I went to a new rifle range today, a farmer and his brother created it on the family farm and it is actually quite nice, as inexpensive rifle ranges go.

http://www.harrisoncreekgunclub.com/

I spent 5 hours there, wringing out hexagonal boron nitride coated 160 grain bullets and R19 powder.    Upshot is that this powder along with the bore & bullet coating allow you to tag 300 fps on top of what you used to be able to get out of a small .308 based case and an elk-sized  heavy weight 7mm jacketed slug.

MM, the 30-06 load that got your eyebrow was a 165 grain bullet going 2,750 fps.   You thought it was a kicker in that HEAVY BARREL heavy gun with the bi-pod rubber feet that soak up a lot of the recoil motion.   That gun is not a carry weight gun at all, it is a stationary hill top gun.

Instead, I was shooting the light 7mm-08 carry rifle, tossing 160 grain bullets at 2,975 to 3,150 feet per second out of a 22 inch sporter weight tube.   And yes, it kicked hard, to the point that after 5 hours of doing it sporadically (barrel was heating up something fierce at each shot and needed 15 minutes between shots to cool down) I had had enough, and yes, my shoulder is a bit sore tonight.

And yes, I know, you can't do that.   Im-fricking-possible.  2,850 fps is the highest fps listed for 160 grain bullets, even in the old unregenerate Speer #11 reloading manual.

Trick is pre-treating the barrel with nano-fine hexagonal boron nitride then shooting bullets that are impact coated with the same stuff.   Once the barrel engraves the bullet it just zips on down the bore with practically no barrel drag.   Energy once spent overcoming friction becomes SPEED and the peak pressure is actually less as the bullet gets on down the bore ahead of building up the old magnum pressures like max loads used to do.

Book max loadings show no signs of pressure and give 300 extra feet per second of velocity.

Now the real evil grin stuff  --    --  so now you can use more powder now and get even more velocity and eventually wind up getting up to the same level of primer sign that you used to get at book max -- but at recoil levels that make old men decide to quit early before they hurt themselves.

Accuracy was surprisingly good, with the increases in recoil causing the groups to march on up the target but they all hung in around 2 inches in size for each charge level.

And, as in any ladder series, the sweet spot showed up with a couple of increases hitting the same point of aim.   My sweet spot is 49-50 grains at high 2900s to low 3000s in fps.   Above this pressure and velocity both get more erratic and the butt pad begins banging up the operator too too too much.

So, it was a good day at the range.   I learned something new, and proved to myself it actually works.

BTW, no copper fouling was seen at all during cleaning.  And clean up only required getting the carbon out of the grooves, fairly easily done with normal bore products using the clean, soak, clean routine drill.

This is what people love about hexagonal boron nitride , it isn't corrosive, it does not attract atmospheric moisture and you can leave a pre-treated bore in your gun for several days with no oil film and your first cold bore shot will group with all the rest of them as you don't ever have a film of oil in the bore to deal with.

Next, since you get no copper fouling, you can choose to leave your bore alone for the entire hunting season if you wanted to that and just clean it when hunting season is over -- all shots fired will land in the same group that way.

MM, finally my loctite'd scope tube stayed put in the rings and didn't walk anywhere.  

Finally.  

I shot the rubber flip cover off the front of the scope a couple of times, but it just presses right back on again and I could fix it in place with loctite too, I guess.   I won't bother since nobody is going to be shooting these sorts of loads for the chuckles of it.

This is what the coated bullets look like.   The inside of the bore looks about the same after you coat it with an alcohol dissolved patch.  Shoot a few bullets and it looks all black like normal, but the stuff is now an integral part of the fouling that is build up and it fills up all barrel pores and irregularities with super slick stuff which is a mixture of carbon residue and hexagonal boron nitride.

Moly coating did the same thing, except moly attracted moisture from the air and resulted in some sporadic long term barrel corrosion issues for some people.   Hexagonal Boron Nitride does not do this, supposedly.   Or so they currently say, anyway.

I think that once folks use this for 10 years or so, the downsides will become known, just like happened with moly.

However, something that can tag 300 fps on to a max load and REDUCE the pressure doing it is worth looking into.

It throws all the loading books out of the window, which isn't necessarily a good thing as a few people will get hurt going TOO FAR off into the weeds.

You can see that RECOIL, pure and simple recoil, stopped me about half way up the potential ladder series.   No point in trying to go further with the heavy bullet as I didn't want to go there, it hurt too much.

But I was able to toss 160 grain slugs at the same speeds you do your 90 grainers.

IF you shot a deer lengthwise you might get to full max expansion and get to use all the energy available with the 160 grain slug at 3,150 fps (my max speed seen at 50.5 grains)  -- but it would be a right messy dress out on that deer I would think.

Normal side to side shot, you'd spend 80% of what's available killing trees on the far side of the deer you just shot.   Other than elk and bison, there just isn't anything in North America that needs this bullet at that speed.

However, if the same idea works with lighter bullets, and everybody gets an additional 300 fps tagged on to their favorite load, gets easy cleaning and if you coat, shoot and leave it dirty, a cold bore shot that groups with the main group instead of "over there" as they did out of an oiled bore, then the idea has potential.

http://www.amazon.com/Reloading-Hex-Boron-Nitride-Powder/dp/B004ZRKBH6/ref=sr...

This is actually quite a lot of the stuff, enough for a generous coating on a couple of thousand bullets.




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It is a good trick, I think.   So far anyway.   Cheap enough to try anyway at $15 for .4 ounce shipped by Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Reloading-Hex-Boron-Nitride-Powder/dp/B004ZRKBH6/ref=sr...

But if we wanted to do a group buy and split it we could buy a quarter pound for $63 and divvy it out by the half ounce for $10.   But I think our shooting group is too small to do that, really.

http://www.amazon.com/Hexagonal-Boron-Nitride-Powder-HBN/dp/B00BM8KMX4/ref=sr...

Not for me though, I've coated all my bullets already.    Since I buy bullets in 1,000 lots I just clean them really good with hot water and dish washing solution to get the production oils off of them, rinse real good with boiling water then towel dry and into the tumbler while they are still very very hot.   A sprinkle of powder and a half hour of beating into each other does the trick just fine.   And I am fixed for bullets for a very long time now, all coated.

I was wearing a coat, a thick one, so I had some extra buffering.  And I already have a good rubber pad on the stock so I am not bruised -- just sore from the pounding.  

Shooting from the bench is harder on the shoulder than plain upright shooting will ever be.   A younger me would not have been affected as much I don't think (or I would like to think that, anyway).

Time for a strongly stated "logical exception" point here, I think.

I am selectively applying two new technologies to an OVER HEAVY BULLET scenario to get my big increase, making my little 7mm-08 into a poor man's 7mm Rem Mag.

Normally, the 160 grain bullet is WAY TOO HEAVY for the 7mm-08 case capacity to push it "gently" up to over 2600 to 2800 fps -- you had to use excessive pressures to get it up there using the "normal powders".

Enter the new thinking expressed by the Hornady Extreme or Light Magnum loadings -- use a slower powder that fills the case 110% when compressed a bit by inserting the bullet.  Get as much slow push behind the bullet as you possibly can.  

Hornady and Hodgedon have made a science of this trick and now blend custom powders for each common caliber's Light Magnum loading that maximize the slow push behind a certain range of bullet weight.

Dumb luck means that Reloader 19 happens to be such a powder in the 7mm-08 case, but it only works when pushing HEAVY BULLETS.  And I do mean dumb luck and HEAVY BULLETS .... it doesn't work well with normal 140 grain range bullets or the lighter zippy ones at all.  

Reloader 19 is a repackaged normal Norma 204 powder that Hercules is fronting for Norma here in the USA.   You can use uncoated bullets and R19 to get up to 2900 fps (but you get strong high pressure signs).


Enter in the Hexagonal Boron Nitride barrel and bullet coating

A common statement from the varmint crowd is that HBN decreases velocity with varmint bullets because it changes the pressure curve in small cases, zipping on down the bore ahead of the building pressure curve such that it doesn't get up to the high pressures any more.   The transducer shown pressure curves are lower and broader when using HBN.  

Turn this effect on its head, you now can put in more powder to get the pressure curve back up there, but using light bullets you just blow more gas out of the barrel for little effect as the light bullets just get on out of the way.

Stick a VERY HEAVY FOR THE CASE/CALIBER BULLET in front of this action and you now have the ability to go places nobody has been before.


Translate to 30-06 speak using the R19 powder and HBN coating -- you'd take a 180-200 grain bullet and R-19 and you wind up getting more velocity out of the heavy for the caliber bullet such that you go places that nobody has been before -- until the recoil gets too much for your shoulder to handle.   Sorta like IMR 4831 and the 180 grain bullets, except more so.

What you do get out of HBN is no copper fouling and extended intervals for the required decarbonization of the grooves, and if you DON'T clean the gun your first shot from a cold bore goes right into the normal group pattern.  

And it is supposedly non-hydroscopic in the bore, supposedly, as opposed to moly barrier coating which did have some acidic issues with atmospheric moisture and had some long term corrosion under the coating issues that "ruined" some match type barrels and gave moly a bad name.


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So, you take a trick that naturally reduces case pressures and then you immediately go do all the normal bad things to raise the blunted chamber pressure curve back up again.  

You want a REALLY BIG flat pressure curve pushing behind a bullet that has no real normal bore friction.

What happens is your HEAVY for the caliber bullet goes down the bore at the same rate as your light bullets used to with a bare dry bore and normal powders.

What sort of intentional bad things do you have to do?   Go with the heaviest bullet that exists for the caliber.  Use a magnum primer.  Crimp your bullet in the case mouth.   Use extra powder.

So, you are building very special rounds that if fired in a dry, uncoated bore would be DANGEROUS.

Rounds that if you gave them to a friend to use in his dry bore gun would be hand grenades.

NOTE PLEASE that you have to pre-coat your bore as it takes 10-15 shots to establish the bore coating if you are trusting the bullets to do it.  

You could wreck your gun in the first 5 shots using the superloads if you didn't pre-coat the bore properly.

So, the more you know about this trick, the less useful it appears to be.


ADDENDUM:

Primer pressure signs are very misleading with these particular rounds because the pressure comes on "slowly" and the magnum primers really do deform less than standard primers do.  

Case head polishing is also muted because the case lengthens slower, making it less of a sharp rap and more of an expansion "push" as the slack gets taken out of the action to bolt stack up.   Less brass gets slammed into the extractor groove and pusher pin hole accordingly.

HOWEVER, measuring the case web and head expansion (next to the primer pocket) is still a reliable way to find when pressures have gotten too high.   See next post

unfired      .4705 to .4710

47 grains     .4710 to .4715          2,650 fps

48 grains     .4715 to .4720          2,710 to 2,750 fps

49 grains     .4715 to .4720          2,957 to 3,013 fps

50 grains     .4715 to .4720          3,058  (err)

50.5 grains  .4720 to .4725           3,173 to 3,180        first small primer leak signs


Studying the ladder group sizes gotten and the available pressure signs and the case head expansion information suggest I should quit around 49-50 grains for best accuracy.    Say, 49.5 grains max for my gun, properly coated.

Now, considering the potential first shot effects on an improperly coated bore, I think 49 grains might be a good more conservative max place to run the rounds.

That puts me pushing 160 grain bullets as fast as I used to push 130 grain bullets, but only by using all the dirty tricks possible.

And again, way way way outside what the current books show to be possible.   Hornaday light magnum, or Extreme or whatever they are calling it this year only gets 3,000 fps with 139 grain bullets.

So, I think this is neat stuff, but don't try this at home without developing it for your gun using your chronograph and a careful research into the tricks themselves.

And you had better be "flinch tolerant" and used to heavy recoiling guns or you are going to spray bullets all over the place when the recoil finally gets to you.



..... and it will .....   so consider "the lesser is better" for more shoulder friendly accurate shooting

Ohh, you could hunt deer with those, but after you shot it, you might not find much of it.

Caught this on sale at Amazon for $17 to make range shooting sessions more fun.

Justin, folks have had various issues with Fusion bullets not expanding to suit them when driven too fast.  The ideal impact speeds are from 2,000 to 2,800 fps for all generic non-bonded bullets, but in general bonded bullets can go higher, up into the 3,000 plus fps range.

This is not true for the Fusions and the Deep Curls -- they are moderate velocity deer bullets by design.

Issue with the Fusions at over 2,800 fps are that it can blow the expanding petals right on off  the bullet and then the bunted core portion just plows right on through the animal leaving a minimal exit wound.

This is a common problem with Nosler Partitions and the Barnes copper bullets as well when driven too too fast, so it isn't unique by any means.  

To get bullets to work well, you have to apply them in the fps range they were designed for.

Too fast is not good for Fusions, so I think I will slow it down some.

MM, you want to go halves on some super fine HBN powder?  

Heck, I'll just give you a bit in a little baggie next time I see you, the stuff is so much cheaper than it was a couple of weeks ago.  Be careful not to snort any of it -- make you sneeze for an hour it will.   Inhaling a whole lot of it is bad for your lungs though, so put your tumbler outside and don't let the dog sniff at it while it is running.   Forget about a breathing mask, it will go right through it.

http://www.amazon.com/MICROLUBROL-HEXAGONAL-NITRIDE-Powder-micron/dp/B00WP4VH...

Cut it with some alcohol to make a syrup and put it in a squeeze bottle, shake it well before use and you got you some good concentrated poor man's MilTech, a "clean" dry lube that really works.   Cheap too (relatively speaking).

Is it safe?   Yep, original packaging was for use in ladies cosmetics.  

As such it was tested for over 40 years by having countless 20 year old males lick it off various female surfaces and sniff it and all the other things we do tend to do to dollied up females.   Seriously, no one has found anything HBN does that is bad, which is a good thing since the powder is so fine it DOES get up in the air and DOES get breathed in, and the powder is so fine what gets on your fingers does get into your bloodstream through sweat pores, eating a sandwich, blowing your nose, wiping your arse, etc.

http://accurateshooter.net/Blog/hbnmsds.pdf

http://www.cir-safety.org/sites/default/files/Boron%20Nitride_faa-final.pdf

Products containing boron nitride are reported to be used on baby skin (in a lotion, oil, powder, or cream), may be applied to the eye area or mucous membranes, could possible ingested, or may possibly be inhaled. Boron nitride is reported to be used
at up to 25% in eye product formulations, at 2% in lipstick formulations, up to 16% in powders, and at up to 0.9% in fragrance preparations. Although use in baby products was reported to the VCRP, no concentration of use data were reported by industry.

Smoother than a baby's butt?   That's the HBN laden baby powder talking to your fingers .....  babies are actually kinda sticky normally.

If they sprinkle and rub it on babies and put it on women's eyelids you know it's gotta be safe for you.