Trying to Blow Up a Bullet
Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 11:44 pm
One year ago today I made my first post on the calguns thread, Wildcatter's response two days later started my search for 3000 fps. There was some followup on that thread about selecting bullets to avoid blow ups cause by too-fast spin. I used Hornady totally encapsulated 185-grainers to try to avoid that problem. I didn't have any disintegrations.
In the attempts to reach 3000 fps, at one point I looked for 185-grain 45 bullets that had a cannelure to aid with crimping. The only one I could find was a Prvi Partizan hollow point listed by Grafs. (I showed their illustration on another thread: LINK.) Grafs was out of stock until a few weeks ago, but the bullets that I received had no cannelure.
The bullets were only 0.4495 inches in dia, with enough variation in length to indicate that quality control was taking a back seat to price. I decided to find whether these would blow up as predicted, so I made up a series of increasingly stiff loads with Lil'Gun, with a side-crimp. The C.O.A.L. was about 2.000 inches.
Here's a photo of a bullet and a round. For comparison a 250-grain FTX and a factory 205-grain round are shown. (Truth in advertising: In the image, the Prvi bullet is in an empty fired case, and is not crimped.)
At the range, the velocities over a chronograph 8 feet from the muzzle went from 2700 to 2900 fps; all the bullets made it to the target.
So, what's next in an attempt to get a blow-up?
I want to see little puffs of gray dust. I could maybe coax another 100 fps out of these bullets, but they are already doing about 3X their designed speed and rotation. I know that thin-plated bullets don't fare very well, but the predictions were for the hollow-pointed jacketed type. I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks.
--Bob
In the attempts to reach 3000 fps, at one point I looked for 185-grain 45 bullets that had a cannelure to aid with crimping. The only one I could find was a Prvi Partizan hollow point listed by Grafs. (I showed their illustration on another thread: LINK.) Grafs was out of stock until a few weeks ago, but the bullets that I received had no cannelure.
The bullets were only 0.4495 inches in dia, with enough variation in length to indicate that quality control was taking a back seat to price. I decided to find whether these would blow up as predicted, so I made up a series of increasingly stiff loads with Lil'Gun, with a side-crimp. The C.O.A.L. was about 2.000 inches.
Here's a photo of a bullet and a round. For comparison a 250-grain FTX and a factory 205-grain round are shown. (Truth in advertising: In the image, the Prvi bullet is in an empty fired case, and is not crimped.)
At the range, the velocities over a chronograph 8 feet from the muzzle went from 2700 to 2900 fps; all the bullets made it to the target.
So, what's next in an attempt to get a blow-up?
I want to see little puffs of gray dust. I could maybe coax another 100 fps out of these bullets, but they are already doing about 3X their designed speed and rotation. I know that thin-plated bullets don't fare very well, but the predictions were for the hollow-pointed jacketed type. I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks.
--Bob