Rifle experiment

Jim in rush co

Well-known Member
Location
Rush Co. Indiana
Way back in the 1960s a local custom gun shop had a piece of steel he had shot with a benchrest rifle he had built. About 15 or 20 yrs ago I did a little experimenting with my 6mm. at 50 yrds. and a piece of 1/2" tool steel. The 80 gr. bullet did not go thru and is expanded inside larger than the entrance hole and is loose but will not come back out. The 100 gr. bullets punched holes.
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This could become the new Red Neck punch press. Nice looking holes and more fun than a drill press. Want to look at something really crazy? Go on U-Tube and find the two crazy people who show you why you should NOT use smokeless powder in your black powder deer rifle muzzle loader!
 
You should see what a .300 weatherby mag does to a small deer! A little to much gun but what the heck there legal in Indiana now.
 
Interesting but deer don't have steel plating.I'm with Jack O'Conner a .257 Roberts is hard to beat.I shoot the Hornady 117 gr SST hollow points when deer hunting does a nice kill but doesn't destroy a lot of meat either and it'll reach on out there.
 
Had a friend that did the same thing a few years back with his Weatherby 460 Mag.. He used railroad main line rail (175 lbs.a yard) and put holes through web of rail like it was butter.
 
The 6mm came by the way of the 257 Roberts, Remington used 257 case necked to .243 but was 1 and 12 twist and called it 244 and then Winchester came out with 243 and went with 1 and 10 twist. A little later Rem. followed with 1 in 9-3/8" twist and called it 6mm.
 
Before trying that again. Go to you tube and try to find the video of the guy shooting a 50cal. at a steel target a long ways off. You can hear the ricochet and then his hearing protectors got knocked off by it !!! Guy was darn lucky to live through it.
 
What kind of tool steel is the plate? The surface finish looks like it could be hot rolled.
 
I doubt if hot roll,it has been machined all sides and I cut off of a much larger piece with torch. My BIL was a tool and die maker by trade and it was part of a mold he made.
 

I've done some of those experiments. Velocity has more than anything else with penetration. Loading cast bullets in a 30 caliber rifle at about 2000 feet per second penetrates 1/2 inch mild steel, AIRC.

KEH
 
> Velocity has more than anything else with penetration.

Are you saying a 100 grain bullet has greater velocity fired out of a .243 than does an 80 grain? That's news to me.
 
> That's why the 44 and 45 were weapons of choice. Figured one shot, one victim.

There's not a lot of difference in the sectional density of typical 38, 44 and 45 caliber bullets. The real difference back in the day between large and small calibers was the limitations of available propellants. Black powder and early smokeless propellants couldn't deliver the velocity necessary to get acceptable muzzle energy with small caliber bullets. Using a heavy bullet in a large bore would deliver acceptable muzzle energy without blowing up the gun. Remember that the larger the bore, the more force is imparted on the bullet for a given chamber pressure due to the greater cross-sectional area of the bullet.
 
They were Hornady 180 gr GMX. I will probably stick with the .30-30 from now on. I was setting on a pond dam and the woods is 180 yard away so I thought the .300 was a good choice. Well this little doe just keep getting closer and after 2 days of nothing I shot it at maybe 75 yards. This is the first year for "big" rifles in Indiana. I normally use a .458 SOCOM upper on my AR.
 

Back in the 50's and 60's there was a lot of work done with 17 and 14 cal rifles. This as back when they had the idea that velocity alone would guarantee a one stop kill. One of their "tests" was shooting steel plates. A 14 or 17 cal bullet at 4000+ fps would always make a nice big hole. The reality of course is that speed alone isn't the answer, but those holes sure impress some people.
 
I know a 30-06 and a .303 British will go through 3/8 mild steel plate like nothing. There was a video on line some years ago of "10 minutes of exploding bullets" or some such title. It was slow motion of bullets going through and hitting mostly steel. Maybe I will look and see if it is still out there.
 
Hear you on that but I still feel that a full metal jacket defeats the purpose of high velocity impact vs brute force aka mass. Course then you weigh the tradeoff in carrying a bucket full of 22's vs an ammo belt of 45's, or 30-06s.
 
(quoted from post at 15:22:31 11/14/16) Interesting but deer don't have steel plating.I'm with Jack O'Conner a .257 Roberts is hard to beat.I shoot the Hornady 117 gr SST hollow points when deer hunting does a nice kill but doesn't destroy a lot of meat either and it'll reach on out there.

The world would be a lot better off if people would stick to stuff like the 250 Savage, 257 Roberts, 6.5x55, 7x57, 308, etc. rather than buying into the magnumitis everyone seems to suffer from these days. No one bothers to sight their 338 Loudenboomer in at 350,400, 500 or more yards, but they delight in taking those hail Mary shots at any deer they can spot through that 18X scope. The 17mph cross wind? THey never consider that at all! We'd be better off, and we'd have a lot fewer fat coyotes, if people would get a rifle they aren't terrified of and spend some time on the range. 99.9% of the hunters out there never, ever do that. They depend on advertising blurbs and a false belief that a bigger gun will "reach out further" and somehow make up for the fact they put 3 rounds through the rifle at a rock in a sandpit and called it good enough.

Obviously, this has been a sore point for me for many, many years. Rant over.
 
I've always wondered about all these various calibers. My Remington 700 in .270 has always done everything I've wanted it to.
 
I always thought I would like a 270. We are open to rifles in Indiana this year for deer, but the 270 is a no no. I don't know how they came up with what they did, it doesn't make much sence to me.
 

I didn't express myself too well below on velocity and penetration, so I'll add this:

The amount of penetration depends on bullet weight, bullet construction, and velocity with velocity being most important. Armor piercing ammunition in military rifles has a hardened piece of steel inserted into the bullet. US 30 caliber ammunition of World War I and II, plus the Korean war was supposed to penetrate 1/2 inch of mild steel, using ball ammunition. With armor piercing rounds it was supposed to penetrate 1/2 inch of armor plate. Velocity was somewhere around 2800 feet per second. Modern(or not so modern) hunting ammunition of equal bullet weight to the military stuff has about the same velocity as ball ammunition. Generally heavier bullets will penetrate more than lighter bullets. Higher velocity loads will penetrate more than lower velocity. I invite anyone to test fire for penetration in steel using a 30-30 and then a 30-06. I don't have the figures before me, but AIRC the 30-30 is about 4-500 feet per second slower than the 30-06 with both using a 150 grain bullet, so the 30-06 should penetrate more.

BTW, I was not discussing the 243 at all in my earlier post. Factory figures have the 80 grain bullet going faster than the 100 grain. The 243 with 100 grain bullets is supposed to give excellent results on deer.

KEH
 
Why is the .270 a no no? It's as much of an old standby as a 30.06 here in Nebraska.
 
Wowwee!! I've seen some convoluted attempts to limit cartridges, but this one's got 'em all topped. It's actually not particularly restrictive--there's dozens of proven, effective deer cartridges on the list (and a bunch I'd consider marginal at best) but the way they do it is VERY odd, to say the least. ONLY cartridges with bullet diameters of .243 OR .308 are legal--not higher, not lower, and not in between! Therefore, a .30-06 is legal, but a .25-06, .270 Winchester, .280 Remington, or .35 Whelen (all based on the .30-06 case and, for all practical purposes other than drunken arguments pretty much identical) are not. Note that apparently this particular "extra" rule is only for some areas, namely private land, and for public land another, more restrictive list is used-from what I can see it's mostly straight-walled pistol cartridges and a few like the .450 Bushmaster intended primarily for AR-type rifles. The link below will take you to it, though you may have to hit the "equipment" tab to get to it.
Indiana deer firearms for 2016
 
> The amount of penetration depends on bullet weight, bullet construction, and velocity with velocity being most important.

Well, sort of. I'd say penetration is dependent on hardness, sectional density and energy. In the case of the original poster's tests, the 80 and 100 grain bullets have similar hardness and energy. But the heavier bullet has greater sectional density, and that's what allows it to blast through the plate, even though its velocity is LESS than the lighter bullet.

Anti-tank bullets, such as those used by the 30 mm cannon on the A-10 are made of depleted uranium. Why? Because uranium is hard and dense. It's possible to construct a uranium bullet with a much higher sectional density than one made with traditional materials such as lead, copper and steel.

Velocity by itself doesn't ensure penetration. A 25 grain bullet from my .17 Fireball varmint rifle has a muzzle velocity of around 3800 fps. But I'm pretty sure it will not penetrate a steel plate of any thickness. Not enough energy. And the sectional density of a 25 grain bullet is only about half that of a 100 grain 6 mm bullet.

Another factor that comes to play is the momentum of the bullet relative to its energy. Metallic silhouette shooters know this effect very well, since they want to knock down the target rather than blow a hole through it. Bullet energy increases to the square of velocity, but momentum increases linearly to velocity. Given two bullets with identical energy, the slower, heavier bullet will have greater momentum and will tend to knock down the target rather than penetrate it.
 
(quoted from post at 22:06:50 11/15/16)
I didn't express myself too well below on velocity and penetration, so I'll add this:

The amount of penetration depends on bullet weight, bullet construction, and velocity with velocity being most important. Armor piercing ammunition in military rifles has a hardened piece of steel inserted into the bullet. US 30 caliber ammunition of World War I and II, plus the Korean war was supposed to penetrate 1/2 inch of mild steel, using ball ammunition. With armor piercing rounds it was supposed to penetrate 1/2 inch of armor plate. Velocity was somewhere around 2800 feet per second. Modern(or not so modern) hunting ammunition of equal bullet weight to the military stuff has about the same velocity as ball ammunition. Generally heavier bullets will penetrate more than lighter bullets. Higher velocity loads will penetrate more than lower velocity. I invite anyone to test fire for penetration in steel using a 30-30 and then a 30-06. I don't have the figures before me, but AIRC the 30-30 is about 4-500 feet per second slower than the 30-06 with both using a 150 grain bullet, so the 30-06 should penetrate more.

BTW, I was not discussing the 243 at all in my earlier post. Factory figures have the 80 grain bullet going faster than the 100 grain. The 243 with 100 grain bullets is supposed to give excellent results on deer.

KEH

Well, the big question is what does penetration of steel have to do with hunting or target shooting? I suppose if you're out to defend the nation from the oncoming hoard who are riding in APCs it matters, but penetration of steel has nothing to do with bullet performance on game or accuracy on targets.
 
Tim, I don't know why the ones that make the laws don't ask the opinion of some of us that have hunted for more than 60+ yrs and have a lot more firearms experience than they do!!!
 
Well, it's hardly the first time--firearms laws are particularly bad in this regard, as 99% of those wishing to limit firearms use have, pretty much by definition, little experience with them, though the same holds true in many other areas. Still, as noted, the list of what IS allowed has plenty of proven calibers on it, though I could well see where someone with, for instance, a nice .270 would be grumpy that they can't use their gun when someone else with the identical gun in .30-06 can. Another one that's sure to get people grumpy is the inclusion of the .30-30, but not the .32 Winchester Special, which, again, is for all practical purposes identical in ballistics and available in many of the same rifles and has over a hundred years of proven ability as a deer cartridge. I can bet the local gun dealers are doing a land-office business swapping out old 270's and .32 Winchesters for new .243's .30-06's, .308's, and 30-30's!
 
> what does penetration of steel have to do with hunting or target shooting?

Well, it doesn't. With the exception of metallic silhouette shooters and elephant hunters, most sportsmen should not be concerned about bullet penetration. Which is not to say folks aren't curious about it. Of course for military and law enforcement personnel, the matter isn't just academic.
 
Way back yrs. ago using a 40XB benchrest in the 6MM,which had 28" barrel, I keep bring the velocity up with the long barrel using slow burning 4320 and pushing a Seirra 60 gr HP bullet. Was making close to 4000 FPS when the bolt would not open and sure kicked hard. I had got a little tooooo much pressure. Just before that I had the 60 gr. blowing on a Starling at 100 yds. The pressure was bad enough it strecheded out primer pocket and you could read the Norma on the brass.
 
(quoted from post at 12:25:35 11/16/16) > what does penetration of steel have to do with hunting or target shooting?

Well, it doesn't. With the exception of metallic silhouette shooters and elephant hunters, most sportsmen should not be concerned about bullet penetration. Which is not to say folks aren't curious about it. Of course for military and law enforcement personnel, the matter isn't just academic.

Umm, yeah, penetration is part of the equation. Saying people shouldn't be concerned with it is part of why we had people making big flesh wounds in game animals or having pencil sized holes through and through. You need to think about penetration as a function of performance, but I agree it's not the whole ball game. Adequate penetration with expansion or a bullet design that is less about expansion and more about physical damage (think big, wide flat points) is what's needed. Pure speed without penetration is what used to give us those nasty flesh wounds that left the game to run off and become coyote food. I'm sure you know that, but I don't want people thinking that it's not worth considering.
 

I was discussing penetration in general terms concerning some aspects of what affected penetration. I was in no way discussing
effectiveness of different hunting cartridges. I will leave that to someone who is a much more experienced hunter than I am.

I found the IN hunting regulations interesting, but confusing. ( I don't live in IN but saw a lot of nice farming country when
passing through.The people I came in contact there were nice). I have a copy of the book "Cartridges of the World" which had a
interesting discussion of wildcat cartridges that hunters developed in IN in search of effective cartridges that would comply with
regulations. It seems that there have been at least 3 extensive changes in regulations about allowed cartridges in fairly recent
years. Where I live in SC there has been some confusion in the game department about weapons allowed. 50 or so years ago the only
areas with deer were in the Eastern, or "lower" part of the state. Only shotguns were allowed on the theory that since that part
of the state was flat, rifles would fire bullets a long way before hitting something and that something might be a person. In
later years deer were released all over the state and hunting was done on hilly rolling land where a bullet would not travel far.
At present, rifles are allowed all over the state AFIK. There are no cartridge restrictions other than not using full metal
jacket military bullets. The 30 carbine is not allowed on the grounds that is is not powerful enough to make quick and humane
kills on animals. Unless it has been changed, centerfire 22 rifles are not allowed for the same reason. Coyotes and wild hogs may
be hunted with anything, year round.

Happy hunting

KEH
 

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