sabotloader

The weather! It has finally cooled off here and even has been raining - so it is only natural that I made the jump this morning to go shooting and experimenting...

What I have been trying to do is to shoot a full bore conical other than a pure lead concial. With the advent of the 50 caliber pistols, there are some really nice 50 cal. bullets on the market. Of course these are not designed for a ML so some work on the bullets is needed. What I have been trying to do is to create a knurling on the bullet that increases the diameter of the bullet from .500 to .5015-.502.

As it turns out the Barnes and Speer bullets are very easy to knurl and create the lift needed. On the other hand the brass Lehigh bullets are more difficult - they are harder. Yet they are no harder on the barrel bore than a copper bullet as both copper and brass are self lubricating metals.

Anyway this week I changed up my knurling method in an effort to get more lift on the brass bullets. With the copper Barnes and Speer's a simple use of two mil files creates plenty of lift. The mil files will not create enough lift on the brass bullets. I have been using two general purpose files to get this done. But, this week I added a thick piece of leather under the bottom file to give a form of cushion as I roll the bullet across the surface of the files.

This shows my basic older operation...



With the addition of the leather as a partial cushion under the bottom file I was able to easily get the lift that I needed for consistent knurling.

Testing this morning confirmed my progress... The two bullets that I used this morning were both built by Lehigh Defense. The first one I used was a Bloodline 50x325 grain bullet packaged with a purple 50x54 sabots for shooting from a 54 caliber rifle. The second bullet was a Lehigh 50x350 grain bullet built for the #500-200 (350 grain) was designed to provide advanced terminal performance for the new .500 cartridges including the .500 Cyrus, .500 S&W(Encore rifle), and .50 Beowulf.



This composite shows some of the shooting accomplished this morning...

bronko22000

Sabot I know you like shooting the clay birds and it gives satisfaction when they bust. But in all honesty shooting at paper would give us all a better idea of how accurate these bullets are in your testing. Even though you may hit 5 out of 5 you could still be shooting a 4" group. Otherwise you're giving some good insight in the use of these full bore bullets.

sabotloader

I guess I am not really interested in accuracy on paper... My goal is to hit what I shoot at and hitting a 3" circle at 100 yards is going to get the animal I am shooting at. Accuracy for me is not the total goal. I know a lot of folks get hung up with very tight groups.

I know I could get tighter groups with bullets designed with very high BC's, even tighter if I wanted to dink with the powder load. Shooting 110/120 grains of powder does not always produce the tightest groups but produces more energy and if I can stay inside 2" for hunting purposes that is great for me.

Even the bullets I shoot have a wide open hollow points designed for maximum damage to the internal organs...

I do shoot some targets sighting the rifle in but as soon as I get it sighted in - targets just do not do it for me. This shows a typical sighting in and from there I move to hitting breakable things.



This a pretty typical 100 yd. target that I might shoot. But this is really boring...



These are the same bullets I was shooting today...

cayugad

I can understand the reasoning of shooting clay birds. I admit, paper punching does get old. Probably why I love of pop cans so much. But it looks like you're getting this conical shooting down to an art. Good going.

bronko22000

I can understand your view. But if I were testing bullets I would want the ones that have both the best accuracy and terminal performance. You really can't see that busting clay birds. Like even you presumed, you may be shooting 3" groups where as a full bore lead bullet may shoot half that. But you would never know for sure.

sabotloader

How's this for terminal performance - no tracking necessary

bronko22000

Never mind Sabot...I congratulate you on your hunting success but I guess you don't understand what I am trying to say so I guess we can just agree to disagree. No sense ruffling feathers.

BarnesAddict

Paper punching is great for tweaking a load, which I don't mind doing and find it fun. However shooting something like the clays afterwards would be a blast. Now the pop can thing here, would be like shooting an additional 10¢, as we have a deposit on them. One of these days I'm going to buy one of those exploding targets but, better shoot it after a rain though. Last time I did something with ignition like that, I caught the roadside on fire with a boating flare showing the wife how it worked

Grouse45

I understand your point and agree completely. He has already proven the accuracy of the Barnes and the Lehigh's for sure. So I guess aside from killing game it really doesn't matter now if you shoot clays or paper.

bronko22000

Grouse the initial post was about his knurling technique. While I agree that both Barnes and Lehigh bullets are accurate, if it were me I would be shooting at paper to see if the knurling technique improved or impaired accuracy. Then once that was validated and I had the most accurate load possible THEN I would not hesitate to stop shooting paper and begin busting things up. But whatever he wants to do is no skin off my nose.