Barnes Bullets
- Thread starter Mumptia
- Start date
Careful - premiums are NOT intended to increase accuracy. That is not a design priority. For accuracy, you do not want a profiled jacket as you get with premiums. This is why the match/benchrest guys use totally different bullets than the usual hunting type ones, premium or no.
Some "Premium" bullets are designed to work well over a failrly wide range of velocities. Others have a narrow band of effectiveness. Usually, the "tougher" a bullet is (Resistant to blowup), the more likely it is to pencil through if sufficient velocity is not present. The Nosler Partition is a bit different in that the front section of the bullet has a rather thin jacket at the nose, which means it expands pretty reliably, even at lower speeds. If the front core is lost, it still retains the rear one, with some of the folded back jacket material from the front part, attached. This continues to penetrate and cause tissue disruption, just as it was designed to do. The later generation of Partitions (since Nosler switched to gilding metal jackets) tend to be quite accurate in my experience. Typically, I have been able to get at least MOA accuracy, and many times much less from these bullets in my rifles. I'll post a group from my M700 Classic in 300 Savage as an example. This rifle will shoot ½MOA regularly with the 150 partition if I do my part. The Barnes TSX bullets seem to do very well, also. Regards, Eagleye
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how did you get a Remington to shoot accurately? 
Barnes has come out with a 150 grain TSX flat nose for the 30-30, for 2007. Surely it is designed to open up down to 1600 fps, about what a 30-30 impacts with @ 200 yards with a 150 grain bullet. Should be an excellent choice for hunting in the bush where deer don't always stand broadside!
Barnes has come out with a 150 grain TSX flat nose for the 30-30, for 2007. Surely it is designed to open up down to 1600 fps, about what a 30-30 impacts with @ 200 yards with a 150 grain bullet. Should be an excellent choice for hunting in the bush where deer don't always stand broadside!
prosper said:
I do not think hot cores are bonded! In the days before present day bonded bullets, most bullets were swaged(sp) or a copper cup was squeezed over a lead core. Speer tried putting hot lead alloy into the copper cup and swaged after it cooled. Bullets seemed to hold together slightly better than non hot core and still do at velocities around 2700 -2900 but it was obvious that core was not glued or bonded to jacket when velocities were pushed. Actually speer's goal was to develope a more uniform center with the hot core, and bonding was assumed by the consumer and not so much advertised by speer.
An interesting side note. After the hot core, speer developed their Grand Slam in direct competition to the Nosler Partition. This bullet, premium priced was later sold in Speer's premium Nitrex factory load. Later Federal offered the grand slam in their cheap line, the Federal Classic at about half the price.
Sometimes I think premium only describes the price that someone is willing to pay
Same league - probably not. But they ARE bonded. As mysticplayer alluded, bonding is largely a scam. The HotCor uses a regular style jacket, most other 'premium' bonded bullets have tapered/profiled jackets. If you can keep the jacket from peeling back too far, you'll retain more weight, bonded or no.
prosper said:
Not so! Molten lead does not stick to anything without a chemical agent and molten lead is not solder without a chemical agent. I am not saying that hot cors are not good bullets. They are very good! They just do not preform the same as Sirocco, Interbond and accubonds. Someone mention, try em? Try a 130 grain 270 at 3000+ fps at under 100 yards on a few animals.
I dunno - seeing bullets like the TBBC compared to non bonded bullets leads me to be pretty sure that bonded bullets are more than simply a 'scam'. I haven't tried the accubond, but a buddy who shoots the interbond was very impressed with how well they held together even on high velocity close range impacts.
prosper said:
mysticplayer also said that Nosler balistic tips and accubonds were the same and a whole bunch of other stuff. He also claimed that sectioned bullets were the same. He also argued that because they were built the same they would preform the same. A few other posters as well as myself disagreed with him and one even produced measurements to demonstrate that he was mistaken. Nosler is a co that set out to build a better bullet and they did. The partition! It is still favored by many and it is still one that the others have to beat or at least equal. He also said that if there was a significant difference between AB and BT that nosler would have pointed it out. They did! One was bonded and one was not. He relied on nosler to support his argument and in the same breath labeled bonding as a gimck. mysticplayer or nosler? I'll go with NOSLER!
Speer Hot-Cor bullets are not bonded. I had a couple of these bullets lose their cores when shot into moose at close range from my 300 H&H. I have sectioned several Hot-Cors and once you cut them in half, you can peel the lead right out of the jacket without any problem. I have tried the same with Accubonds, Interbonds and Sciroccos, and you cannot get the lead to leave the jacket, it is like it's soldered to the jacket material. I, for one, believe the bonded bullets have an advantage over non-bonded equivalents for weight retention, and thus penetration, and that particularly applies where the jacket has purposely been made heavier, as in the Accubond & Interbond. Regards, Eagleye.
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prosper said:
I disagree that bonding a bullet's core to the jacket is of no real advantage. The bonding process allows greater expansion without failure, resulting in a larger wound cavity, all out of proportion to what would normally be expected from a bullet of a given caliber.
Notice in the pic below, the amount of upset from the solid base bonded core 380 gr Rhino bullet compared to a 270 gr and a 300 gr X bullet. The test was conducted with the bullets being fired across my chronograph and into a row of 5 gallon oil pails filled with wet drill mud at 25 yards
The "wound volume" from the 380 gr could not be measure because the first pail in the row failed, but the pails fired at with the X bullets did not fail. I thought that was pretty good evidence of the effect of a bullet's larger frontal area compared to bullets with smaller frontal areas. In all cases, the greatest wound volume was within the first pail, which is as we would expect. Velocities were 2800 for the 270, 2600 for the 300, and 2300 for the 380. Penetration was dead even for all bullets at 32"
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