Snuffy,
First, an interesting looking mold. Looks like he's cutting vent grooves by running a fly cutter across the block faces, same as Lee does on their 6-cavity molds. It's a good system.
The expansion is fascinating. The shape of the cavity looks like the round nose expanded at least part way a couple inches in, then finished where the hole is bigger, while the penta looks like it went unexpanded until the very end, then opened up and dumped it all after about 5". Perhaps I'm mis-reading, though. I don't know how much you had to dig at the final bullet position to get the bullets out.
When you get the casting figured out, please shoot one round of commercial 230 grain JHP as a penetration reference. That green stuff may be harder than ballistic gel, and if so, we need a reference point. There are some ballistic gelatin tests online that got about 13" out of most commercial 230 grain expanding .45 ACP rounds. If you only get, say 6.5", then well know the green stuff is about 2:1 harder to penetrate than ballistic gelatin.
First, an interesting looking mold. Looks like he's cutting vent grooves by running a fly cutter across the block faces, same as Lee does on their 6-cavity molds. It's a good system.
The expansion is fascinating. The shape of the cavity looks like the round nose expanded at least part way a couple inches in, then finished where the hole is bigger, while the penta looks like it went unexpanded until the very end, then opened up and dumped it all after about 5". Perhaps I'm mis-reading, though. I don't know how much you had to dig at the final bullet position to get the bullets out.
When you get the casting figured out, please shoot one round of commercial 230 grain JHP as a penetration reference. That green stuff may be harder than ballistic gel, and if so, we need a reference point. There are some ballistic gelatin tests online that got about 13" out of most commercial 230 grain expanding .45 ACP rounds. If you only get, say 6.5", then well know the green stuff is about 2:1 harder to penetrate than ballistic gelatin.