.577/.450 for Hunting

[Sloffie]

I want to go hunt this year with my .577/.450 Martini Henry rifle. I load with black powder only as I believe that you should not fire something out of something that was not designed for it.

I get 1400FPS with a 380gr bullet. Now the question, with lead bullets, is harder better or should I find a sweet spot?

The reason I am asking is because I can cast super hard lead bullets or I can cast standard wheel weight hardness bullets.

Any advice?

[SFourie]

I read a story in Ron Thomson’s book “Stand Your Ground”. He was during that time stationed at Main Camp at Hwange National Park. The Park recently received a new batch of Kynoch solids (.375 H&H). Ron was ordered to shoot some elephants that had been causing some trouble outside of the Park on the Lubotsi river (I think). The first shots were fired using the old solids and the elephants hit went down. The last bull was hit with the new solids. It took 10 shots, the finishing shot of which was one of the old solids.

The new bullets were sent back to Kynoch who tested the bullets and found that the materials they were made of were too hard and shattered on impact.

During that same period Senior Ranger Harry Cantle used the new solids on a lion. Same results.

I am no expert in pure lead bullets, but I think that the end result will be the same. Too hard will likely mean fragmentation on impact.

Good luck. Sound like a lot fun. Definitely something I would like to try one day.

[Musgrave]

It all depends on the velocity. Garret bullets in the USA load super hard cast bullets with a wide meplat at speeds of 1500/1600fps for the 45-70. These loads are apparently awesome in penetration.

Sloffie, you may want to load a batch of both and do some of your own penetration tests?

[THOMAST]

Over on Shootersforum.com I saw a technical article relating to cast bullets where the base of the bullet had a higher Brinell hardness factor than the rest of the bullet. Cant remember how it was done (I read it several years ago) but it was very interesting, albeit a bit time consuming. Go have a look under technical information, maybe even the archives.
I wonder if gas checks are available locally for the .450?
Maybe a torture/penetration test with different mixes of lead and alloys is in your future.

[THOMAST]

http://www.beartoothbullets.com/tech...h_notes.htm/35

[Sloffie]

The reason for hard bullets shattering is that the antimony makes the lead brittle. To fix this you add a bit of tin which then bonds with the antimony to form a more ductile phase... or something like that.
Wheel Weight lead contains some Arsenic which allows for the alloy to be heat treated. So to get the bullets lekker hard you chuck them into a bucket of water straight from the mold.
I think if you quench the bullet only at the base in the water, you could get a bullet that is softer at the tip than at the base.

I get a velocity of 1400FPS, same as those hard cast .45-70 bullets. So it should be good. But I first have to see if the bullets group at all. If they do, I will do some wetpack tests to see how they deform. Might have to stick a piece of bone into the mix to see what happens if I hit it.

[dritz]

i find that two 10mm ceramic tiles in the wet pack placed on either side of a wet phone book work perfectly for deforming the bullets. it gives you a good idea of how they will perform on big bones.
sure its not fair on the bullet, but if it makes it through that then you know that no bone is going to stop it.

[Peter Wells]

Sloffie, the obvious question is - what are you gong to be hunting and where? Any lead 380gr bullet that groups at 1400fps will be fine for bushveld use on any non-DG animals, assuming lung/heart shots only. I can't see any other use for the 577/450 in the field.

[Sean Murphy]

What Martini do you have. Was it a military rifle or was it built as a sporter? Military rifles have a long throat and shoot much better with a hard bullet.

Sean.