hnachaj
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2011
- Messages
- 396
I am somewhat amazed over the years shooting in Europe that, nearly all Euro shooters look at the height of the brass and how little it costs, to choose a shell. There are very FEW shooters in Europe that bother with some sort of scientific testing of their shells! Nobody patterns loads nor does hardness tests nevermind owning a chronograph!There are so many misconceptions about shells. One of many, is that higher antimony shells out perform lower antimony shells. Tim Woodhouse debunked this in the latest ClayshootingUSA issue. I also had a revealing experience while visiting RC Cartridges. Here is the short of it. Supersonic loads loose their velocity at twice the rate of subsonic loads. High antimony shot looses velocity more than low antimony shot as the later is denser (look at steel shot versus lead). Higher antimony shot usualy patterns better but that is not always the case as higher pressure loads and not fully encapsulated shot will have more deformities than lower pressure and fully encapsilated loads! The Italians have learned with their success in Olympic trap that heavier (denser) pellets will not ricochet off a target and do retain more energy at distance than less dense and faster pellets. So they keep antimony levels to a max of 3% compared to British and American shells which can have 5 and even 8%. At FITASC Sporting and Olympic trap distances, many targets do not break but are dusted. The harder but lighter pellet does not have the energy to beak the target but just sufficient to either bounce of or punch a hole.So how do they keep the patterns from being blown with the softer compounds? Simple, it is something tha we did to harden are long range metallic silhouette bullets. Once formed in themold, we would drop them into a pail of water while still soft. This would increase the hardness by 6 fold. The bullets would barely distort hitting steel at 100 Meters! This is the Italian tempered shot! It is shot, made while being dropped into water for a molecular restructuring increasing its hardness 6 fold while retaining density which is important at distances of over 50 yards! So now I know why the RC shells perform so well, specialy the RC Red. The RC Red Supernik has another story to tel and the coating has nothing to do with hardening the pellet! I can bet, that nobody knows what plating pellets does! Junior Technoid of the third degree,The Lone Canadian,Henry/wp-content/forum-smileys/sf-wink.gif