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Copper Bullets, Ballistically by Wayne Van Zwoll

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Copper Bullets, Ballistically by Wayne Van Zwoll The following review was accessed at: http://www.rmef.org/Hunting/RifleCart/Rifles/CopperBullets.htm on 8/15/2012. Copper Bullets, Ballistically by Wayne van Zwoll Lead-free bullets have been around for decades. Now they’re the rage. But how do they perform? For bullets, lead is logical. It is dense, malleable and relatively cheap. When a hollow-base bullet upstaged the patched round ball in the 1840s, the physical properties of lead were essential to its success. The pressure of powder gas in the base cavity expanded it upon firing, for a tight bore fit and good accuracy. Lubricated with mutton fat or beeswax, the Minie ball, was issued to Union troops for their Enfields during our Civil War. After metallic cartridges and breech-loading rifles appeared, an expanding bullet base was no longer needed. In the 1890s, repeating rifles by John Browning and Paul Mauser put muzzleloaders on the skids. High-energy smokeless propellants supplanted black powder, hiking bullet velocities. Increased bore friction deformed traditional lead bullets, however, and accuracy fell off. Solution: a jacket to insulate the lead. The .30-06 cartridge was conceived in 1900, when engineers at Springfield Armory began work on a battle rifle to replace the .30-40 Krag- Jorgensen. The Model 1903 Springfield fired a 30-caliber rimless round with a 220-grain bullet at 2,300 fps that closely matched the 8x57 Mauser and its 236-grain bullet at 2,125. A year later Germany switched to a 154-grain 8mm spitzer at 2,800 fps. The Americans countered with the Ball Cartridge, Caliber .30, Model 1906, hurling a 150-grain bullet at 2,700. The first .30-06 bullets were jacketed with an alloy of 85 percent copper, 15 percent nickel. It did not hold up at .30-06 velocities. Fouling rendered rifles inaccurate. Tin plating reduced fouling, but over time, tin “cold-soldered” to case mouths and could cause pressure spikes. An alloy of zinc and copper, 5-95 or 10-90, solved the problem. It was known as gilding metal. Gilding metal has protected lead cores at velocities far exceeding 4,000 fps. Properly married to uniform and concentric lead cores, it helps ensure fine accuracy and reliable expansion in big game. Over the last century, jacketed bullets have become ever more sophisticated. New materials, profiles and internal designs have followed the simple softpoints and hollowpoints that killed all manner of game before World War II. Partitions, metal inserts and core-jacket bonding processes arrived to control expansion as big game bullets sped ever faster from the muzzle. Polymer tips hiked ballistic coefficients and helped initiate upset. Then, in 1981, after the best lead-core bullets failed to pass muster on a hunting trip, Randy Brooks hatched the idea of a bullet made of pure copper. Others had toyed with this idea; but no one had brought a viable product to market. While still manufacturing Barnes lead-core bullets, Randy shifted the firm’s focus to solid-copper hollowpoints. Soon the Barnes X became as well-known among hunters as Nosler’s famous Partition, the dual-core big game bullet dating to 1947. The X-Bullet drove deep, though its petals didn’t open as broadly as those on traditional lead-core bullets. Coated X-Bullets followed, the blue film reducing bore friction and copper fouling—both liabilities endemic to solid-copper bullets. Then came Barnes Triple Shock (TSX) bullets, with four circumferential grooves to reduce bearing surface and give shank material a place to move under land pressure. The Triple Shock soon became known for its deadly terminal performance and for more consistent accuracy than the X-Bullet. The recent addition of a polymer tip gave the TSX a higher ballistic coefficient. Now this bullet has a rival: Barnes’s own MRX. Its nose section is all copper, a hollowpoint with a polymer tip. It has the TSX profile, with shank grooves. But inside the copper envelope of the shank, you’ll find what Barnes calls a “tungsten-based Silvex” core. Extending from just behind the ogive to the heel, it adds heft without lead. Now other bullet makers have introduced hunting bullets of copper or gilding metal construction, arguably in response to a lead-bullet ban in southern California condor range. Winchester, Remington, Nosler and Hornady plan to increase their lead-free bullet offerings. Ammunition firms will surely add to their lead-free loads. There’s even a lead-free .22 WMR round from CCI (TNT Green). Are jacketed lead bullets on their way out? How do copper bullets compare ballistically with lead-core bullets? Are they as accurate? What about their versatility—do they perform across a wide range of terminal velocities. Do they kill thin-skinned game as quickly? First, a clarification: “solid copper” is commonly used to describe these bullets. They are not solid in the sense that non-expanding bullets are solids. They’re designed to mushroom. A hollow cavity ruptures the nose, enabling pre-scored petals to peel back, increasing diameter and destruction. Here “solid” refers to the bullet’s composition: either solid (“pure”) copper or gilding metal—copper/zinc alloy. “Give up lead, and you give up speed in certain cartridges,” says Hornady’s chief engineer Dave Emary. “Cases designed for full-capacity charges behind heavy bullets don’t do quite as well with copper or gilding metal bullets, because to make weight, so to speak, these bullets must be longer than lead-core bullets. You have to put that extra length somewhere. Seating a bullet deeper reduces case capacity. Seating it to greater overall length can jam it in the magazine or throat. Any copper bullet with the dimensions of a lead-core bullet will be lighter. It won’t retain its velocity as well or carry quite as much energy. Yes, you can start light bullets faster. “But a little more speed at the muzzle won’t offset a higher ballistic coefficient downrange,” says Dave. “And because copper is harder than lead, and gilding metal harder still, you can’t accelerate a lightweight non-lead bullet as fast as a traditional softpoint without boosting pressure. There’s too much friction from that hard shank.” He adds that cartridges like the .30-06 are more forgiving of long bullets than are most magnums. In single-shot rifles, throat dimensions can determine overall length, which may be greater than that permitted by a box magazine. “So you may be able to seat non-lead bullets out far enough to match lead bullets ballistically in dropping-block rifles with long throats.” Another concern that attends copper and gilding metal bullets is throat life. Actually, most hunters needn’t worry. While harder bullet material hikes friction and accelerates wear, few riflemen shoot enough to ruin a throat with these bullets. And competitive shooters have so far stayed true to lead-core bullets. Dave tells me that solid copper hunting bullets incorporate compromises in the nose. “You want an aerodynamic ogive, a pointed profile. But the small nose cavity in bullets of this shape doesn’t initiate upset at low impact speeds. We can make the cavity bigger—but only at the expense of ballistic coefficient. An open nose also tends to shatter when driven fast into tough targets. Copper bullets expand satisfactorily in a relatively narrow velocity window. We can make lead-core bullets that penetrate well when striking an elk at 3,000 fps but still open reliably in deer at speeds as low as 1,600. It’s difficult to make a copper bullet expand at less than 2,000 fps unless you make the cavity so big that the front end disintegrates when it strikes bone or heavy muscle at 3,000.” Small-diameter bullets— 25 caliber and under—pose a challenge in nose design, because there’s so little material forward of the shank. A slender nose limits options for cavity diameter. “Lead-core bullets deliver better upset at long range,” Dave declares. But this, too, may affect few hunters. Most cartridges produce lethal mushrooms with either bullet type to 400 yards. That’s a very long shot. And the magnum rifles popular for long shooting keep velocities at sure-upset levels well beyond that. As for penetration, the copper bullet does just fine, typically retaining more of its original weight than lead bullets and delivering a more symmetrical blossom, which tends to drive straighter. On average, petals on copper rifle bullets don’t gape quite as widely as jackets on lead bullets, assisted by the smashed core. But while double-diameter upset of a fast lead bullet opens a huge cavity in the vitals, damage caused by a copper bullet 1½ times its original diameter can be stunning, and penetration deeper. Not long ago I shot a couple of Australian buffalo with Barnes TSX bullets. Both drove to the off-shoulder. Both ruined tissue well outside the bullet channels. One hit the front knuckle of the off-shoulder so hard that it shattered the wrist-thick bone at mid-section, inches from point of impact. I couldn’t imagine any lead-core bullet dealing a more destructive blow. Accuracy, too, can be on par with that of jacketed bullets. I’ve shot tight groups with TSXs, and Dave Emary tells me tests with the new Hornady GMX bullet show it to be the equal of any in the firm’s lead-core line. Like the TSX, it has circumferential grooves. “We settled on two of standard .045 cannelure width,” says Dave. “In tests, they proved significantly better than one; with three we gained no perceptible advantage.
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