^^^^^^^


Dats interesting. Thanks for that tidbit....

Yes, some people have noticed that monolithics do expand more reliably and, probably, wider when fired in a faster twist. Our friend Dwayne (BC30cal) from British Columbia has noticed the difference in how TSX's act from the fast twist in the 6.5x55 versus the slower twist in the .270 Winchester. In fact, partly because of this he discovered his .270 has a slightly slower twist than the standard 1-10. (This isn't all that unusual, especially in older rifles. Before button-rifling and hammer-forging became the industry standards, sine-bar cut-rifling machines were the primary method used by factories. The rifling they cut is adjustable, and quite a few barrels had somewhat oddball twists. One of the several older .250-3000 Savage 99's I've owned had a 1-15 twist, as I discovered after failing to get 100-grain Speer Hot-Cors to shoot in the rifle, a bullet that normally shoots fine in a 1-14 twist.)

Twist has an even more noticeable effect on lead-cored bullet expansion. The most extreme example I've seen occurred a couple years ago, when Nosler first introduced the Varmageddon bullets. I was shooting prairie dogs with the head of their rifle division, and he was shooting their new AR-15, made by the late John Noveske, with a 1-8 twist barrel, using the Nosler factory load with the 55-grain tipped Varmageddon at 3100 fps.

I brought several rifles to the shoot, but started with a tang-safety Ruger 77 in .220 Swift, which of course had the standard 1-14 twist. I'd handloaded the same tipped 55-grain bullet to 3800 fps.

Guess what? The .223 "sploded" (a West Virginia term) PD's noticeably more violently than the Swift. This didn't happen just once, but consistently, on many dogs, throughout the day, out to 300+ yards.

It seems to me that in order to prove a "bullet failure" one has to dig one out of an animal that you have on the ground! I think we ask a lot of of the bullets we shoot, we want perfect expansion every time regardless of what the bullet launcher is, regardless the range of the hit, regardless of the size of the game shot! And of course they have to group 1/2 inch or less out of our rifles. Out side of boards like this dose anybody really care all that much? Seems to me the Barnes TSX's in what ever flavor, dose the job in a ho hum manner, it puts game on the ground and meat in the freezer!

Ok boys. You all concede that twist rate has an obvious effect on bullet expansion (terminal performance). We know there is hardly any decrease in rpm's during a bullets flight time. Therefore you must concede that the bullet tests done by reducing the muzzle velocity, and therefore the rotational velocity, and then shooting into a test medium at close range DO NOT TRANSLATE into valid comparisons of the same bullet at full muzzle velocity shot into test mediums at long ranges.