Various brands of 6.5 cal

Excellent! I love data like this! Almost a decade of work in fisheries good data sets like this get the nerdy side of my brain all happy lol.
Definitely some standout trends! Too tired now but gunna put together some summary notes for myself tmrw. Appreciate it much!

@fordy great to see you back. It's been a spell since I've seen you post.

How were you getting the 1800ish velocities? Shooting animals at distance or using downloaded ammo at closer ranges?

BEEMAN said:

Basically your results with the Apex is what I was referring too. Not sure how they do at high impact velocity. But from what I am seeing they do ok at high velocity impacts. As with other bullets I'm sure not all apex perform excellent at high and low velocity impacts. I do see on the apex site they do list impact velocities on some bullets, which is nice to see.

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Gday beeman got it on where you seeing

Need to break these apex pills into 2 categories
& where I'd say your seeing that on the website as I've not looked for ages

First part guess you call it gen 1
the first alloy mark was using showed a weakness of fracturing under extreme pressures for which I personally won't use that style ( yes I've seen other alloys/brands do roughly the same some worse some a little better but it will let you down eventually ) now smack ( place the shot ) that critter & as long as it doesn't impact the knuckle or big bones @ extreme velocity it's go for ones life as I couldn't fault the performance then so imo a very wise choice to velocity rate a pill ( apex is not the only company to run maximums but also is that information correct as just like minimum you see it's often different than advertised when we take all resistance into account )


I loved that information on the apex website was put up as @ a minimum that information is better known than not , if one adheres to that or not is a personal position but great to see it imo

Second part gen 2
They do well @ high velocity & even to extremes I pushed things to & this is with the new alloy ( if that's still current I don't know but haven't talked/ messaged mark for ages so I'll find out ) on these tests I had 2 of the new alloy & 1 old which in all reality basically impossible to see in low impact ( balanced part more noticeable ) but once impacts were to the other extreme it reared it's ugly head again on gen 1 alloy but gen 2 it disappeared or I couldn't find it but believe me I tried lol

So on discussion with mark he asked one part of me " can I take the limit off the new alloy " which man alive that's personally a lot of burden for myself to carry as this can come back to bite me hard real hard but my testing showed no flaws in that alloy & one I never saw a pill do that style of meplat form , yes it's different is it the best but it definitely improved from gen 1 .

so we have to get out of our comfort zone & look what the data showed us & it showed me I trust the gen 2 & wouldn't worry what shot I took in a hunting situation with the gen 2 alloy as long as the pill is capable of covering the requirements of penertration capabilities so how can I not say take it off in my honest opinion it's not a concern now

But now we get into the next part of how does it preform @ where I will run it for my most likely impact/ resistance everyone of the apex is pipped by others yes it's matching it to one's own circumstances
But the apex has no pop & ultimately it has shown no broached pill has ever produced this pop but on the chat I had with mark he was going to adjust a few things to see what he came up with for which I don't know if he did or not

So has apex got pop now I don't know as not tested any of those pills for well over 8 months & mark was straight onto it & testing theories in gel so maybe he has maybe not but throughout other testing of pills for a mate who was tweaking pills I know no you can get this pop in a broached pill but it's not commercially available to any of us as in early development stages so if that company or others takes on board this tweaking that creates pop watch that space as that's a game changer as they will take the level of good killing to a even wider number on what kills where

I'll not name the company that broached pills were used

just to be straight up this thread is not to promote one brand over another it's to show what worked better where & the apex excelled @ low velocity & best easily imo is a good killer in other areas & not found a poor area in gen2 pills but improvement yes they can as I want excelled across all
I can dream right

Think I've dribbled enough yes use apex with confidence across all impact resistances in gen 2 pills
gen 1 I like the keep impacts below the velocity number ( think 3200/3300) & go for one's life from 1700 ish to whatever one wants to run them at
Cheers

Excellent analysis fordy. This is why I feel all your testing is so important. With the few animals I shoot a year, I just can't make those observations.i try my best though. I find that very interesting on the broached pills not having the "POP". Is this because they open a bit too early? I'm sure at my shooting distances and no extreme muzzle velocities they'd work fine for me. Maybe a point blank with the 338 RUM into a knuckle at 3000-3100 fps could cause problems. I believe the 200 gr Afterburner has an impact velocity tested to 3200 fps. But I'd need to look that up again. Thanks again for the details.

FireFlyFishing said:

@fordy great to see you back. It's been a spell since I've seen you post.

How were you getting the 1800ish velocities? Shooting animals at distance or using downloaded ammo at closer ranges?

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Gday FFF
Thankyou
Had a absolute terrible last half of this 24 year from 2 deaths of extremely close people to logistic of firearm & animal legislation changes in government acts in the organisation I work for on a voluntary basis plus health scares for my m&d plus trying to run a farm ( well my son done most of that & proud of him stepping up like he did ) amongst other things I'm so looking forward to 25 but getting settled again which is a big relief

To your question on how these tests were done & sorry I should've put that up

My setup was on these low velocity ones to load my beenmore down to 6.5 grendel levels & shoot those @ distance to get the velocity impacts I sought

Now I wou r loved to shoot @ my rifles velocity capacity as the rpm would've been better ( which I like higher anyway ) but I physically don't have the skills to place accurately past 500 yards & some instances 400 or less will pull me up

So the rifle is a 7 twist & loaded to grendel like MV velocity

The velocities to be used came from places like hodogen , GL's velocity charts on hammers
Adi , Barnes , nosler , nick Harvey's reloading books plus couple mates & just went from there on work up loads

So to me my thoughts were if it's in the grendel range & works it is only going to be more consistent if in a higher MV cartridge goes back to rpm for me & the 7twist puts that in a better field than the 8 twist grendel so the tests maybe a little worse in a 8 twist grendel

Do you or anyone else have thoughts on that rpm thing or if a problem with my thought process on how I went about doing what I did

I would love to hear more on the what one's thoughts are on that

Cheers

fordy said:

Had a absolute terrible last half of this 24 year from 2 deaths of extremely close people to logistic of firearm & animal legislation changes in government acts in the organisation I work for on a voluntary basis plus health scares for my m&d plus trying to run a farm ( well my son done most of that & proud of him stepping up like he did ) amongst other things I'm so looking forward to 25 but getting settled again which is a big relief

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I hear ya. I lost my father this year. I'm ready for 2025. Hang in there!

fordy said:

So to me my thoughts were if it's in the grendel range & works it is only going to be more consistent if in a higher MV cartridge goes back to rpm for me & the 7twist puts that in a better field than the 8 twist grendel so the tests maybe a little worse in a 8 twist grendel

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I agree. Especially on the coppers. The cup and cores you have tested may be more explosive which has it merits too.