After i think about two years, i finnaly got to meet Dave Fricke in person. From Saxonburg Pa, the drive to Quakertown PA was about 5 hours. Driving up Interstate 80 was very peacefull and scenic.

I arrived late afternoon and walked in to a pleasant surprise. Very clean and well maintaned shop. Everybody seemed happy and everyone was working. A gentleman walked over to me and pointed me in the right direction of Dave. So i walked on over to his office and walked in on Dave sending out emails to customers i assume.

After a warm welcome i was amazed of all the different bullets Dave manufactures for companies. Rifle bullets and pistol bullets galore. I really cant believe i forgot my camera. Pictures of alot of this stuff would of been awesome to say the least. After a tour of the shop i saw some Muzzleloader stuff over on a bench. So i walked over and we started talking about the different Knight bolts on the extreme's, elite's, and Long rage hunter. I clearly saw some differences between the tolerances in the bolts.

So after a couple hours we decided to go get some dinner and a few drinks. We had a great Dinner and headed back to the shop to do some testing of the Lehigh's controlled fragmenting bullets. Only this time out of a T/C ProHunter with a 375 CF barrel sub-sonic. Dave got some buckets of water and we shot thru the buckets of water. WOW....i was very surprised at the enitial explosion of the water. Evertime there was four petals laying on the bucket of water. Dave says the other two blow right out the top. And that was very obvious after watching the water explode.

After that we started talking about sabotless bullets for 45 and 50cal Muzzleloaders. Dave loaded up a pistol and shot some bullets into drums of water to show me how the sabotless bullets will expand and perform. These bullets are and will be copper for the Muzzleloaders. After retrieving the bullets i was very surprised of the controlled expansion of these bullets. For an expanding bullet, they look very effective for hunting all sorts of animals.

The muzzleloader bullets will be made to expand around 3/4 of an inch. The bullets in the pics are wider and they are not the ML bullets. They are pistol bullets. The first pic below is of a 168grn .451 bullet.



Heres a heavier bullet and a wider expansion by design. It's really fascinating how he can control the expansion and the weight at the same time.


Though i still much rather use the Brass bullets, these bullets will be very effective for those that choose sabotless bullets.

So the next morning i picked Dave up and we had breakfast. Afterward i hit the road and headed home. I do want to thank Dave for letting me come up and see his operation. It was an honor and i cant wait to go back.

Those .451 might shoot real nice out of my White .451 model 97. With the light loads I normally shoot, that kind of expansion would mean a dead deer. Very interesting visit. Thanks for posting it.

Cool report! I wish I could see the pics on this work computer. I'll have to check them out when I get home. Sounds like a lot of folks are getting on board the copper bullet bandwagon. Good job Lehigh!

The expanded bullets that Tom has shown here are not hunting bullets - they are "home defense/personal protection" bullets.

It is my understanding that Lehigh Dave is going to develope the sabotless bullet much along the same lines as these 'defense' bullets, but they will be a much stronger bullet and will be pinned to open a given distance maximum + penetrate. The 'home defense' bullets are designed just the opposite. They open in a hurry and they open wide - they are not designed for penetration.

Congress or someone has set some very stringent regulations on what bullets must do to be used as a 'home defense/personal protection. As I understand part of the rules not using these type bullets 'HD/PP' and hand loads still might get you into court.

We should have some of these bullets to test this weekend.