A few days ago while blasting a fallen tree with my 30-30 Winchester to chronograph bullets, it blew large chunks of soft wood out of the tree. Clearly the larger than usual caliber was having a noticeable effect on the insect eaten soft wood. When I went to the tree to recover the paper target, I was surprised to see some bullets in the pulp of the tree.
I used fingers only to pull them out of the soft wood and was quite surprised to see some .375" bullets cast from a Accurate Mold 37-149H bullet mold and fired out of either a 1851 Navy or 1861 Navy Cap & Ball revolver with a "38 Special" conversion cylinder in it. I use the conversion cylinder to fire both the 38 Short Colt as well as the 38 Long colt with this heeled bullet. These were cast in 20:1 alloy and loaded on 10/21/2024. I used 3.0gr of HP38 powder to throw these powerhouse bullets into soft wood.
There is absolutely no deformation of the bullet but the engraving is clearly visible on the bullets. It was kind of neat to see the bullets in the wood waiting to be dug out. It's reminiscent of finding Civil War bullets buried in the mud along river banks only these are not that old.
Just cool to find them.
With rifle in hand, I confidently go forth into the darkness.
