Monolithic bullets

[Ranger188]

What are the advantages and disadvantages to using them.
Other than they are longer per weight to a lead core bullet.

 

[Shawnba67]

No chance of core seperation. They have proven themselves up to the task in the leadfree hunting states. Possibly better than lead.
I imagine in a target bullet it may have better balance being homogenous. But on paper whats been workin works well

 

[Ranger188]

You never see any in F Class or Bench Rest shooting.
Only in ELR
They make them sound great, lighter weight and can
run them faster.

 

[Adam in WI]

Drop down in weight. Trade weight for velocity and flatten your mid-range trajectory. They'll also out-penetrate most lead core designs. If going after lighter game like deer I personally opt for weight shedding designs like the Lehigh Defense Controlled Chaos. Deer don't need 98 percent weight retention.

 

[gilmillan1]

They are cost prohibited! They are usually very expensive for f class.

 

[XTR]

I think they have demonstrated their functionality in hunting.

In F class where you're looking for sub ½ MOA loads at 1000 yards they have not shown that they can do that. There are a number of shooters who have tried them and none have managed to get them to work. The BC advantage doesn't make up for the points lost to vertical.

 

[INTJ]

Barnes TSX and TTSX are as good as it get for hunting bullets inside of 500-600 yds. Full penetration, lots of tissue damage, and as accurate as any other controlled expansion hunting bullet. I converted to them years before all this non-lead silliness.

There are companies that make mono metal target bullets that shoot well at long range. I don't know of anyone using them in LR BR, and unless lead free gets mandated I doubt any of us will.

 

[std7mag]

Several factors keep them from most competition.
Not the least of them being cost.
Cutting Edge bullets typically run $75 and up per 50 for 7mm bullets.
Bergers can be had for around $50 per 100.

Typical F Class match is 70 rounds or so, so your looking at 2 boxes per match.
That doesn't take into account load workup, or practice sessions.

Mono's are longer for weight, but typically not any better in BC than comparitive weight cup & core bullets.

Also the longer length of mono's require faster twist than standard cup & core bullet( another reason to go lighter weight with a mono for hunting).
Example would be a 168gr 7mm bullet.
Typical twist found is 1:9.
Mono needs 1:8.

Also, and don't take this the wrong way, benchrest shooters are a particular bunch.
"If Bob doesn't win with them, then why would i try it?".
They don't like to stray from what is working for them, or should i say known winner for them.

King Of 2 Miles uses a lot of mono (read Cutting Edge) bullets. But then most of them are burning over 100 grains of powder per shot also.

 

[Ned Ludd]

In my experience, it's not the cost, it's the performance. There are plenty of F-Class shooters that can and will pay pretty much whatever it takes in order to be competitive. I am one of those. However, dropping a bunch of 9's to unexplained vertical in a match is not a recipe for success, regardless of how good the resistance to wind deflection might be. Once you figure that out, the lure of the monolithics is largely gone. In my hands, the monolithics do not seem to behave exactly like lead-core bullets in terms of precision, although it's difficult to put my finger on exactly what the difference is; it's subtle. You can get a load tuned up, but the loads just never seem quite as precise or quite as stable as the those readily achievable with lead-core bullets.

Let's face it, the real (and possibly only) reason most F-Class shooters would have any interest in a copper monolithic bullet is solely for their eye-popping, almost inconceivably high BCs. The uber-high BCs are perceived as being an advantage. By definition, that also limits the game to only a few players in terms of bullets; if the BC isn't markedly higher than a traditional lead-core bullet of similar weight, shooters are not going to spend their money on it, and many of the copper solids, particularly hunting bullets, fall into this category. So there are realistically only a few monolithic bullet choices that represent a significant [theoretical] advantage.

The hard part about deciding whether to try the monolithics is that the BC advantage for a couple of these bullets isn't just a small increase, it's HUGE. That is the real lure that draws in F-Class shooters like a moth to the flame. However, these bullets have been around for a while. This is likely not a case of many other F-Class shooters not having seen these bullets, or being aware that they exist. Yet you don't really see many (if any) people using them regularly in F-Class matches. Even more importantly, no one is winning big matches while using them. They may work really, really well for hitting large steel targets at crazy long distances nearly past the curve of the earth's crust when fired by out of high-performance cartridges with cases almost the size of a ripe banana. But in F-Class rifles, particularly F-TR (i.e. 0.308 Win), the performance hasn't seemed to live up to the lure of the ridiculously high BCs.

So people have tried them, not gotten the results they want, then gone back to lead-core bullets and not really made much if any effort to disseminate their results to others. For that reason, posts will periodically pop up here and elsewhere with shooters that may have only recently become aware of the ridiculously high BCs that then are asking about the monolithics. My observation [and it seems to also apply to many things in life beyond just competition shooting] is that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.