Flight 140 TTSX

KodiakHntr said:
Weigh them Boomer...

Not sure how you think the one in the middle has been smeared as opposed to expanded, as in YOUR picture you can see that the shank is now wider (aka expanded) .......
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The bullet in the middle has indeed expanded as I said above, but it has not expanded to the full depth of the hollow cavity which a TSX typically does when shot into a game animal. The expanded and bent shank would not occur in game, and if it did you can be sure that straight line penetration would be lost. The gravel was flecked with bullet metal, so I'm not sure what the retained weight would prove. Suffice to say that the TSX retains its weight well in game.
 
Huntsman said:
Ah yes, I remember my Dad having a few boxes of the old "Imperial Saber Tips" I thought they were the coolest looking bullet at the time.........
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And prior to WW-2 Winchester-Western had an Open Point Expanding boat tailed bullet, which was a lead core hollow point and like the TSX had a great reputation on game. Not sure why production of that bullet stopped, perhaps it was interrupted by the war and just never continued.
 
I have at least 2 TSX's recovered from animals, that show bent shanks...

One of them went in the tear duct of a deer and was recovered in his tail, travelled the entire length of his spine an inch over from the spinal cord...Could of stuck a pool cue down the hole...

All solid copper bullets are controlled expansion bullets regardless of manufacturer...Controlled expansion simply means that it won't over expand and lose a lot of weight....

And by perusing the Barnes site and if you talk to Ty you'll find that all of their bullets are fully expanded after a couple of inches...
 
KodiakHntr said:
I have at least 2 TSX's recovered from animals, that show bent shanks...

One of them went in the tear duct of a deer and was recovered in his tail, travelled the entire length of his spine an inch over from the spinal cord...Could of stuck a pool cue down the hole...

All solid copper bullets are controlled expansion bullets regardless of manufacturer...Controlled expansion simply means that it won't over expand and lose a lot of weight....

And by perusing the Barnes site and if you talk to Ty you'll find that all of their bullets are fully expanded after a couple of inches...
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A bullet that has a bent shank is a failed bullet, whether the game died or not. A bent bullet is unlikely to travel in a straight line. When a solid bends in a very large animal like an elephant or hippo, the result is almost always a wounded animal caused by a bullet that fishtails out without fully penetrating. For the bullet to perform properly it must be able to rotate around a linear axis, the expansion must cause the center of gravity to move to the nose for the bullet, and the expansion cannot exceed 2.5X the shank diameter. A failure of any one of these elements will cause the bullet to under-perform.

If all of the Barnes bullets are designed to be fully expanded within a couple of inches of penetration, and I have no doubt that they are, then the claim on page 4 or the manual that they are a controlled expansion bullet is false, or at the very least they have arbitrarily redefined the term.
 
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Boomer said:
I am quite happy shooting Nosler Ballistic Tips, they are very accurate and quite destructive.
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Yes they are, I've went inside a few critters looking for the "mushroom", and could find nothing more than sand grain sized pieces of lead and copper. Self destructive would be a better description, specially if you clip a shoulder or rib going. They perform flawlessly in gellatin I hear, but I've yet to hunt that critter.......

Boomer said:
I'm not doubting that the TSX's can expand in a gravel pile, the hollow cavity is more prone to damage than the nose of a closed tip bullet. But the inside of a game animal is wet, not granular and dry; therefore the bullet is not designed to perform in a dry medium.
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Still waiing for you to explain how a lead tipped bullet expands. They should penetrate like a hot damn in gravel, without that open end to clog with sand....
 
Boomer said:
then the claim on page 4 or the manual that they are a controlled expansion bullet is false, or at the very least they have arbitrarily redefined the term.
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I don't think you understand the term controlled expansion as it relates to bullets.

The expansion extent of the bullet is "controlled" by design. It cannot expand farther than the cavity allows and shed significant weight. Even if you shear off all of the petals you will still have a shank that weighs over 90% of original weight. It cannot expand the same way a BT expands, in that they will shed weight depending on what it hits.

Even the Partition is classified as a "controlled expansion" bullet, in that it may shear off the nose portion, but will retain the core at 60% of original weight...Hence the "controlled" part...
 
KodiakHntr said:
I don't think you understand the term controlled expansion as it relates to bullets.

The expansion extent of the bullet is "controlled" by design. It cannot expand farther than the cavity allows and shed significant weight. Even if you shear off all of the petals you will still have a shank that weighs over 90% of original weight. It cannot expand the same way a BT expands, in that they will shed weight depending on what it hits.

Even the Partition is classified as a "controlled expansion" bullet, in that it may shear off the nose portion, but will retain the core at 60% of original weight...Hence the "controlled" part...
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I think I do.

A controlled expansion bullet is one that retains much of its original weight once fully expanded, and is designed to leave 2/3 of its shank length in tact. The bullet is engineered in such a way that expansion slows as it progresses to ensure deep penetration on very large game. Controlled expansion is not normally required on light or medium sized game, but shines on the big stuff and is useful on all game when impact velocities exceed 2500 fps. Bullets that exhibit rapid expansion or those that are designed to shed much of their original weight are not properly referred to as controlled. This does not mean they are not effective on the game they were intended for, but they are not controlled. The very best controlled bullets are typified by the Rhino, A Square's Dead Tough, and some of Woodleighs, Lapua, and Swift's designs. The various styles of X bullet I don't consider controlled, but they do penetrate well, tend not to over expand, and retain a high percentage of their original weight. The old X's were prone to losing petals as shown in the first picture I posted, but the TSX is better due to the smaller nose cavity.

My biggest complaint with respect to the Barnes bullets is that they are built backwards. By that I mean that the extent to which any bullet weight can expand within caliber is fixed. All of the nose cavities within caliber are of similar depth, and to increase weight the shank is lengthened without a proportional increase to the length of the nose cavity. Choosing a heavier bullet cannot increase the wound volume. The only advantage to choosing a heavier bullet is that you can decrease the chance of bullet failure due to the lower velocity of the heavier bullet, without loss of penetration. This is important because the wound volume is proportional to the frontal area of the bullet.
 
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Boomer said:
A controlled expansion bullet is one that retains much of its original weight once fully expanded, and is designed to leave 2/3 of its shank length in tact. The bullet is engineered in such a way that expansion slows as it progresses to ensure deep penetration on very large game.
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Boomer said:
The various styles of X bullet I don't consider controlled, but they do penetrate well, tend not to over expand, and retain a high percentage of their original weight.
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Do you actually read the bullchit you post, or just type until your fingers hurt????!!!!
 
Boomer said:
The only advantage to choosing a heavier bullet is that you can decrease the chance of bullet failure due to the lower velocity of the heavier bullet, without loss of penetration. This is important because the wound volume is proportional to the frontal area of the bullet.
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I'm feeling charitable today, so I'm going to let you read what you wrote for yourself...Feel free to make changes as required...
 
Boomer said:
I think I do.

A controlled expansion bullet is one that retains much of its original weight once fully expanded, and is designed to leave 2/3 of its shank length in tact.
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See now, this is where you prove my point....

Boomer said:
The various styles of X bullet I don't consider controlled, but they do penetrate well, tend not to over expand, and retain a high percentage of their original weight. The old X's were prone to losing petals as shown in the first picture I posted, but the TSX is better due to the smaller nose cavity..
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Evidently you didn't bother to read what you wrote then...


Oops, looking back I see the RO already called you on some of those statements....
 
Fellas, I have supported my arguments with my observations and have submitted photographs of recovered bullets to illustrate why I have reached my conclusions. You have brought nothing to the table, not even a point of view that I can tell. If you disagree, hell thats fine, it even helps the world go round, but from here on in it looks like things are going to degenerate quickly. I can spend my time more productively then getting into a slugfest over nothing.
 
See, the thing is that you haven't really supported your arguments. Yes you have made observations, and taken some pictures, but you refuse to see simple logic, and failing that, simple physics, and you even refuse to see that your testing is flawed...

And all of this is based on a bullet that didn't expand in a tree...And I'm betting you shot that Rhino into the tree butt on didn't you? (Meaning that you shot it into the end of a log....)

I applaud you for trying though, which is a lot more than most people who bash something do...

And if you are using a Barnes product, good for you, even if your thoughts on how they work are flawed.
 
The Rhino bullet was shot into the side of a 24" square timber that was once used to support a pipeline. That timber was very old, very dry, and very hard. Had I shot into the butt end of a log , a tie, or a tree the results would have been very similar.

If I recall I also submitted a picture of TSX's recovered from a berm and those bullets did not expand, despite being told by you guys that was impossible. Expanding bullets perform best when they impact an aqueous medium, that is what they are designed to do. I supported that position by demonstrating that their performance is suspect in dry mediums, regardless of being solid or granular.

Expanding big game bullets must function over a broad range of velocities and they must penetrate in a straight line through a target that is neither homogenous or of a single density. To accomplish this they expand to move the center of gravity to the nose, without expanding to the extent that they loose their linear axis, or to the degree that the width of the expansion is so far away from the dimensional centerline of the bullet that rotational velocity is lost and stability degraded. If the expansion is too rapid, the bullet fails to penetrate to the vitals and a wound results. If the expansion is too slow, the bullet pencils through, or swaps ends because the base of the bullet is heavier.
 
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