On monolithic bullets

[Tom68]

Here is a set of tidbits I got from a LGS today. The first made me seriously question the second, and I present them here for discussion. I'm hoping that Brian will chime in soon, as he usually has information on this topic that I normally find informative.

First, a fellow behind the counter heard me speak of using a 110 grain TTSX in .270 Win. for deer. His first question was if my rifle could stabilize such a bullet: he opined that such a bullet would require a faster twist to stabilize, as the .270 was optimized for 130-150 grain bullets. Now, this caught my attention for two reasons: first, it's longer bullets, not shorter bullets, that suffer from too-slow a rifling twist.... And second, a monolithic 110 grain .270 bullet is 1.168", while a 130 grain SGK is shorter at 1.108"...so the monolithic bullet per grain is longer as a rule anyway.... And most of us agree that bullet length, not weight, is the primary factor in bullet stabilization and rifling twist. For this reason, I took his second point with a grain of salt. I would like your opinions here, especially those with extensive experience in shooting whitetail deer with monolithic bullets.

He said that with my setup, a .270 shooting a 110 grain TTSX at around 3300 FPS, that at a hundred yards I should take a shoulder shot, because the bullet would fail to expand fully, and would leave a pass-thru hole of around, say, 0.277", unless the bullet hit a rib or other bone. Longer shots, after the velocity had decreased, a lung shot would be fine.

Now, I've never shot a deer with a monolithic bullet, so I have no experience whatsoever in this. I've shot deer with cup and core bullets in both heart/lung as well as shoulder, so I'm frAming this discussion for those with experience in this area. I know there will be the comments that say just use a silvertip or a core lokt, they've killed more deer than all the others combined.... I got that, and don't disagree. I'm just wanting to hear the experiences of others who have used these Barnes or others and hear what they have to say. Especially after hearing this LGS fellow who I think was just plain wrong about about bullet length and rifling twist. So what say you?

 

[Jim243]

Your right the guy at the gun store was all wet. I don't use "lead free" bullets so I can't tell you how they expand, but from what I have heard they are designed to perform the same as lead bullets. So the appropriate fps for a lead hunting round would be the same fps for the lead free. The twist rate for a 130 grain bullet should be fine for a 110 grain bullet as well.

You are right maybe Brian or Unclenick can put the data into his/their Quickload program and give you more information as to what to expect as results.

Jim

 

[JD0x0]

He said that with my setup, a .270 shooting a 110 grain TTSX at around 3300 FPS, that at a hundred yards I should take a shoulder shot, because the bullet would fail to expand fully, and would leave a pass-thru hole of around, say, 0.277", unless the bullet hit a rib or other bone. Longer shots, after the velocity had decreased, a lung shot would be fine.

Umm that's backwards. Monolithic bullets have no problem opening up at high velocity. In fact, they're better for high velocity because they retain their weight. Their downfall is that they DONT open as well at LOW VELOCITY. At LONG ranges you have to worry about impact velocity being too low and the bullet not opening up, in which case it essentially acts like a FMJ type bullet.

Monolithic bullets hold together better than cup and core lead bullet. They can take harder bone hits, and faster flesh hits without fragmenting. Because of this strength, at low velocity the bullets may not open up.

@ 100 yards you're fine. Then general accepted minimum impact velocity for monolithic copper rifle bullets is generally 2000-2200FPS. There is no MAX velocity, because they can pretty much take how ever fast you shoot them.


As far as the twist rate. .270 is pretty much fine with 1:10, you can stabilize all but the longest most obscure VLD's like the 175 grain Matrix bullets...

Monolithic copper bullets have no lead in them. This means for an equal weight the copper bullet will be longer, because it will require more material to reach the same weight as a lead/copper bullet. As we know, longer bullets require tighter twists. If this is a .270 Winchester rifle, it should have no problem stabilizing any mass produced monolithic copper bullet on the market.


Oversimplifying it.
Monolithic - More robust, maximum weight retention. Higher cost. Generally, poor/worse low velocity performance than lead core bullets. Generally, not an issue, unless you're shooting at extremely long ranges, or using a cartridge that has a fairly low muzzle velocity, with monolithic bullets constructed for a much higher velocity. An example would be loading a 130-180 grain TTSX intended for .308win/.30-06/.300winMag, in a .300Blackout pistol/SBR.

Lead core - Cheaper. Expansion is usually larger at a given velocity due to the softer core, but greater chance of fragmentation, especially at higher velocity. This is largely controlled by how the bullet is put constructed, though. A tougher bonded bullet would obviously hold together better than a standard cup and core bullet, which changes the equation a bit.

 

[jmr40]

Copper bullets work much differently than lead and it is usually best to drop down at least 1 and sometimes 2 bullet weights for best performance. You also need to shoot them as fast as possible, which is part of the reason for less weight.

Common lead bullets lose anywhere from 20% up to 80% of their weight when they impact. A common 130 gr lead bullet will actually weigh around 25-105 gr after the bullet is recovered. It takes a really good premium lead bullet to retain 80% of its initial weight, most will be even less.

The copper bullets often retain 100% and rarely less than 98% of their initial weight. So a 110 gr copper bullet will most likely penetrate much more than a 130 gr lead bullet.

The downside to copper is expansion. They need to impact game at higher speeds, or you get little expansion. They end up working like a FMJ. Barnes recommends around 1800 fps minimum, but if you look at recovered bullets at that speed there isn't much expansion. Most guys who have shot them a lot recommend 2000-2200 fps at impact for best results.

Because they are longer, a 110 copper bullet should be pretty close to a 130 lead bullet. Unlike lead you don't need the weight to get penetration. Folks who use the same bullet weights often get poor results, especially at extended ranges, because of less than ideal expansion.

Here is a good link with a writeup showing some recovered bullets and how they look after impacting at different speeds.

http://www.thediyhunter.com/big-gam...hock-bullets-tsx-ttsx-243-wssm-270-wsm-rifles

 

[old roper]

I shot pretty nice buck here in Co using 270 with 140gr TSX. Had one dead buck, one shot never recovered bullet.

I used Barnes data start load was 51gr/H-4350 @ 2852fps and max load was 54gr/H-4350fps @ 3030fps and I used max load .050 of the lands.

I have 1/10 twist barrel and Berger has twist calculator and good tool if you plan on shooting their bullets.

http://www.bergerbullets.com/twist-rate-calculator/

Barnes has suggested use for 110gr and it's deer,antelope,sheep and 130gr includes same as 110g but adds elk and 140gr/150gr deer,sheep,elk, moose.

I didn't think much of the 110gr base on what it was used for so settle on 140gr maybe in antelope rifle might consider the 110gr.

Barnes has light bullets for 7mm and 30cal about same usage as 110gr 270 and I'm sure they work.

 

[Tom68]

And I will add... that when I made the decision this year to move from 130 grain SGK to 110 grain TTSX, I reasoned that thousands of deer are taken every year by .243 rifles shooting 95-105 grain bullets at 3000-3100 fps... so a .270 pushing one even faster certainly wouldn't make any deer "less dead".

more about the LGS guy though... he was nice enough, and was really trying to be helpful, even if he didn't know what he was talking about, but I was polite and didn't argue with him. I suppose his advice could fit into one of the current "things heard in gun stores" threads.

 

[AllenJ]

I agree with pretty much everything said above, your LGS guy is mistaken. If your 270 shoots the 110 TTSX well, you have an excellent recipe for deer IMO. I've been shooting Barnes bullets on game since before the TSX was introduced. The original Barnes X bullets were not the most accurate bullets for sure, but what they did to animals I shot with them was impressive to say the least. When the TSX and TTSX were introduced I quickly found them to be way more accurate in my rifles.

 

[Panfisher]

My experience with the older Barnes XBT has been that they were extremely accurate for me, have heard that most rifles either loved or hated them, mine loved them. The proof is in the shooting, my 7mm-08 with 120 XBT's loaded to a moderate velocity had no problems expanding on deer, while no bullets have been recovered the internal damage has been evident that expansion occured. Accurate, expanded and did lots of internal damage, exited and left big blood trails, what else could you ask for. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to use a 110 grain .277 GMX or TSX type bullet. I think that their expansion at lover velocities is better than they are given credit for in most cases. I would think with the 110 grain in the .270 you would be loaded to around 3200 fps, and should hold 2000 FPS to 400 yards or better.

 

[old roper]

This is from Barnes site.

Will TSX Bullets shoot through deer-sized game?
Yes, in most instances Triple-Shock X Bullets will completely penetrate deer-sized game. Hydraulic pressure causes Triple-Shock X Bullets to open as soon as they strike tissue. TSX Bullets are known for their superb penetration. Even when they penetrate completely through game, these bullets create a very large wound channel and cause massive shock to the animal’s system. These amazing all-copper bullets live up their promise of “more one-shot kills”

 

[ffffg]

130 tsx and 270 results

I know you guys hate old threads to be brought back up but i have some usefull data on tsx bullets. Most but not all of what has been said is true in my point of view.. I use phone books to prove perfomance in my guns testing. They even helped me imensely to get proper pennetrating power with flintlocks using bismoth years ago for duck hunting. Sorry about my english and spelling
.
270, 130 tsx... muzzel vel aprox 3025, 55.1 grains H4350, this is max so work up your load, my gun loves it, 22 5/8 inch barrel.. Amazing backyard accuracy with tikka and target dies, weighed cases etc.

30 yards, stack of taped phone books anchored solid: , good expansion aprox .58 x .491, 8-9 inches pennetration, 129.3 grains. approximatley 3 inch circumference in damage to phone book at largest depth in stack. any tear in paper counts as damage in this circumference..

300 yards, now things get interesting. 1 1/8" x 3/4 inch damage with complete pennetration(passthru) of 10 1/4 inch of phone book. This is very stout test. The wound channel tapers up to max at about 4-7 inches and tapers down to a small exit hole in this medium.. Phonebooks compress when they are struck, but must be used in comparison tests only. It is not really relevent to anything else.. The expansion of the bullet i found in another test at this range was .461 x .384, 129.2 grains.. The bullet opens up very little, but is very long and tends to go strait, the bullet i retrieved probably turned or it would have gone thru alot of phone books..

when you think about it this is perfect performance for a .270 and tough game..(I said tough not dangerous). when close it opens up and chews up alot of tissue, but not like a cup and core of course. when its out there and loosing power it stays tight and burrows thru.. It is not a truncated (flat nosed) bullet like for dangerous game so it can be vered off course by deflecing off heavy bone, or other reasons and will sometimes turn in a phone book even tho it is very long in proportion to the expansion diameter, which is perfect for deep pennetration..But as i said phone books are very tough.. All in all it is quite impressive.

My son shot a white tail, not a huge animal by any means probably average to a little less than that, thru the ribs/ lungs this year with 168 tsx .30 cal form his 30/06, 50 or so yards this year,, the exit hole thru the back side of the ribs was aprox 2.0 -2.5" x 1 1/8 inch. It may have hit a rib going in, but hard gristle most likely.. This proved to me the tsx is performing well for us..

I did talk to a shooter who killed a ram last year and he said the tsx failed.. He is very upset with barnes but did retrieve the bullet.. I personally dont feel a bullet has failed if you have retrieved the bullet(he was so upset i couldnt get a good inerview,maybe they had to follow it for some time shoot it twice dont know..,,

but to each his own and nothing will be perfect, cup and cores can blow up sepparate etc... Dave.

 

[Mike / Tx]

Years ago when my 25-06 was my main hunting rifle I was working up loads using several of the 115gr weight bullets. One of them was the 115gr Barnes X. I had several people tell me that this bullet was far too long to stabilize in my standard 1-10 twist rifle and that using them was simply a waste of money and barrel life. So as I am hardheaded and have to prove things to myself I continued on my merry way shooting 1/2, 3/4, and just shy of 1" groups with the same load using the 115 Partition, and the Barnes X. THE only difference between the two bullets was about 3/4" difference in point of impact at 200yds. Both of them accounted for deer, coyotes, feral hogs, and even a few fox squirrels who were chewing up my feeder motors from 200 or more yards away. I also had a heated argument with one of the folks from Nosler who said that the 115gr weight in a Ballistic Tip would not stabilize and would tumble, well something must be wrong as they now load it in plenty of factory ammo plus offer it as a component which is hard to even keep on the shelves at most LGS's.

I have had issues with the mono type bullets though. In most cases they work just fine and as mentioned do need to be driven to the upper scale on velocity for use at extended ranges. What I have had the biggest issue with is them loosing the petals due to hitting a shoulder or shooting deer at ranges closer than 75yds. Or having the petals flatten back against the shank resulting in a caliber sized exit which doesn't allow for much if any blood trail should the animal run. Granted they have killed, sometimes in spectacular fashion, but other times have resulted in long and tedious trailing even with a solid hit to the vitals taking out both lungs and a portion of the heart. In the 7-15 or so seconds or more it takes some critters to actually realize the effects of a solid hit they can cover some goodly amount of ground. In a wide open pasture or prairie situation this usually isn't an issue but in thick overgrown river bottoms it can be a problem if they go 30yds with nothing to follow them up on.

I recovered several during the years I was using them and in most cases they all had lost one or more of the petals. Yes a recovered bullets is usually still in the animal but none the less, said animal didn't always drop or fall within a short distance. Nowadays they have the TTSX which I have used in only one caliber, my 308. It only has a 16.5" barrel so I used the 125 and 130gr versions. In most cases things were picture perfect, nice caliber sized entrance, considerable damage, and a 3/4" or so exit and animal within 50 or so yards of the initial shot. Hoewver in a couple of cases unfortunately things went terribly sideways and the animals were never recovered. I know that they were hit solidly, and I know what I should have expected to find and did find, but at the end of the trail there was no animal to gather up. I'm not saying that it was the fault of the bullet nor condemning them as a result. Simply passing along my own experience with them as a result. I have since gone back to using the 150gr in either a C&C design or in the Partitions as I got a great deal on some several years back and figure I might as well use them up.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

I'm hoping that Brian will chime in soon, as he usually has information on this topic that I normally find informative.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, sorry I missed this thread way back when but I may as well chime in now.

You are correct that the 110r mono bullets are longer than a traditional 110gr bullet. The LGS guys is (partially) correct in theory that a mono bullet would require more twist than a SAME WEIGHT (that's what he's missing) cup-core bullet because, as you say, it's length that matters. The other responses pretty much cover the issue.

Really, what prompted me to respond at this point is this:

He said that with my setup, a .270 shooting a 110 grain TTSX at around 3300 FPS, that at a hundred yards I should take a shoulder shot, because the bullet would fail to expand fully, and would leave a pass-thru hole of around, say, 0.277", unless the bullet hit a rib or other bone. Longer shots, after the velocity had decreased, a lung shot would be fine.

This sounds like the annoying "your bullet needs time to expand" old wives tale. Bullets don't need "time" to expand, they need ENERGY to expand, which is why they (all bullets) expand less and less as distance increases... because velocity and therefore energy is decreasing.

Also, in regards to Mike/Tx's experiences, the shedding petals was a known issue (or at least widely reported) with the early versions of the X bullets. I have not heard such reports from any of the modern incarnations. Barnes did tell me directly that "the worst that will happen" if you hit a shoulder at very high speeds (we were theorizing over 3,800fps) was loss of petals but they would not expect to see it on any shot at normal speeds. They also told me that every batch is tested for such and if the samples fail they scrap the whole batch.

In regards to unrecovered animals, my opinion has always been that no shot is "known to be solid" unless that animal was recovered. The guys who track animals with dogs can tell you of their experiences with "known" good shots as described before recovery and where the animal was hit when they finally found it. (No insult or offense intended, Mike, not saying anything specific about your animals, I weren't there.)

 

[Unclenick]

Well, bullets may need specific but different times to expand, but they are almost universally very short. For handgun bullets, Duncan McPherson found they all needed to travel about 5 cm (2") to expand. For rifle bullets, Berger says 4-5 inches for theirs. You see this narrow entry channel in stop-action ballistic gelatin photos of their bullet's effect on the block. But the bottom line is the distance is short and the time it takes a bullet to traverse it is probably on the order of one or two hundred microseconds, the time needed to traverse that short distance.

Bullet stability depends on both length and weight. Length just matters more. If you take the same bullet mold and cast some bullets of tin, lead, and gold, their weight will increase in that same order as the density of the metals increase in that order. Let's suppose the bullet is a .270 that casts 130 grains in lead. It will cast 83.7 grains in lead and 221.3 grains in gold. let us further suppose they are all 1 inch long, to keep it easy.

If we assume an experienced cast bullet handloader who knows how to load cast bullets to jacketed velocities, running QuickLOAD suggests a 24" bore would give us 3700 fps for the tin, 3200 fps for the lead, and 2550 fps for the gold. The twist rates needed for a gyroscopic stability factor of 1.5 for these three identical length bullets are:

83.7 grain bullet at 3700 fps
11.18" twist

130 grain bullet at 3200 fps
13.87" twist

221.3 grain bullet at 2550 fps
17.92" twist

So you can see that as mass increases the gyroscopic stiffness of the projectile in flight goes up, making it harder to turn, so less spin is needed to maintain its course. Now, instead of using a mold, lets cast three different molds, all using lead, but this time change the length to get 83.7 grains, keep length for 130 grains, and change length to get 221.3 grains, all in proportion to the weights. The 83.7 grain bullet is now 0.6438" long. The 221.3 grain bullet is now 1.702" long. The 130 grain bullet will need the same twist, but let's see what the length change does to the other weights. This time the lighter bullet will need less twist, but the heavier one will need more:

83.7 grain 0.6438" long bullet at 3700 fps
23.15" twist

130 grain 1.000" long bullet at 3200 fps
13.87" twist

221.3 grain 1.702" long bullet at 2550 fps
7.65" twist

So, we need about 1.81 times more twist for the long bullet, where we only needed 1.29 times less when only its mass increase was considered. We need 1.669 times less twist for the light bullet when we needed 1.241 times more when only the weight difference was involved.

This is what is meant by length being most important. Note how the length increase demanded more spin even though the extra weight was still there and trying to pull the spin requirement in the opposite direction.