Recent content by GeorgeS

Simple answer: the cooling rate doesn't affect brass annealing. The reason quenching is a good idea is that the upper part of the brass case is hot. If you let it air cool slowly, conduction will bring that heat to the lower part of the case, which you don't want. So if you quench, that cools...

Piece of cake; take a kid's playpen - about 6' x 6'; fill to the top with softballs; go 1,000 yards away; shoot. Guaranteed you'll hit a softball consistently at 1,000 yards. Not the same one each time, mind you, but . . . I suspect that if the expert shooters on this forum find that to be...

While it's tempting to think of saboted bullets as a way to get high velocities - despite awful accuracy because of sabot stripping on the lands - there's another use: for small game in the same gun as used for deer. They don't have to be loaded to warp speed. Seems to me that a .30 cal rifle...

It's not being a spelling or grammar nazi to offer a correction that gets everyone on the same page with a technical term. It's brake, not break. It slows down (brakes) the flow of muzzle gas by diverting some of it off-axis - it doesn't damage anything. I find it hard to believe that people...

What, pray tell, is a "drinking gun?" Drinking and guns are mutually exclusive; I have never heard the term before.

Epoxy is OK - strong, but it tends to be stiff. The newer UV-activated polymers bond instantly when exposed to UV light, and are strong and flexible - the flexibility being important when a joint is subject to impact like in a tumbler. You can get a kit for less than $6.00 at Wally World - UV...

This guy insists that the "vacuum" from the .50 "sucked the eyes out" of the doe and killed it. That is totally unjustified by the evidence. It is more likely that the bullet went through both eye sockets and the internal concussion dropped the doe. The doe was broadside to the shot, and it's...

Since the issue on drop is time of flight, altitude is not the only variable - the direct measure is air density, which is what affects drag. That means humidity as well. More humid, more drop, less dense, less drop. But it's the drag that affects the time of flight, and time of flight that...

Update to earlier post: I mentioned that the internal forces on a bullet spinning at a high rate are working to tear the bullet apart - which, in the old days, with .220 Swift, happened. The bullets would disappear in a puff of lead smoke downrange, until they were built to take the forces...

Yes - the presumption, of course, is that the "black talon" holds together. Surprisingly, bullets hold together quite well. I have a load that uses 50 grain SBTHP bullets out of a .220 Swift, with a muzzle velocity of 4,400 f/s - got it out of an issue of Handloader back ages ago. In my 1:14...

I'll chime in here without getting too physics-y, on two counts: first, the force involved, and second, the rotational decay. In the first case, the bullet is held together (stopped from flying apart) by the material strength of the bullet - lead, jacket, copper, whatever. For a given...

Just a thought, but accuracy is the culmination of the rifle, cartridge, and load attributes working together. Some cartridges are loaded in rifles that have the proper barrel weight to minimize whip, the proper leade and chamber dimensions to ensure concentricity of the bullet with the barrel...

A worthwhile observation. A perhaps even more worthwhile observation is that if you buy commercially-loaded ammunition, and the necks split on the first firing because the manufacturer did not anneal the brass, then never again buy from that manufacturer. Any manufacturer of a product like...

jshepherd61 makes a good point: if your cases are once-fired, annealing is unnecessary. Cases only need to be annealed to offset work hardening, every 3-5 firings depending on the peak pressure of the round - high pressure more often, and more often for full length rather than neck resizing...

I have to say that when I read a label like "Cutting Edge match tactical hunting" the first thing that comes to mind is that the company that produces it certainly has a marketing department with an active imagination. That hits all the buzzwords you can pack into a bullet name short of armor...