Research Press - Boattail Bullets Anyone?

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Boattail Bullets Anyone? (Read 1170 times)

07/29/11 at 5:03pm

Southron Offline
New Member

Posts: 17

Seems to me that the ultimate "Long Range" .451 bullet would be a smooth sided, Paper Patched, Boattail bullet that was just a tad under bore size when loaded with the patched bullet.

Cast out of pure lead, the bullet would "slug up" to grip the rifling when the arm was fired. As we all know, the advantages of a Boattail bullet only kick in when the bullet is subsonic. This would be ideal because most long range, M/L bullets spend most of their flight time in the subsonic speed regime anyway.

Has anyone had such a mould made up and tried it yet? It might work or might not work-but the experiment would be fun~

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Reply #1 - 07/29/11 at 5:07pm

Southron Offline
New Member

Posts: 17

OOPS! I meant to say in my first line "...when loaded patched with a paper patch."

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Reply #2 - 07/29/11 at 5:21pm

paulbehe Offline
Senior Member

Posts: 283

Southron.....If it was a boattail bullet and soft enough to "bump up", wouldn't the boattail deform when obturating? I think if you give a bullet any excessive space to expand into, it will. Paul

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Reply #3 - 08/01/11 at 8:09pm

Jason Offline
Member
Iowa

Posts: 49

pauls right, the boattail would deform too much. the only way i can think it might work would be with hex whitworth bullets, and a rock hard alloy.

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Reply #4 - 06/24/12 at 1:32pm

DEVA Offline
New Member

Posts: 11

Back in the early 1980's following an article in the then Guns Review Sept 1981 I made a cutter and milled out an old mould to give a long almost pointed stepped boattail bullet (the step .0750"deep and 0.330"dia.) that had a bearing of 0.660 in .451" that weighed 450grns for P/P in my own repro Metford. Eichelberger 5 groove .461" barrel.I started with about 4% tin thinking that the close fit at .459" including two turns of bank copy paper (0.002") it would upset enough.After the first poor results and a chat to Bob Sanderson the author of the articles on Stickledown I shortened the ogive and dropped the tin to 2.5% and started to get results at 100 & 200yds.Not good but a start!!Then unfortunately some detritous hit the ventilator and I had to shelve the plan but I have recently been looking at the mould again to try to reduce recoil and to see if I could improve on it any further.I am going to shorten the ogive a bit more and may be increase the bearing slightly still trying to keep the weight to under 450grns when I can get round to making a new "d" bit also drop the tin to ???1.5% and see what happens !!! I dont know if the articles are still copywright?? Theory says they should work ,all thats needed is a b-big lead pot and a good range next door.....DEVA..

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Reply #5 - 07/25/12 at 3:10pm

Broadarrow Offline
Member
Sydney Australia

Posts: 71

Hi Southron,

I recently made a new base plug for my my regular cylindrical paper patch mould to the shape shown on the left of the picture below as I wanted to try the "double ended" variety of bullet in my whitworth.

The cylindrical round shown on the right is 550grs. in weight as is the boat tail/double ended round shown on the left both were paper patched and fired on the same load combo in the same match, that is five with the PP base and five of the boat tail/ double ended variety. The distances for the match were 500, 700 & 900yds. the first noticable difference was an audible one as the boat tail/double ended rounds produced a lower sounding report than the PP based rounds and there was only a minor change in elevation (Had to come up for the boat tail/double ended rounds). As a guess I would say I was getting some gas blow-by on the round based projectiles the next time I use these I am going to run them the other way up as there is a slight flat where the sprue cut-off is and I am hoping that will reduce some of the gas blow-by as it should in theory keep the wads flatter allowing them to seal. As to the accuracy it was very much the same as the PP rounds over the distances but I will try some down at 100yds. and see. The other thing we wanted to do was a bullet catch and see how the base has stood up to being fired, I will post photos of that as soon as we do it,

Regards, Peter B.

Be heard and not seen...!!!

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Reply #6 - 09/14/12 at 12:10pm

DEVA Offline
New Member

Posts: 11

Hello Southron,
Further to a previous post I have recently found some of my old bullets which were fired from my Eichelurger 5 groove Metford barrel.Can't remember what range but I expect 200yds.The nose has deformed into a nice even mushroom and the base has only been slightly flattened by the fried beer mat sweeper wad..Now I have my new kit up and running and before I alter the old mould I'm
gowing to cast some in pure lead ,some in 2.5% and some in 3.5%tin and see what happens..Watch this space !!
Broadarrow,
Your experiment looked interesting.Have you gone any further.I made a mould years ago for my 50 metre rifle with a round base as the rifle was built for patched ball - 9.6 m/m.But I think the bearing was too short and I shelved the project . Must have another try now I have a little more time and a handy 50 m.range.
DEVA

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Reply #7 - 09/14/12 at 11:26pm

Bill Curtis Offline
Member
Wales

Posts: 34

Whitworth produced boat tail iron solid shot for his artillery and also experimented with hardened boat tail bullets for his .451 rifles. I have one of his 12 pdr iron shot and I have seen the occasional trial bullet. He achieved astounding ranges with shot, in excess of ten thousand yards, truly miraculous for the period. Unfortunately such distances were useless in the context of the time as no one had even begun to think of appropriate sighting, fire control or any of the other things that go with field artillery much beyond maximum small arms ranges.
My analogy to this is someone inventing the jet engine and then enquiring around to see if anyone had thought of inventing the aeroplane.

W. S. Curtis
Asst. Curator, Museum of the N.R.A.
Whitworth Rifle Research Project

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