Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Talk about your 450b reloading experience, ask questions, etc...

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Re: Thanks!

Postby wildcatter » Sun Sep 07, 2014 12:37 pm

45-70 shooter wrote:Like you, I find the internet to be a very useful tool if used with the care any tool should be.

The "pressure spike" stuff is all over the net regarding high power handgun and short rifle cartridges. It appears to have replaced the fear of reduced loads of slow burners like 4831 that were also reputed to blow up guns left and right. Neither have ever been documented with independent third part tests like the powder makers and those who publish accredited reloading books do.

Being a simple man, I believe that if a current Barnes, Nosler, Sierra, Hornady, Alliant, IMR, Hodgdon (need I go on ?) says a given load is a safe starting point with the EXACT components specified, it will not take apart any gun, in good repair, designed for that cartridge.

In 5+ decades of shooting I have seen three blown up guns. An 03A3 30-06 shot with 198 gr Ball D German machine gun loads in 8X57, a 12 bore damascus Belgian hardware store double, loose as a goose and barrels pitted to "He double l" shot with 2& 3/4" magnum buckshot. Both cost the shooter a couple of fingers. Last was a nice BP colt SAA that the dolt decided to try Elmer Keith 45 Colt loads in. Top of cylinder and top strap went into orbit. Shooting glassed avoided anything but new freckles.

If you read it on the net and it doesn't square with what people who have the tools and knowledge, consider it incorrect.

After all, right on the net, you can find thousands who believe in Aliens among us (not Mexicans), that Bush the younger blew up the WTC so he could start a war to enrich the VPs pals and that Obama will soon outrank Lincoln as out greatest President..

We helped win WW II with only 140,000,000 Americans and now with over 300,000,000 we can handle a bunch of rag heads who bury children alive.

Welcome to Rome ...... it's 470 AD.


Wait a minute now!!

I can handle all of your assertions, except about Aliens. I assume from another Planet.

.."To Know our TSD is to know that Aliens Exists"!!

..t

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Magic Mouse Milk and Aliens

Postby 45-70 shooter » Sun Sep 07, 2014 7:45 pm

I did exclude Mexicans as w/o them no heavy construction would take place in the USA.

As far as bullet coating go, magic mouse milk to dope your bore or bullets has been around since Harry Pope. Plain base bullets have limits, GCs add a few 100 fps. That's how it is and always has been. If there were such an elixir, the inventor would be richer than Obama and the product would have received dozens of reviews (favorable) from people who are serious cast bullet competition shooters. When I see it lauded in Rifle or Handolader I'll pay attention.

If a 300 gr cast bullet at 1600 fps won't handle your task, you need a bigger gun.

Cast up a bunch of Lee 300s with Lyman #2 this afternoon and ordered a .453 SAECO sizer and crimp on GCs on the way.
But speed goat season opens the 10th, deer and elk the 15th so...... it may be a while, as lugging any AR around the high country is self abuse compared to my Benelli R1 300 WM w/2.5-10 Nightforce.

Two interesting asides:
1. GRAF has 30 round metal Bushmaster AR15 magazine at giveaway prices. With the 10 buck 450 adapter on Ebay, it could be Miss Piggy's worst nightmare. (unless you live in a Democommie slave state).
2. If you price out buying Hornady cases and bullets (no powder or primers), the factory Hornady ammo is a break even with rolling your own.
I bought a box and will break it down and set the powder and bullets aside.
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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby Hoot » Sun Sep 07, 2014 8:53 pm

If you're fond of the 250gr FTX bullet, Midway has blemished ones available as of the time I post this for $20.99/50. A considerable savings over the normal price for the new ones. Some have blue tips and were made for Thompson Center, but they are exactly the same bullet with the same performance. Though they are classified as blemished, I think a more appropriate classification would be production overruns. I've gone through several hundred and when loaded the same as an actual Hornady 250gr FTX, their performance is indistinguishable. I have a thread somewhere evaluating them as does TSD.

Since my order for 200 just shipped, I encourage all of you to get them while supplies last. Since I ordered mine on Friday, the 225 FTX blems, for an equally good savings, sold out. I ordered another 100 of them as well. Lastly, they had the 230gr FMJ Magtechs in stock on sale for $15.99/100. Couple of hundred of them heading my way in the order also, but the sale expired at the end of last week.

It pays to check Midway's blemished bullets frequently.

The url for the 250 FTX bullets is http://www.midwayusa.com/product/918926. For non-sale, but excellent priced, Hornady bullets, its hard to beat the prices at outdoormanventure.com Another site to check frequently. An example of their rock bottom prices on many items would be the Burris Signature Zee rings, of which I'm a big fan. They're going for $10.00 less than Midway and they don't rape you on shipping. Total price shipped was less than Midway get for the rings before shipping. I highly recommend them as a source, though they are subject to the same inventory availability fluctuations as encountered at Midway.

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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby BD1 » Sun Sep 07, 2014 9:22 pm

A couple of points in the interest of clarity.
First, velocity does enter into the boolit stabilization equation as it is RPMs that stabilize projectiles. The longer the projectile, the higher RPM need to stabilize it, (see the "Greenhill Formula"). As most stock .450B barrels are a 24 twist, it may in fact take more velocity to stabilize a projectile than what is required in a comparable cartridge shot from a 12 or 16 twist barrel.
Second, the issue with crimp in the .450B is not so much bullet set back as you might experience in an autoloading pistol, but rather bullet "jump" forward on chambering. The problem being that the bullets don't jump forward very consistently, resulting in significant differences in case capacity on ignition from shot to shot. Never beneficial to accuracy.
Third, the issue with gas checks in the .450B is not that they are a hazard in any way. IMHO the issue is that the gas port diameter is larger than the height of the gas check, which I feel allows the checks to occasionally be disrupted as the heel of the boolit passes the port. Shooting cast I get a lot of 5 shot groups with three shots touching, and two "flyers" that tend to open the group to 2" or more. It's pretty easy to get the .450B to shoot cast reliably, it's just hard, (at least for me), to keep five shots in the kind of sub moa group that I get consistently with jacketed bullets. There is no issue with leading at all using gas checked boolits. The first month I had it, I ran my .450 for 500 rounds of cast without cleaning to check this out. It's a total non issue. However, plain base boolits are another story. That big gas port takes a little bite out of the base of each and every one. This leads to piss poor accuracy and some lead build up, not in the barrel, but on the rear of the bolt. The same place that carbon always builds up in any AR. Surprisingly I found no lead in the gas tube. Apparently it stays vaporized, (just as the carbon does), until it condenses on the rear of the bolt. I was able to check this stuff out by shooting across the surface of light snow, then walking out and recovering the boolits. You could probably do the same by shooting into a swimming pool or something, and then recovering them from the bottom of the pool.
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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby Texas Sheepdawg » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:08 am

Just a note.... If you do decide to blast your 450 Bushmaster into your swimming pool, be sure you do it at the deep end. At least 8 foot. Doing so at the shallow end will likely put a nice dink in the floor of your pool.
Just a warning. I know of someone who fires into 55 gallon drums vertically and downward. He dents the bottom of them with his 450 B.
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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby 45-70 shooter » Mon Sep 08, 2014 1:39 pm

BDI, it is not the speed of the bullet it is the twist. I would agree that if the bullet were going so VERY slow that it was unable to assume almost no rotation, then speed might come into play.

I would think the performance of the Whisper cartridges shooting very heavy bullets at very low velocity would make this clear to anyone.

My 30 Blackout/AAC/Whisper AR shoots 210 gr SMKs at less than 1000 fps. Anyone who thinks they have a velocity rated key holing problem has never put one on paper @ 600 yards.

The mere change in bullet diameter 100% eliminated my key holing problem with the 450BM. The answer is obvious to all who understand lead bullet ballistics.

As for those TC bullets, while they may be the same, I'd have to section one and try it on ballistic Gel before I agreed it was a Bushmaster bullet with a different colored tip. While some TC loads equal BMs in velocity, the bullet is inside a Sabot and has nowhere the forces exerted on a "look alike" jacketed bullet designed for a rifles barrel.

Your jacketed bullets may be a deal, but that's not the point. I want to shoot lead, big, fat, large Metplat bellets that are far cheaper and will kill anything that a 45-70 300 would be correct for. FYI, it is still exceeding 454 Casull ballistics @100 yards down at 200 yards. (IMO too far for either gun)
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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby 45-70 shooter » Mon Sep 08, 2014 1:47 pm

Texas Sheepdawg wrote:Just a note.... If you do decide to blast your 450 Bushmaster into your swimming pool, be sure you do it at the deep end. At least 8 foot. Doing so at the shallow end will likely put a nice dink in the floor of your pool.
Just a warning. I know of someone who fires into 55 gallon drums vertically and downward. He dents the bottom of them with his 450 B.


No swimming pools here in WY (they freeze over in August). Our "shallow lake" is 250' +, our deep one almost 600'. When I fish in FL, it's off the wall, 2000'+ so bullet recovery would require a robotic diver.

Filling those drums with propane and building a small fire next to them would be fun on a windless day.
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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby wildcatter » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:57 pm

Texas Sheepdawg wrote:Just a note.... If you do decide to blast your 450 Bushmaster into your swimming pool, be sure you do it at the deep end. At least 8 foot. Doing so at the shallow end will likely put a nice dink in the floor of your pool.
Just a warning. I know of someone who fires into 55 gallon drums vertically and downward. He dents the bottom of them with his 450 B.


OH My Heck, I quit using 55gal drums. I used to fill'em up on the side of the house and then shoot into them from top-to-bottom, while leaning over the edge of the roof, say a 8-12ft shot. Besides getting soaked (which I finally cured by placing cardboard over the top of the open drum and then shooting through the cardboard) from the vertical water column, the 230gr FMJ's would pass through the bottom and into the dirt 6"s +-..

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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby BD1 » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:36 pm

45/70, you are certainly welcome to believe what you like, and I am not interested in re-starting this old argument.
However, as for myself, I'm going to stay with the generally accepted external ballistic theory of the last 100 years wherein projectile stability from rifled barrels is dependent on RPM, a function of both twist and velocity.
Too little twist, or too little velocity for a given twist, may not allow the projectile to stabilize enough for acceptable accuracy. Too much twist, or too much velocity for a given twist, may result in a disruption of the projectiles integrity, again resulting in unacceptable accuracy. If you'd like some real world cast lead examples try a long conical in a 60 twist muzzle loader, or just about any cast boolit in a 7.5 twist Swedish Mauser above 1,700 fps or so. I've personally seen both ends of the spectrum, so I'm convinced.
I found the low end for my 24 twist .450B while looking for a subsonic load using 400 grain cast boolits. Below 1,000 fps groups at 100 yards were basketball sized, with keyholes being fairly common, while the 300 grainers would run that slow pretty reliably. I don't think the 24 twist will allow us to see the issue at the other end of the spectrum.
My biggest interest is in trying to get a little better accuracy using cast. Despite many tantalizing groups of 3 out of five, I haven't been able to come up with a cast load that would group ten shots MOA.
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Re: Hornady Die Problems GRRRRR!

Postby BD1 » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:42 pm

Here's an interesting online gadget where we can play with these variables:

http://kwk.us/twist.html

When I plug in my 400 grainer at 900fps, this gadget is telling me that what I need is a 22 twist or faster, which does match my experience.
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