Big Bore hollowpoint cast bullet design and performance. Wide shallow, wide deep, narrow shallow, narrow deep. Texan .457 CF TX2

[durbs75]

I design and cast all of my own ammo and mostly use solid nose wide meplats for hunting. I only hunt with my Texan .457 CF TX2. HOWEVER, I am intrigued at designing a hollowpoint but wanted to get some information on the hollowpoint design itself, particularly with wide shallow, wide deep, narrow shallow, and narrow deep hollow-point cavities.

I am in the penetration 2 holes side based on my experience and success with wide nose meplats getting 2 holes and great blood trails using an alloy producing 9 BHN. I shoot in the lower third of the chest cavity on deer. ALL hogs get head shots so they DRT. I cast with an alloy that produces a BHN of 9.

But the premise of this post is to research, understand, and learn how hollowpoint design performs. In my limited research, wide and deep cavities will fragment like a grenade quicker and break up while wide and shallow will promote better expansion characteristic with better weight retention and possibly still get a 2 hole complete pass through. Maybe I answered my own question, but I wanted to get your experience and knowledge casting with various hollowpoint designs.

One last question, how do you think a wide and deep cavity with a BHN of 9 would perform? My Texan likes ammo in the 280 to 340 grain range with velocities in the 950 FPS range for 280 and 875 FPS range for 340 grains. Would there be any advantage of using a poly plastic ball inserted in the wide and deep cavity using a softer BHN like 6-7?

 

[RM.510bigbore]

You have a noe mold I take it. In short for shooting deer and wanting a pass through hollow points are not what you want. Sometimes regular slugs don't even pass through. Hollow points good for small game coyotes. No blood trail sucks. If you want better killing power looks.the Lehigh defense copper slugs with 4 petals shed and main slug body passes through. Here's a picture of regular cast slug recovered from game no pass through.. Do you really need hollow points for big game? I use pure soft lead..

 

[durbs75]

You have a noe mold I take it. In short for shooting deer and wanting a pass through hollow points are not what you want. Sometimes regular slugs don't even pass through. Hollow points good for small game coyotes. No blood trail sucks. If you want better killing power looks.the Lehigh defense copper slugs with 4 petals shed and main slug body passes through. Here's a picture of regular cast slug recovered from game no pass through.. Do you really need hollow points for big game? I use pure soft lead..

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I have a variety of molds from NOE, Arsenal, and my own designs I developed and had Tom at Accurate make for me.

I don’t need a hollowpoint. The wide nose solid meplats have been very successful. However I enjoy learning new things and have a thirst for knowledge and like to understand how things work. I’m not in a quest per se of finding a hunting hollowpoint but more geared towards learning their design characteristics and how they perform.

 

[iAMzehTOASTY1]

I have a variety of molds from NOE, Arsenal, and my own designs I developed and had Tom at Accurate make for me.

I don’t need a hollowpoint. The wide nose solid meplats have been very successful. However I enjoy learning new things and have a thirst for knowledge and like to understand how things work. I’m not in a quest per se of finding a hunting hollowpoint but more geared towards learning their design characteristics and how they perform.

I am here to learn too

 

[durbs75]

I am here to learn too

I’m an experienced caster but I’m not too good to learn!!!

 

[iAMzehTOASTY1]

I’m an experienced caster but I’m not too good to learn!!!

I have never cast; I like the process*watched videos and seen a few people do it in person. I am completely intrigued taking something and making something out of it
Spectacular stuff honestly

 

[durbs75]

I have never cast; I like the process*watched videos and seen a few people do it in person. I am completely intrigued taking something and making something out of it
Spectacular stuff honestly

It’s relaxing for me and a way to shoot for pennie’s per shot and shoot often!! I have about 1,560 lbs of lead left and recycle everything so virtually a lifetime supply!!

 

[iAMzehTOASTY1]

It’s relaxing for me and a way to shoot for pennie’s per shot and shoot often!! I have about 1,560 lbs of lead left and recycle everything so virtually a lifetime supply!!

I feel like if I had that; people would never see me againI would be making pellets and testing them constantly instead of any thing else

 

[RM.510bigbore]

This is what you are wanting. I made 500 of these when I had surgery and was laid up. Noe mold big hollow point and 25 cal steel slingshot ammo to be cool I guess. I figured the steel ball would go.through the opposite side. They shoot the same as regular hollow points.. From having my noe mold with 3 different hollow point sizes they all shoot exactly the same. I cast for .510

 

[durbs75]

This is what you are wanting. I made 500 of these when I had surgery and was laid up. Noe mold big hollow point and 25 cal steel slingshot ammo to be cool I guess. I figured the steel ball would go.through the opposite side. They shoot the same as regular hollow points.. From having my noe mold with 3 different hollow point sizes they all shoot exactly the same. I cast for .510

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Very nice. I have the NOE HTC 459-300RF. It makes great bullets but man are the pins a pain sometimes. I figured out a way to get them to work but it’s a process!

I like to design ammo as well and I have been thinking about sending several of my molds that work very well in my Texan .457 to Eric at Hollowpoint Molds. That’s the main reason for this post is to research and learn how hollowpoints work with various alloys, bullet weights, styles, and cavity profiles.

 

[RM.510bigbore]

If your shooting deer and pigs I wouldn't stress the hollow points. I have first hand experience with hollow points and zero blood.... If your shooting game in a fenced preserve yes hollow points....if free range solids... No blood and lots.of tracks how do you know which track is the animal hit. With soft lead the hollow points mushroom perfectly.. Big bores are more like 22 rimfires....They hit bounce flip around.... Slow slow velocity is not like powder burners .. Hollow points more effective if velocity was higher... Really are airgun are kinda super low powered... Even with my 50 I'm only taking neck shots on big game. The videos online only show the good hunts. Check out the hunting forom here a guy perfectly heart shot his deer at close range... Zero blood...he did recover the deer doing a grid search.. I hate to say it but arrows kill better at low power than airgun slugs... If you look at my slug recovered from a neck it bounced around and hit sideways... I'm not buying anymore hollow point molds with the current power levels of big bores. I say money better spent increasing velocity and foot pounds of energy. I wasted money and testing on hollow points in my 50 and I'm not impressed.. Id.say a 22 mag has much better killing power for chest shots than are 45 or 50 big bores. If you don't have a regulator to shoot your Texan tethered that's where I'd spend my money. Texans not shooting tethered aren't much fun...my 2 cents

 

[karl_h]

I design and cast all of my own ammo and mostly use solid nose wide meplats for hunting. I only hunt with my Texan .457 CF TX2. HOWEVER, I am intrigued at designing a hollowpoint but wanted to get some information on the hollowpoint design itself, particularly with wide shallow, wide deep, narrow shallow, and narrow deep hollow-point cavities.

I am in the penetration 2 holes side based on my experience and success with wide nose meplats getting 2 holes and great blood trails using an alloy producing 9 BHN. I shoot in the lower third of the chest cavity on deer. ALL hogs get head shots so they DRT. I cast with an alloy that produces a BHN of 9.

But the premise of this post is to research, understand, and learn how hollowpoint design performs. In my limited research, wide and deep cavities will fragment like a grenade quicker and break up while wide and shallow will promote better expansion characteristic with better weight retention and possibly still get a 2 hole complete pass through. Maybe I answered my own question, but I wanted to get your experience and knowledge casting with various hollowpoint designs.

One last question, how do you think a wide and deep cavity with a BHN of 9 would perform? My Texan likes ammo in the 280 to 340 grain range with velocities in the 950 FPS range for 280 and 875 FPS range for 340 grains. Would there be any advantage of using a poly plastic ball inserted in the wide and deep cavity using a softer BHN like 6-7?

Ditto on the pass through two holes camp. For low power slow projectiles hunting deer, I have always been a huge fan of semi wadcutters for the caliber size cut on impact hole, and if no bullet upset passing through, caliber size cut exit. Never a problem with blood trails, always just through ribs and lungs, never shoulder. I've shot deer a little over 200lbs up to 50 yards with 38 special shooting hard cast 158gr semi wadcutters. A S&W 38 special 6" was my first deer hunting gun over 40 years ago, shooting semi wadcutters close to 850 fps. Worked perfect every time, know your gun and your own personal capabilities to put round where it needs to be. I shoot 158gr semi wadcutters out of my Texan 357, the 3 deer I shot with all pass throughs and decent to good blood trails. Pretty much gave up hunting with the Texan simply because where I hunt it has become extremely difficult to put meat in the freezer. Texan simply isn't easy to maneuver with, can take too much time, and limits shot placement too much. The Texan cost me a shot opportunity two years ago that would have been meat in the freezer with any of my PB rifles, and got retired right then and there for deer hunting. I've gone back to only deer hunting with PB's, I can take shots with them that I would not take with Texan.

 

[durbs75]

If your shooting deer and pigs I wouldn't stress the hollow points. I have first hand experience with hollow points and zero blood.... If your shooting game in a fenced preserve yes hollow points....if free range solids... No blood and lots.of tracks how do you know which track is the animal hit. With soft lead the hollow points mushroom perfectly.. Big bores are more like 22 rimfires....They hit bounce flip around.... Slow slow velocity is not like powder burners .. Hollow points more effective if velocity was higher... Really are airgun are kinda super low powered... Even with my 50 I'm only taking neck shots on big game. The videos online only show the good hunts. Check out the hunting forom here a guy perfectly heart shot his deer at close range... Zero blood...he did recover the deer doing a grid search.. I hate to say it but arrows kill better at low power than airgun slugs... If you look at my slug recovered from a neck it bounced around and hit sideways... I'm not buying anymore hollow point molds with the current power levels of big bores. I say money better spent increasing velocity and foot pounds of energy. I wasted money and testing on hollow points in my 50 and I'm not impressed.. Id.say a 22 mag has much better killing power for chest shots than are 45 or 50 big bores. If you don't have a regulator to shoot your Texan tethered that's where I'd spend my money. Texans not shooting tethered aren't much fun...my 2 cents

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Here are numbers I currently get with my solid nose cast ammo. I consistently get 2 holes pass through on deer no problems and great blood. My longest kill is 142 yards with a 324 grain bullet (bottom right in the picture) with a pass through 2 holes.

Hogs only get headshots as I primarily hunt them at night with night vision.

My Texan is a hunting rifle only and have several thousand shots through it. It’s WELL tuned! I don’t mind my 3 shots and refill as it’s strictly a hunting rifle and nothing else. I don’t benchrest or paper punch as I think that’s incredibly boring. Just my opinion! All in all I’m at 100% recovery rates on my flat solid nose ammo on game and couldn’t be happier with them! Looking to kill both time and money and dabble in some hollowpoints!!

 

[RM.510bigbore]

Looks like you got a good barrel on your Texan. I have to tether to get decent accuracy. Did your Texan break yet?

 

[durbs75]

Looks like you got a good barrel on your Texan. I have to tether to get decent accuracy. Did your Texan break yet?

The barrel is great! I’m thankful for that. I have over 17,000 shots on mine and it’s been great with no breakdowns. I host small events where I let people interested in the rifles shoot them so they can form their own opinions on them and get a feel if they want to get one. That and I like to shoot in general. In the hunting off season I practice a lot so I stay sharp! I live deep out in the country and have a dedicated range.

The only thing I’ve replaced is the hammer spring but that’s only because of so many shots and I consider the springs as a consumable piece like o rings. I change out o rings every 500 shots as well. I clean and maintain it every 200 shots. It’s been a solid rifle and a pure shooter.

 

[RM.510bigbore]

My Texan 50 had every single part inside changed at Airforce. They tried charging me $430.00 for repairs even though I sent it in for warranty. I had to fight with them for months to get it back. Shortly afterwards it broke again. I wasn't going to deal with Airforce again. I tore it apart and found the problem. My Texan actually wore out the pin that goes through the sear.... Watch yours seems like quite a few have problems. I also live in the country and have 125 yard home range I shoot mostly. I thought I'd buy a Texan made in America warranty... The best... I'm not super impressed with reliability on mine... Maybe the platform can't really handle the heavy recoil of heavy weight slugs in the 50. I wish mine was like yours. Have you tried powder coating your slugs?

 

[durbs75]

Two .510 slugs N.O.E molds. One 475 grain hollow points one 460 grain solid. Both neck shots... Both animals dropped at shot but didn't die requiring follow up shots.....being honest.... Velocity almost the same on both 840 fps 860 fps.
Since neither died on impact I don't see use in hollow points for big game. I think its mostly marketing.. Look at the pictures ..you decide

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Out to 160 yards I use solid wide nose meplats in my 457.

 

[gohip2000]

I think what your currently using is already going to be the most effective. I would be more inclined to experiment with the width of that meplat rather than going hollow point. Get it wider, like .40 cal wide or larger.

Now, I understand wanting to experiment, so if hollow points are your curiosity then they work like this. Think of the cavity as a pressure chamber. Pressure works by force per area and acts perpendicular to any surface the pressure interacts with. Given the same pressure exerted on the cavity, the more internal surface area will create more expansion (larger diameters and thinner walls expand faster/easier). This is the same reason high pressure lines or tanks have to be smaller in diameter than low pressure lines or tanks. The wider the cavity (hoop stress) the less pressure it can handle. The depth of the cavity has to do more with how far back you want the bullet to mushroom back. If the velocity of the bullet can't create enough pressure to overcome the hoop strength of the cavity, that is when you get hollow points that don't expand. when the velocity is high enough that the pressure created is much more than the design of the cavity, this is when you get fragmentation. If you ever see hollow points that have mushroomed only part of the way down the cavity, leaving a cavity at the base still in tact, this is because by the time the expansion as gotten deeper in the cavity, the bullet velocity/pressure dropped to much to overcome the strength of the cavity at the base. By scoring the inside of the cavity, you could create predetermined split points and could possibly create petals that fold back rather than a mushroom. Lead is pretty soft though so it may just stretch more at the scores instead of splitting.

V shaped hollow points have greater expansion at the tip of the bullet, but expand less when reaching the bottom of the V. This seems like what you would want, but often what happens is because it only expands at the tip of the bullet. There is just not enough material to flow out into a mushroom and it can create a bullet that just opens the tip about as wide as the shank of the bullet. (this is if the shank of the bullet isn't deforming and flattening out behind the expanding portion). Additional to the bottom of the V not having as much expansion force, the wall of the bullet is thicker here than near the tip as well, doubling down on less expansion as you go further down the V.

A U shaped cavity will expand at a more consistent rate as the outward force stays the same the entire depth of the U and only the wall thickness of the bullet increases as you go deeper.

Another interesting shape to try (and I don't know how you could cast this) would be a ^ or upside-down V shaped cavity, where the tip of the cavity is smaller in diameter than the base/bottom of the cavity. To much slope and the hollowpoint would blow out beneath the tip of the bullet., but just the right slope and the cavity could expand perfectly as the velocity of the bullet drops during expansion. remember that once you get a mushroom started, that pressure also acts pulling the mushroom back towards the base of the bullet and this is when your penetrations really starts to fall off. The wider the mushroom, the less penetration. Your effectively creating a flat point/meplat that is wider than the bullet.

Hopefully this give you some ideas to play with. With the low velocity/nose pressure of an airgun, it is going to be hard to get a bullet to fragment and you can go much larger on your cavities. If you can actually get an airgun bullet to fragment, then you have just created a varmint bullet.

 

[EdinGa]

I cast this one with pure lead and shoot it around 950 fps.

 

[allinssd]

I don’t benchrest or paper punch as I think that’s incredibly boring. Just my opinion!

Yep, I say that all the time too. Careful, we're the minority!

I literally hate it when I have to site in my scopes. Punching paper and static shooting is boring AF