The sense behind Copper Alloy monolithic bullets

[RockyMtnMT]

At this point there are only a couple of things that we are unable to duplicate compared to lead.

Due to the difference in density the same form lead bullet will be heavier. Can not fight the physics. The bullet with more weight will always have an advantage in bc. Faster velocity capabilities of the copper mono can make up for some of this, but not all. To get into really good bc all copper bullets faster twist rates are required because the copper bullet gets longer in order to get heavier. We have a design that falls within our patent that appears to be making up some of this difference. We will continue testing this further after we get through this hunting season that just started.

The other is cost. The only answer to this is to produce a superior product. It simply takes longer to make a lathe turned bullet. So we hold a tolerance of 2 ten thousandths. That is .0002". That makes the bullet nearly perfect for concentricity, diameter, and length. Consistency is unparalleled in a lead bullet. Perfect hollow points that are always open. Meplats that are always the same. No need to ever weight sort or sort by oal. Next time you order bullets they will be the same size as the last time. Finding the best alloy with the right tensile strength to ensure terminal performance from sub 1800fps to as fast as they can be launched with no difference in bullet performance. That is exceptional. So much so that we have lived all our lives saying that it can't be done. Well it can. Just not with a lead bullet. A bullet designed to retain enough weight to reach vitals regardless of the angle of shot or the size of the animal or the velocity of the impact. Now possible with pure copper. Bullets designed to deform on impact to the same form regardless of impact with bone or not. Pure copper bullets cause less meat damage due to blood shot/destroyed meat. A bullet that makes load development a breeze. Much less time and recourses used to develop a load makes a huge benefit in the cost column. Hard to put a number on this, but 1 or 2 trips to the range to have a done load inside 25 rounds fired, is fantastic. We have developed hundreds of loads and very rarely have an outcome different from this. This is worth hundreds of dollars for the average guy that has to drive any kind of distance to the range. Let alone the savings of powder, primers, brass, and barrel life. Then the many hours saved. For most people this will make them less expensive in the end.

We spend all kinds of money on the gear we use to hunt with, from rifles to optics and clothing, without batting an eye. It always amazes me that guys want to save a few bucks on the bullet. All the other stuff is used to aid in getting the bullet delivered to the target. When the moment of truth comes, the bullet is the one thing that actually does all the final work.

I know that the pure copper bullets have come a long way, we have been working hard on it, and will continue to.

Like I said before, the toxicity of the bullet was not our goal or reason for making our bullets. It is just a bonus that should not be overlooked.

Steve

 

[kyron]

I have no doubt that within my lifetime, probably over the next decade we're going to see if not a complete ban on lead in the taking of game animals something very close to it is very likely.

That would be Nanny State bullcrap that needs to be fought tooth and nail no matter whether you are a fan of lead bullets or a fan of lead free bullets.

Every choice we allow to be taken from us is one more step on the road to slavery.

 

[westcliffe01]

My father was born in 1937, lived in a shack with an outhouse and started working for the railroad as a messenger boy at age 13 to help the family make ends meet given that all of my grandmothers husbands perished in WW2 except the last one who fled to Baltimore and never returned home after the war.

My dad got into the electrical (high voltage) side of things, which back in the day involved mercury by the bucket and asbestos insulators and he worked with that stuff daily without any protective gear. He is still alive today, despite more than 20 years of occupational exposure to mercury and asbestos dust, the key thing being that he never smoked. All the smokers have been dead for decades.

Politicians would love to ban lead in ammunition because of the impact it would have on the price and availability of the product to us. Even if you can get it, there would still be an impact with a lot of weapons due to the change to ballistic coefficient and maximum weight feasible due to the reduced bullet density (for existing rifles).

This thread has an awfully misleading title....... It should be the Non-sense of monolithic bullets. If you want to use it for personal reasons, thats your choice. Just like wrapping up everything on a BBQ with aluminum foil is going to make it safer. We are FAR more likely to die / get sick as a result of medical malpractice or due to the effects of processed food and GMO crops than any reasonable amount of lead in the meat that we eat.

 

[WildRose]

That would be Nanny State bullcrap that needs to be fought tooth and nail no matter whether you are a fan of lead bullets or a fan of lead free bullets.

Every choice we allow to be taken from us is one more step on the road to slavery.

You can fight legislation but the administrative state can put regulations in place and we really have nor recourse. Our politicians can raise hell and sound tough but once a regulation is in place it's almost impossible to get it overturned.

Congress has all but completely ceded the power of the purse and so without a constitutional amendment or amendments this isn't going to change.

 

[WildRose]

My father was born in 1937, lived in a shack with an outhouse and started working for the railroad as a messenger boy at age 13 to help the family make ends meet given that all of my grandmothers husbands perished in WW2 except the last one who fled to Baltimore and never returned home after the war.

My dad got into the electrical (high voltage) side of things, which back in the day involved mercury by the bucket and asbestos insulators and he worked with that stuff daily without any protective gear. He is still alive today, despite more than 20 years of occupational exposure to mercury and asbestos dust, the key thing being that he never smoked. All the smokers have been dead for decades.

Politicians would love to ban lead in ammunition because of the impact it would have on the price and availability of the product to us. Even if you can get it, there would still be an impact with a lot of weapons due to the change to ballistic coefficient and maximum weight feasible due to the reduced bullet density (for existing rifles).

This thread has an awfully misleading title....... It should be the Non-sense of monolithic bullets. If you want to use it for personal reasons, thats your choice. Just like wrapping up everything on a BBQ with aluminum foil is going to make it safer. We are FAR more likely to die / get sick as a result of medical malpractice or due to the effects of processed food and GMO crops than any reasonable amount of lead in the meat that we eat.

There's nothing misleading about it, there is no reasonable amount of lead to consume in meat.

There are some engineering challenges to producing a good quality non lead bullet but in every case it makes sense not to eat lead. That's not just a personal choice it's common sense.

For adults it's not that big of a deal but in the case of children permanent and irreversible damage is done to their brains and developing nervous systems when they consume lead and once that lead is deposited in their nerve cells it is there for life.

I've spent my life picking lead shot out of birds and small game and removing bloodshot meat from large game and have largely dismissed the idea that any harm could come from consuming the meat of a deer, elk, etc killed with a lead core bullet but that was because I had never considered the tiny fragments of lead being distributed in the meat outside of the primary wound channel until seeing the splattering effect of frangible bullets in slow motion gel testing.

As our knowledge increases how we think about things should change and if it doesn't we live in a state of willful ignorance.

 

[kyron]

Regulations are easier to undo than laws. But I get what you are saying. I'm just saying that simply accepting that sort of thing is the wrong answer.

 

[WildRose]

Regulations are easier to undo than laws. But I get what you are saying. I'm just saying that simply accepting that sort of thing is the wrong answer.

Not really because the regulatory agencies are in sole control of them.

Congress can repeal a law or neuter it with new regulations but the courts again and again rule in favor of the power of the agencies granting them sole authority over them once the agency itself is created by congress.

That's why so many of the absurd regulations on the books still exist.

Probably the best example of this was the EPA declaring that CO2 is a pollutant. Congress fought it but it was settled by the federal courts ruling that the EPA has sole and absolute discretion over environmental regulations.

 

[gohring3006]

Not really because the regulatory agencies are in sole control of them.

Congress can repeal a law or neuter it with new regulations but the courts again and again rule in favor of the power of the agencies granting them sole authority over them once the agency itself is created by congress.

That's why so many of the absurd regulations on the books still exist.

Probably the best example of this was the EPA declaring that CO2 is a pollutant. Congress fought it but it was settled by the federal courts ruling that the EPA has sole and absolute discretion over environmental regulations.

Me being in the timber industry, I have come to know some of the EPAs power.
They can garnish wages without a court order if you are found in non compliance with regulations... The EPA can be a good thing, but they have become a overreach for the federal government. It's another law enforcement firm with weapons and all..

 

[WildRose]

Me being in the timber industry, I have come to know some of the EPAs power.
They can garnish wages without a court order if you are found in non compliance with regulations... The EPA can be a good thing, but they have become a overreach for the federal government. It's another law enforcement firm with weapons and all..

We have more regulatory felonies on the books today than felonies created by legislation. That my friend should terrify us all.

 

[Deleted member 46119]

WildRose is correct on all three counts:

No amount of lead in food is good. Can you get away with it, hmmm.
Regulatory agencies are out of control and in excessive control of our lives.
Regulatory felonies with no backing in a law are very very scary. The legal costs are insane for the victim.

For hunting I love non-lead. Reading "Outdoor Life" and other magazines in 1974 I vowed to never eat lead. I've hunted with Barnes, I've shot CEB and liked it, I'm waiting for the Hammer loads to make the today list in the todo list.

For "target"work, paper, rocks, scissors oops I mean steel. I am using more and more copper. Though I have lots of jacketed to use up on stress relief.

I even have copper 45ACP loads worked out for my Just Right Carbine and 1911. In case I carry my 1911 during a hunt in California. Carrying a personal protection side arm loaded with lead or jacketed lead is considered "hunting" with lead. $1,500 fine and probable confiscation of the firearms.

 

[WildRose]

WildRose is correct on all three counts:

No amount of lead in food is good. Can you get away with it, hmmm.
Regulatory agencies are out of control and in excessive control of our lives.
Regulatory felonies with no backing in a law are very very scary. The legal costs are insane for the victim.

For hunting I love non-lead. Reading "Outdoor Life" and other magazines in 1974 I vowed to never eat lead. I've hunted with Barnes, I've shot CEB and liked it, I'm waiting for the Hammer loads to make the today list in the todo list.

For "target"work, paper, rocks, scissors oops I mean steel. I am using more and more copper. Though I have lots of jacketed to use up on stress relief.

I even have copper 45ACP loads worked out for my Just Right Carbine and 1911. In case I carry my 1911 during a hunt in California. Carrying a personal protection side arm loaded with lead or jacketed lead is considered "hunting" with lead. $1,500 fine and probable confiscation of the firearms.

I'm certainly not to the point of swearing off of hunting with lead period but after watching those videos the monolithic copper alloy bullets certainly started making more sense to me.

Until the last few years I had not shot any of the non lead bullets but he Hornady GMX has shot well in a couple of different rifles and the best .223 ammo I've tried on hogs is the Barnes Vor-TX which is loaded with the TTSX I believe. They also make it in a couple of other calibers I shoot but I haven't used any of it up to this point.

Winchester came out with a great idea a few years ago with their XP3 bullet which was copper alloy from the tip down most of the way and a lead core behind it similar to the 2nd core on the Nosler Partition. The tip of the bullet looked like any of the polymer tipped bullets driving the tip into a hollow point opening it up. The jacket was then designed to do the mushrooming with the lead remaining sealed in the base of the bullet. For whatever reason it appears to have been discontinued however.

The Barnes MRX similarly used a copper tip and the base was segregated but in their base they were using tungsten alloy. That bullet however doesn't seem to have gathered much of a following.

There's a lot of sound thinking and physics in the idea of a mushrooming copper tip and a segregated/protected lead core. That would prevent all or at least most of the lead from even coming into contact with the meat.

I don't favor lead bans but if we can still get the ballistic benefits of using lead while keeping it from ever contacting the meat I'm all for it.

 

[Deleted member 46119]

...
I don't favor lead bans but if we can still get the ballistic benefits of using lead while keeping it from ever contacting the meat I'm all for it.

Same here. I hunt with non-lead but lead bans with poor science promulgated by bureaucratic regulators or even made in to a "Proposition" law are just hard to swallow for a native non-big city Californian.

 

[RMulhern]

All one need do reference this post is to FOLLOW THE $$$$$$....and who will benefit!!

 

[WildRose]

All one need do reference this post is to FOLLOW THE $$$$$$....and who will benefit!!

? I certainly don't make any money off of anyone's non lead bullets or any other for that matter. I don't make anything off of any of the products I recommend.