Fridays are for casting!

[Beagle333]

Today, I got out the MP 359640 and gave a look at the penta pins. And after looking closely at these things..... I was thinking ... "There's no way these are gonna let go of a bullet. It looks like he whittled 'em out with a skillsaw!"
So I decided to install 'em anyway and try it. I took the pliers out to the casting table too, because it's pretty obvious I'm going to have to wrench the bullets off the pins.

But after putting the pins in, and pre-heating it for 20 minutes on 80% on the hotplate, I lubed the tips of the pins up good with sprue lube on a Qtip, and the bullets just fell off, exactly like they do on the round pins. I was amazed and happy! The hollow point cavity has that same grainy pattern inside it as on the head of the pin, of course, but maybe he's onto something and this was designed? 'Not sure... but it works!
Now, it does need sprue lube reapplied to the pin tips about every 80 bullets, but it hits that sweet spot and they fall out as soon as the mold is cracked open. The pins just slid out on their own and plop-plop..... two shiny new bullets at a time! I made a whole pie pan full of these too. I was going to just try it out, but it was going so smoothly that I just kept at it til I drained the pot.

 

[Beagle333]

I also cast another pile of Turtle Busters, maybe 120 or so. That was my original purpose for casting today anyway, before I got sidetracked playing with the MP penta pins. These are set to 155 grains. (The HP pin is adjustable on this one)

And... I was playing with the 358429 mold too, because it was just barely dropping at .358 and I wanted a good solid .358, so I "beagled" it with some aluminum duct tape (not my invention, by the way, the name is purely coincidental, the technique belongs to a guy over on the castboolits forum)
and I got just a hair over .358, so I double-beagled it, and now they are dropping at .361! Them's some fat ol' bullets right there!

I made a few dozen of these to play with. I'm going to have to watch the temp closely when "beagling" this one, because if it or the lead is too hot, it wants to creep down beside the HP pin. But overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I gotta back off on the tape some though. I was going for .359, but it was my first attempt at the process.

 

[Grizz12]

thats cool, how do they shoot?

 

[BerdanSS]

Dang Nabbit Beagle! your casting pictures are kill'n me. My wife said I've been muttering things like..... "ladle....hmmm...turtle..buster.....lee....six bullets at once" in my sleep Those are some NICE looking HPs Sir. Let us know how they fly.


I've been working so much lately I haven't been able to pick up my wheel weights yet

 

[Beagle333]

'Can't offer a range report yet.

I don't know how the penta hollow points shoot. I'd guess they shoot just like the round ones. (which shoot pretty good!)
I don't have a luber/sizer, I pan or dip lube, so I'm very slow at moving the newly cast stuff to the loading blocks.

 

[Vance]

The theory for the penta pin hollow points is that it will split at the thin spots on the nose then you would have five parts spreading out to do more damage. I haven't seen it happen like that yet.

Nice looking bullets.

 

[Beagle333]

Very true, Vance. The alloy I'm using pretty much does this with all my HP bullets. I just like the look of em loaded. I don't hunt with them, so I don't spend the time to mix up an alloy that will make a good mushroom. But, like you, I would be impressed if somebody could figure out an alloy that will make a 5-star flower out of a penta HP.

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update: I found this picture on another forum and this fellow claims that if he uses 25:1 with no antimony in the mix, he can get one to do this:

(I don't know if it does more damage than a cup point, since the petals aren't sharp like on a Black Talon, but at least it retains weight and transfers energy. It looks nice anyway. He didn't say how many he had to shoot to get one back that looked like this.)

 

[snuffy]

Very nice!!

As for the penta points and expansion, here's what I got with 45 acp from a MP 200 RNFPHP.

Round HP on the left, penta on the right. You can see it almost did a five point expansion. This is from a machine counterweight I scrounged from my former workplace. It's nearly pure lead with a bit of tin, just guessing but it behaves like 40-1 alloy.

Same two as above from the front.

These were cast from range lead that is at 12-14 BHN. I'm sure the penta HP would look something like those that Beagle recovered. That alloy is too brittle to allow for expansion. The round HP might expand without loosing the nose, I'll have to try it to see.

Nice looking pictures Beagle!