Gas port

[BD1]

What were they sized to? Sizing a boolit down more than .02 or so in the throat can also give you land marks much closer to the nose than you'd expect. You can check this to a degree by holding a caliper set to bore diameter, (not groove diameter), against an unfired boolit to see how far back from the nose the lands begin contact. If you load a .454 boolit in a .450 bore, you're basically extruding the nose past the start of the lands. My .450 B has groove diameter of .4505 so the bore, (harder to measure accurately), is less than that by the height of the lands.
BD

[Siringo]

They were shot as cast -- .452". Instead of me trying to post a photo -- go to their web site. It is in the .452 section.

The overall bullet length is .85 inches. The shank measures .45 inches. The crimp groove is .05 inches wide by approximately the same depth. The nose is .35 inches long. The nose section just in front of the crimp groove is .448 inches. The meplat is about .375 inches in diameter.

It appears the bullet slugged into the freebore as this is the length of the rifling impression in front of the crimp groove. The crimp groove did collapse about 1/2 of its length -- but this could also have been from the impact. The rifling impressions on the nose are very faint. However, it appears that the entire bullet turned into a full wadcutter.

I am going to rig up a water trap in the near future and shoot all of the bullets that I use into it. I have to come up with something other than milk jugs or plastic pails.

[BD1]

That's not something I've seen before. I wouldn't have expected it with a bullet that at the pressures we're talking here. I need to come up with a way to recover boolits. Both of the local ranges have rules against shooting anything but paper targets.
BD

[Siringo]

I have shot a lot of Black Powder Cartridge (45-70, 45-90) and you will see a lot of slugging with black powder. Due to the intial explosion of the powder. With smokeless, you do no usually see this. SO, maybe it is a LG thing and 110 or 296 would not do that. ????

With BPCR's depending on the alloy (I normally use 1/20 or 1/30) I have had the heavy 550 grs. bullets fill up the bore. Of course, that is what I want to happen. Good gas seal! Interestingly when the military was testing the 45-70 in the 1870's, they found that the 405 grain would not slug up to the .460 bores they were using in the trapdoors (bullets were sized to .457 and btw were swaged). Therefore, all of the old ammo had hollow bases. On the other hand, the 500 gr bullet had no problem slugging form .457 to .460 (this was designed to accomodate powder fouling) and that was with a 1/15 alloy -- if believe.

I too need to recover the bullets in better shape. Maybe some of my observations are incorrect. How about a baffle box using trash bags filled with water. Those and cheap. 12" x 12" x 4 foot box, filled with the bags

[BD1]

The box would be no problem, it's getting the water to the range that's the issue. Maybe a row of gallon milk jugs? I think the prohibition on shooting at anything other than paper is to cut down on debris litter.
BD

[Siringo]

Yep -- but I don't drink milk. I have a Lake place in Northern MN that I can get the water from and do it close to the water. I wouldn't be able to do this unit mid July.