I captured a bullet

[alamo5000]

As some of you know I have been having a time with some of my cast bullet issues such as chamber leading and what not. Also I have been EXTREMELY busy and it's been EXTREMELY hot so I haven't been doing much shooting. FYI It was 109 degrees the other day. That was in the shade!

Anyway today I used my load of 7.3 grains of IMR 4227 with my 217 grain bullet (which should have been subsonic) and a stack of milk jugs that I have been saving up and I managed to capture a single bullet fired at point blank range. One bullet veered off and couldn't be found, a quick follow up netted me a bullet in a jug of water, and the last bullet was a pass through.

For the record if I just fill up a 5 gallon bucket with water will that stop a subsonic bullet? If so I could have made my life a lot easier! LOL!

NOW the big question is what am I looking for? I will break out my expensive camera gear and try to take some shots of the bullet. Overall to my untrained eye it looks good. A ring of the coating is rubbed off around the base of the bullet about 1/2cm from the base. Basically where the boat tail section transitions to the body of the bullet is about it. I also have clear rifling marks to work with as well.

What next? I will try to get photos of the bullet up soon although it might be a few days before that happens.

[alamo5000]

FWIW A 5 gallon bucket is about 14 1/2 inches tall. I could either go buy something a bit taller or make creative use of a skill saw and some duct tape to double that to around 30 inches. I mention this because I could then test with various powders and seating depths and see if those have any impact on the performance.

[John A.]

Lots of folks have used thick phonebooks, or magazines or whatever they have available.

[alamo5000]

Lots of folks have used thick phonebooks, or magazines or whatever they have available.

The idea here is to use something over and over again. I could save milk jugs for a month from all my friends or just get a big metal trash can that can hold water. The reuse ability part will allow me to try numerous different combinations across different days. Eventually I would like to say over a 6 month period be able to say 'powders A, B, C, and D work, but powders X and Y show signs of ____'

Part of this whole 'catching bullets' thing is for my own education about cast bullets. I am not ready to throw out the cast bullet thing by any means. At the same time my scientific method brain only works in certain ways. LOL! Odds are my testing will probably go on for months using a variety of bullets.

On that note, once I get pictures up of the bullet I did manage to catch what are the specifics of stuff I am supposed to be looking for? Keep in mind my issue that I had was specifically chamber leading. Based on what I am seeing the only place lead could even possibly be scraped off is around that ring where the boat tail meets the body of the bullet. That is the ONLY place that doesn't have the coating intact.

It's possible that these bullets were not sized all the way up through the sizing die? (Note: I have never cast a bullet or used a sizing die so I literally have no clue what I am talking about).

If anyone else has photos of coated bullets that they have captured please use this thread to share so that I can compare.

[rb288]

I have come upon a trick that works great for me.
I shoot into my swimming pool.
It is 6 ft. deep at it's deepest, so shooting at a small angle off verticle, 75 or 80 degrees, gets me 8 or 9 feet of water, and it captures bullets very well. Most bullets expend all their energy within about 4 or 5 feet.
Expansion is near perfect, and because I live away from other people, nobody is the wiser.
It is great to be able to experiment with expansion at different velocities.
Haven't had any problems, a big splash and then the expanded bullet just sinks to the bottom.
Great fun.

[rebel]

For capturing bullets, water works and is a breeze to clean up. For testing a bullets performance you may as well shoot at a flat concrete
slab. Wet packed newsprint, as John A mentioned can be reused, somewhat mimics flesh depending on it's moisture content, which is fairly difficult to repeat the same way.
It also gets fairly messy although it is biodegradable. I started this way early on when I was trying to decide which bullet I would us in my Blackout for deer hunting - as a matter of fact I am pretty sure that is was within my first 100 posts.

Since then I moved to ballistics gel. Downsides, expensive and somewhat labor intensive, melting, cleaning and molding. But it is the most repeatable method of testing expansion and penetration. A few years back we had a rash of folks reporting lost deer with 300 Blackout with both supers and subs in the field. While a lot of this was shot placement, I feel if more folks had spent more time testing however they could instead of loading enough rounds to kill a truck load of deer, some of this may have been prevented.
edit - Owning a sporting goods store and hearing the hunting talk during season. This could be a 30/06 forum and we could have had these same reports. Some folks need more practice.

Not all of us here are as fortunate to be able to walk out back and test. I to am one of the lucky ones and have access to two close by ranges. Those that don't have this luxury that hunt should defer to those of us that have done this homework and benefit from it.

Alamo, I discovered that jacketed subs were very hard to stop. My first wet pack test was about 16" in depth. Couldn't catch a 220 SMK to save my life. I finally put an old 5 gallon trash can of water behind the box of newsprint. Finally got one after a couple of tries. That seam split, rusty can still les up in the woods, perforated with perfectly shaped, sideways hit 220 SMK holes. Those things really turn in the wet media.
Just thought I'd share some of my methods over the years after you have renewed some of this interest.
Have fun!

[dellet]

No telling what you will find looking at a fired bullet. Just throw out some decent pics and see what others might find. Sometimes it’s easier to spot something in a photo than holding it.

Unless the base of the bullet is a larger diameter, I would think that the coating was shaved seating the bullet. That’s best checked by pulling a couple after seating.

The other option is the powder is too fast for bullet hardness. The base is expanding do to pressure and being shaved while chambering, creating your rings. If this is the case you might be able to see or feel an edge at the transition to the boat tail where the lead was pushed back. This might show up in a photo. If the bullet has lube groves you might see the same deformity.

Just throw out a couple decent pics.

[alamo5000]

Here are some various views of the bullet. I added contrast so that if there is something there maybe it could be more apparent.

These are not macro shots. If I need to go full macro I can do that too.

[alamo5000]

Sorry about the original post. I included 3 or 4 'ideas' in my head and wasn't really clear about my intentions.

1. The main purpose is to try and learn about cast bullets in general.
2. To learn why I got chamber leading or if there is anything discernable from my bullet that will help me learn.
3. If my bullets seem to be ok. (It's my first batch of cast bullets to ever shoot)

I do want to capture more bullets so a container like a trash can or 5 gallon bucket is on my list. I could shoot em and get two or three examples. Something cheap and reusable is what I would like. I will only be shooting subsonic rounds for the most part.

I have no intention to test terminal ballistics at this time.

I also don't need to capture any jacketed bullets.

[John A.]

I have a few photos somewhere of a powder coated leatherhead 223 gr that I dug out of the side of the mountain backstop.

Only deformation is the tip.

Powder coating is gone out of the same places too. Probably from seating them.