Anyone ever seen...

[Steyr Hahn]

Anyone ever seen this effect?
I've only ever seen it with my Swedish Mausers.
The group was shot from 100 yards with my hand loads, a Sierra (6.5mm) 160 gr. SMP and IMR 7828. I've also seen this same effect with Remington 140-grain PSPCL bullets.

If you look closely at the jpeg, the shot on the upper right, from about 6-o-clock swirling in to 9-o-clock, the paper actually was sliced.
The swirl seems (by the color) to be vaporized lead dust.

 

[Gewehr98]

Are those 6.5mm bullets open-based?

Could be a smidgen of melted core following closely behind the bullet. I had just this problem with my 6.5-.300 Weatherby Magnum and some open-based bullets. Jacket fouling was bad, too, until I went with moly coating.

My batch of Remington 140gr PSPCL bullets have jacketed bases. So do my 160gr Hornady RNSP's. Maybe it's the soft nose shedding molten lead? There's a LONG bearing surface riding the bore of the typical 6.5mm bullet, so it could heat up quite a bit compared to shorter bullets. Good question, and a good pic with the comet tail to illustrate the problem.

 

[Steyr Hahn]

Well that would have been my first thoughts as well. However the bullet used is a soft point with a sealed base.

Sierra 6.5mm 160g Pro-Hunter #1750

I dont know that it's a problem, it's just rather odd!

 

[MLC]

My "guess" would be with that obscenely long bullet you forced any existing fouling out of the grooves of your barrel and onto the jacket of the bullet. It was in the process of peeling off as the bullet hit the paper.
I'd say that the most prominent "comet tail" was shot #5, with #4 being the one in the black center, 2 and 3 to the right an slightley lower, 1 showing no fouling around the hole.
Like I said, a guess.

 

[cdbeaver]

You can get pretty much the same effect by shooting Hornady SX bullets in a .22-250. The SX is not intended to be shot at high speeds and comes apart in flight, resulting in the comet tail.

 

[hksw]

The effect looks to have occurred on 4 of the 5 rounds, the upper right being the most prominant. As you mentioned, it was also occurring with lighter bullets.

My guess is that one of the corners of a land in the rifling is digging in too deeply into the bullets and cutting through the jacket into the core.

 

[Snowdog]

Yes, I most certainly have!

I thought it was just too odd to mention when I encountered that about 5 years ago after buying my M96 Mauser. No pictures, lost the target, so I just kept quiet and forgot all about it until now.

I was using "Prickskytte" brown box military-type ammunition with the cupro nickel jacket (which I still have a few boxes of). A pulled bullet is most interesting, as it is well over an inch in length. The BC on these must be somewhere in the stratosphere.

I noticed this flame-like halo mark ever-so-slightly around the target face, but behind the target there was an older target still taped to the cardboard backing where these marks were far more pronounced, as well as to the back of my target. The halo scorch marks seemed to display themselves the most in between the two targets. If memory serves me, all rounds were fired from 75 yards.

Now that I remember this again, I certainly would love to hear any opinions! It was most definately a powder or burn mark, as there was not penetration or other damage within this ring.

BTW, I haven't shot my M96 much since then (simply because I have many other "toys" to play with). However, the rifle was quite accurate IIRC.

 

[pdt203]

Magik Bullet

I have read where there is an experiment for a "major" ammo manufacturer to rerun a batch of bullets, powder, and casings from the late 50's.

Sounds like a packaging issue of the same magik bullet that killed Kennedy.

Uh oh... here come the black helicopters.

 

[Gewehr98]

Wouldn't be too hard to figure out what it is...

I have an analytical Zeiss polarized light microscope, and lead displays a unique hexagonal crystal structure that sticks out like a sore thumb. There's enough of the material on the comet tail of shot #5 to get a good look. But if it is lead, and those are sealed-base bullets, I agree with HKSW, something is getting through the jacketing, even if the core is partially melting. 160gr bullets in a 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser aren't gonna move so fast as to melt the exposed soft tip.

 

[tex_n_cal]

Wish I'd photographed it, but...

once I had the .22-250 at the range, and shot a 1/4" steel target that was roughly even with a bullseye target, maybe 4 feet away. The steel target was already pretty chewed up, so no loss there.

The .22-250's 50 grain Nosler BT's did indeed punch a hole through the plate, but what was more interesting was the bullseye target had a number of splatters across it - like paint splattering across a flat surface after it's spilled from a few feet in the air.

Since the splatters were gray, there was little doubt that the lead from the rifle bullet had melted, and been flung sideways at impact. It definitely illustrated the violence of such an impact! I had to think it would be awfully unpleasant to be standing next to that steel target, when it was struck by a high velocity bullet!