It was a great day here today - in between rain days yesterday and another few days of rain starting Thursday... Si I wanted to make the most of it.
Headed to Dinger's Farm with a two-fold purpose - I wanted to shoot both the Bloodline 50-325 and the Lehigh 50x350 gr. bullets. The Bloodline 50x325 was produced as a ML bullet to be shot with a sabot in a 54 cal. ML. The other bullet a 50x350 bullet is a rifle bullet and was developed for the 50 Beowulf rifle.
First... the 50x325 has been shot in a test shoot by Ron and from his test we found out that the bullet will not open in water with a velocity of 1300 fps. Lehigh say the low operating velocity for the bullet is 1300 fps. It was a mathematical calculation and is probably correct when shooting the bullet into the thicker blood and tissue medium of an animal. Never-the-less 1300 fps in most ML's is only have an effective range of 150-175 yards.
The second bullet used is designed for the 500 Beowulf and has a low operating velocity of 1200 fps.
The 325's shoot amazingly accurate from a ML, even when shot sabotless. Since the 325 is a ML it does have a larger +/- tolerance than does a center fire bullet. In most cases I can load the 325 in a couple of my 50 cal. Knights and get enough grip on the lands and with the aid of a wad shoot them very accurately. Some of the bullets on the low end of the diameter range do need to knurled to fit the barrel.
The 350 center fire bullet is held to a much tighter tolerance and the diameter varies very little. The bullet will drop right to the bottom of the barrel in most of my 50 cal. rifles. Because of this they all have to be knurled to fit the bore. I have found a way to knurl them using a tubing cutter. I add a knurl near the bottom of the bullet and a second one at the top of the Ogive. I have marked the cutter knob to give met the depth of cut I need to provide the lift to make the bullet fit the barrel very well. There will be a picture of this contraption in the photos coming that will be added later in the thread.
Last night I tried a couple of tests to see what it really takes to open these bullet. Of the 3 bullets that I physically opened by pushing a spire point bullet into the nose of the bullet showed me of the 3 bullet the 325 was or required the most pressure to open and continue the tearing of the petals apart from each other. I totally understand why it takes more velocity to open. When you get to the pictures of the experiment compare the thickness of the 325 petals, especially near the bottom of the petal, as compared to the other test bullets. Again the pics will show up later. The 350's did take a good deal of pressure to start the opening process - but once the nose was open it continued to open with much less pressure.
I ran a ballistic sheet on the 350 and it shows me that I can shoot to 200 yards and still expect this bullet to function. Again expecting this bullet to open in the medium of an animal down to 1000 fps.
I took some time last night and knurled up several bullets for shooting this morning. The first test was to shoot a 50 yard target to test the knurling and the accuracy of the bullet. The test proved very well that the knurling worked and the bullet shot accurately. Again a pic of the target will be included later.
After shooting the target I placed clay pigeons at 75 and 100 yards. Then I began to shoot them with the 350's. I forgot how
small a clay pigeon is at a 100 yards looking through a peep site. Even 75 yards it is not very big.
Here is two composite pictures showing the activities of the day.
