300 winmag alternative for long range

[BigJohnH]

You know I was just thinking if you were to get some Tungsten that length problem might just go away. You could turn your own bullets out of it that would shorten the bullet by weight, the only thing you might have to make them a .0001 small so as not to damage the rifling.

[MilesTeg]

You know I was just thinking if you were to get some Tungsten that length problem might just go away. You could turn your own bullets out of it that would shorten the bullet by weight, the only thing you might have to make them a .0001 small so as not to damage the rifling.

Powder coat them to protect the bore. There's a growing movement in cast bullets to do this. I'm not sure if would help much because the base metal is so hard. The one issue you might is ATF it might be considered armor penetrating.

Edit I thought you said titanium. I can't remember how hard tungsten is compared to lead or brass. BTW People are swegdgeing bullet in scrap brass casing with no report of increased wear. I'm starting to believe +90% of barrel wear is from the powder burning.

[BigJohnH]

Wouldn't powder coating gum up the barrel? Maybe make the projectile dia. smaller and swage a copper jacket over it that would add to the weight and also reduce the length problem.

[Meketrefe]

Tungsten is really hard and cannot be used w/o a copper or zinc jacket otherwise you will be building a small bomb when it hits the lands/rifling.
It has been used by Barnes and others in the core and arrow head designs (Liberty) but it was abandoned because it is so freaking toxic when
it hits the ground. Much worse than lead and you know lead is being chased already by environmental agencies and groups.
The moly powder coating has been used by match shooters along with other formulas for regular match bullets but there are mixed results.
Bottom line, more people win competitions with good quality copper jacket match bullets more than with anything else. If there was a pattern of
the powdered bullets being better then everyone in competition would be using them, but they don't.
There is a trend on solid copper bullets with amazing characteristics but they are so darn expensive that we will not see them mainstream.
Specially with hpbt lead core bullets doing so well.

[MilesTeg]

John according to the people on cast boolits the powder coated rounds do not gum up at all. I don't have first hand experience other than pistol and so far no issue at all. Meke I agree the best bullets still seem to be copper jacketed. The all copper rounds have their merit but don't seem to dislodge the jacketed bullets from competition winning.

[Meketrefe]

cast boolits is a completely different ball game. Some people sell barrels optimized for cast (very smooth 3 polygonal) and you have now molly and also polymer coating.
Have no experience with those but it seems like a good alternative for slow moving calibers and pistol.
I stay away from lead as much as I can and if you look at the hornady value packs on FMJ for pistol lead and plated bullets do not make much sense from the cost stand point
as they are pretty close the cost per unit. At 9 or 10 cents / unit for an FMJ the cast doesn't make much sense. Same thing with hornday 30 cal 150gr fmj at 17-18 cents who wants
to do experimentation with something else. One just have to buy bulk the 2100 - 3000 units value packs.
Same thing with the 22 cal 500-600 units value pack with the amax and smks. One cannot beat the vale for what you get.
Anyone with a decent reloader can beat the cost and quality of anything out there pretty quickly including the russian steel garbage.
A used piggiback progressive will pay for itself with the first 500 rounds of 69gr smks.
I understand the appeal for cowboy action shooting, sharps rifle, black powder and other disciplines but for the rest it just doesn't equate.