Greetings, On my way to the back yard range I picked this poor thing off of the ground. The snow is gone so the real low ones are on the grass. Any way, what the devil can cause something like this to happen? The load was a .447” cast bullet of soft lead wrapped twice with note book paper over 15g of unique. The rifle is a Peabody in 44-77 Remington/Sharps. The bullet has stretched .200” and gone down in girth .020"
Wha' happened?
- 8K Views
- Last Post 27 May 2015
onondaga
posted this
16 March 2015
I think you now have a chipmunk or porcupine that has lead on it's teeth.
Gary
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delmarskid1
posted this
16 March 2015
Chipmunk had one heck of a taffy pull going there.
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Ken Campbell Iowa
posted this
16 March 2015
i think you might be in the Sasquatch Triangle ... better get a 'nother gun ... bigger and louder ...
ken
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358156hp
posted this
16 March 2015
And it looks like it stretched from back to front too. It weren't critters gnawing on it, they wouldn't have stretched it unless you have something there to be very afraid of.
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norm
posted this
17 March 2015
Is it possible the paper patch tore at ignition and doubled up or worse as the bullet was moving down the barrel ? Just a guess. Now if you could find the remnant of the paper patch that was on that bullet it might tell you something. Is there a bulge in the barrel ?
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delmarskid1
posted this
17 March 2015
My only guess so far is that the paper patch held the bullet and the gas blew through and did whatever this is.
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onondaga
posted this
17 March 2015
Gary
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delmarskid1
posted this
18 March 2015
Gary The smudge is a nice tell. It makes the gas extrusion thing sound even more likely. I'm sure I didn't loud them backward....this time. Looking at the waist portion I can see rifling marks, weird.
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M. W. Curtess
posted this
21 March 2015
I'm privileged to have seen that photo. I could be a bit more certain if I had seen one of a patched, ready to seat, and had some idea how you treat the paper at the base. Thing is: that I've found a couple of patch remnants that appeared to have done something like this - but never a bullet that went with them. My best guess is that the patch tried to blow past the bullet, accordianed and jammed at the front groove and tried to extrude the soft lead while the bullet was still in break-away acceleration. Grain or two more Unique might have torn the nose off entirely. Soft lead bullets in rifles are just a little more advanced than the sling-shot, and patching barely an improvement over M/L's - and neither were developed with smokeless. Refreshing to know that someone is still trying to fill in the technology gap. I said “uncle” 9 -10 years ago.
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onondaga
posted this
21 March 2015
Holy cows, I think we need a forensic ballistic scientist.
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jy3855
posted this
23 March 2015
Holy cows, I think we need a forensic ballistic scientist.
I'm a retired one, and this bullet has me stumped!
Del, do you wrap your patches wet and twist a tail at the base? What's the diameter of the pre-wrapped bullet, do you know your bore diameter?
I shoot a Lyman 366408 ( casts ~.369-.370") with 3 wraps of 9# onion skin or 2 wraps of 16# in my .375 Win Ruger No. 3 and I've pushed it with 35 grains of both 3031 and RL7. I've even shot the patched bullet in my .381"-groove 38-55 with excellent accuracy.
Blowing a properly-applied patch forward sounds far-fetched if the patched bullet fills the bore, but it seems the most reasonable explanation proposed.
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Ken Campbell Iowa
posted this
23 March 2015
einstein said that near the speed of light, things get longer as you are looking at them .... do you think it could have been an overload ??
just tryin to help ...
ken
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delmarskid1
posted this
24 March 2015
I wrapped them dry but glued the over lap with school glue. The bullet was cast at .447” and wrapped went to.455". I sized them after wiping the paper with case sizing lube to .451” The throat was near that and the groove depth is .447". I did have a twist at the bullet base that I nipped off to a stub. The cartridges loaded easily and I felt just a little “kiss” when I closed the breech. I'm looking at the goofy bullet now. It kind of looks like it got run though a ring of paper.
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jy3855
posted this
24 March 2015
Well, given the as-cast dia vs groove diameter, there doesn't seem to be room for the patch to blow forward, so the likelihood of that being the cause of the stretched bullet is lessening in my mind, though nothing to replace that hypothesis comes to mind. Still scratchin my head about your boolet!
Hmm, maybe the patch blows forward before entering the throat. The slight kiss you feel would mean that the forward part of the patch is far enough into the throat to keep the patch from blowing all the way off, creating a crumpled ring that then swages and stretches the bullet. Are the necks of your fired cases much larger than a loaded round's neck? Maybe the case expands enough to let the rear of the patch blow up to behind the leade.
I apply my patches wet - previously with saliva, but no more due to lead ingestion concerns. When applied wet and rolled tight, the patch shrinks on drying and you can't twist them on the bullet. I twist a long tail of paper and cut it off with side cutting pliers when the patch is dry.
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onondaga
posted this
24 March 2015
School Glue on the patch my be part of the problem if the glue permeated the patch and adhered the patch to the bullet.
Consider wetting the patch before rolling with Lee Case Lube , it is hydrogenated wax based and doesn't adhere to bullets. It shrinks paper to fit tight too when the Lee stuff dries. I size the patched bullet when the Lee stuff has dried and then rub graphite into the paper patch with a small scrap of chamois skin.
Actually my patches done this way are slightly brittle and I can slit them with a thumbnail and peel them off. I think that is a good thing for PPd bullets if you can do that to a finished bullet.
Gary
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jy3855
posted this
24 March 2015
As I said above, I used to dampen the patch with saliva. I've been away from PPing for several years, and have since read Paul Matthew's book “The Paper Jacket". I'm going to give his recipe for patch dampening a try.
I got started in paper patching after reading E. H. Harrison's articles in The American Rifleman back in the 70s or early 80s. I bought a Ruger No. 3 in 375 Win. specifically for paper patching, and I had very good success in the accuracy dept.
When I started having “challenges” with my 38-55 Cowboy I thought about trying paper patched. My range log shows a load of 30 gr. of 3031 behind my Lyman 366408 with 3 wraps of 9# paper going into 1” at 100 yds (didn't write it down, but that's probably 3 shots. Jeez - that was in 2003 - I've been away from shooting too long!
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onondaga
posted this
24 March 2015
I've enjoyed the same book but found I had to take notes to actually organize the writing into a step by step. It works well for selecting bullet size, patch thickness and final size. The instructions to set up cutting paper work but weren't easy to actually do that way the first few times. My mechanical drawing experience and tools helped but it was easy to see the method might be very confusing to many.
Gary
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jy3855
posted this
24 March 2015
I don't doubt Paul Matthews' wealth of experience compared to my meager experience, but some of my experience goes contrary to his advice on bullet unpatched diameter. Specifically his insistence that the unpatched bullet equal bore diameter or greater, up to .0005” over bore diameter.
My unpatched Lyman 366408 bullets will fall through the .371” bore (.381 groove) of my 38-55, but they have shot very accurately in the small amount of shooting I've done with them in that rifle.
However, this thread may convince me to either get a larger diameter mold or swaging dies for the 38-55, or just shoot bare cast bullets with or w/o gas check in the 38-55 and leave the patched 366408 bullets for my 375 Win with its .375” groove diam.
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4060may
posted this
24 March 2015
Is it possible there was a build up of blown path material stuck in the barrel someplace that was being held there by the glue you used on the patch? I have shot a lot of PP bullets never with a twisted patch on the bottom,both black powder and smokeless with smokeless I patch to groove and BP I patch as close to bore as I can taper crimp on the Smokeless no crimp on the BP if the case is shorter than chamber length, usually there will be a paper ring at the end of the chamber or if you are lucky it will be stuck to the end of the case, maybe the build up is what you shot through
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delmarskid1
posted this
25 March 2015
Is it possible there was a build up of blown path material stuck in the barrel someplace that was being held there by the glue you used on the patch?
I have shot a lot of PP bullets never with a twisted patch on the bottom,both black powder and smokeless
with smokeless I patch to groove and BP I patch as close to bore as I can
taper crimp on the Smokeless no crimp on the BP
if the case is shorter than chamber length, usually there will be a paper ring at the end of the chamber or if you are lucky it will be stuck to the end of the case, maybe the build up is what you shot through
Maybe?! My cases were formed from 45-70's and are indeed short. A couple of tenths short. OOOOO!
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