New Miha cramer mold

[Unclenick]

Snuffy,

First, an interesting looking mold. Looks like he's cutting vent grooves by running a fly cutter across the block faces, same as Lee does on their 6-cavity molds. It's a good system.

The expansion is fascinating. The shape of the cavity looks like the round nose expanded at least part way a couple inches in, then finished where the hole is bigger, while the penta looks like it went unexpanded until the very end, then opened up and dumped it all after about 5". Perhaps I'm mis-reading, though. I don't know how much you had to dig at the final bullet position to get the bullets out.

When you get the casting figured out, please shoot one round of commercial 230 grain JHP as a penetration reference. That green stuff may be harder than ballistic gel, and if so, we need a reference point. There are some ballistic gelatin tests online that got about 13" out of most commercial 230 grain expanding .45 ACP rounds. If you only get, say 6.5", then well know the green stuff is about 2:1 harder to penetrate than ballistic gelatin.

 

[snuffy]

Nick, I have never felt any ballistic gelatin, so I can't comment on the difference in density between the two. I do know that this stuff is quite dense, it's also quite heavy,(in weight). I would compare it with wet phone books or newsprint. I always considered wet paper to be much denser than gelatin.

That makes sense to compare a 230 grain HP to these, but the extra weight would result in a bit deeper penetration. Remember these are 200 grain bullets. How about a 200 grain HP, lets say a XTP or gold dot? These would be handloads, I haven't bought factory for so long, I doubt I could stand the experience! :barf:

The expansion is fascinating. The shape of the cavity looks like the round nose expanded at least part way a couple inches in, then finished where the hole is bigger, while the penta looks like it went unexpanded until the very end, then opened up and dumped it all after about 5". Perhaps I'm miss-reading, though. I don't know how much you had to dig at the final bullet position to get the bullets out.

That's how I read the bullet/wound channel also. The round HP was sitting right where the wound channel ended. The penta deviated right at the end of it's channel, was at least an inch from it's path. You draw a line that intersects the bullet hole on the side of the tube. Then the provided splitter is a fine cable/wire that is hooked to two rings to pull the wire through the wax.

A couple more tests with more boolits will tell the tale. It will take a lot of time if I don't get more of the expansion media. You can only use it once per day per target.

A search online has netted me a bunch of places to order more spiral wound cardboard tubes.BUT the big ones ,(6 inch), require ground trucking, the packages are too big for UPS or FED-X. Looks like I will get the 4 inchers for the handgun tests, look around for someplace to get the larger ones without costing $185.00 for delivery!

 

[Unclenick]

Snuffy,

The idea I had was to compare one medium to the other by comparing how they do with the same type of round, then to extrapolate back to how your's compares. I've seen photos of a number of 13" penetrations by a variety of 230 grain HP loads, so that's the best general data I have to work with. But, I have one datapoint on the 185 grain Silvertip penetrating 9.8 inches, and I found 5 datapoints for a 200 grain +P Gold Dot load penetrating an average of 12.4". Maybe 11" or so for a standard pressure 200 grain, then, but its a guess.

So, while we can't make as good a generalization about 200 as a 230, that's better than what we know now. If we assume about 11 tor 12 inches for it in gelatin, but it only penetrates your material 6", then will know it's about 2:1, and your cast bullets would have gone about 10" in official tissue simulant.

 

[snuffy]

UncleNick, we're on the same page. I have some 200 gold dots loaded, I will do a comparison test.

I finally found a place,http://www.uline.com/Index.aspx that shipped the two sizes of spiral wound cardboard tubes for $33.35 + the cost of the tubes. I will be set for 75 molds for handgun, and 33 for rifle. All were 36" long, I only need tubes 12' long, so cutting them will triple the amount. Should keep me busy all summer.

I plan on getting a couple more of the rifle tubes, better hurry if they're t!ts up at thetesttube.com, Brownells still has some of them left. That should give me enough material for a bunch of handgun tubes, maybe ten for each trip to the range.

 

[Unclenick]

With handloads, just be sure they chrono to match the commercial versions. Should be interesting.