So I was reading up on one of my favorite performance cartridges in .45-70 Gov. for my Marlin SBL and came across some old forum posts that mentioned a manufacturer by the name of Garrett Cartridges.

Apparently they make some hard hitting stuff on a line with Underwood and Buffalo Bore. I came across a description of a Solid Tungsten bullet that they manufactured for both .45-70 and .44 Mag. Something designed to kill the African big five, bull elephants and rhinos.

Anyone here have any experience with either of these rounds? I didn't know solid tungsten ammo existed. I checked their website and couldn't find it, the posts I read were from 2003-2005.

Very curious about this round and any experience you may have with current Garrett products. Apparently the .45-70 isn't liked too much in Africa but from what I've been reading when it's coupled with the right ammo it can pretty much take anything down.

Years ago KTW made tungsten pistol ammo......The tungsten bullet was encapsulated in a nylon "shell" covering so it did not damage gun barrels.......Was deemed a cop killer bullet by the press as able to shoot through vest so it was discontinued.....A straight tungsten bullet would kill a barrel in short order.....It would have to be incapsulated in something to shield it from the bore......Remember the NYcad bullets from S&W then bought out and brought out by Federal years ago?.....Same principle.

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S&W Accumulator

That's interesting perhaps it was a tungsten core that was jacketed. There doesn't seem to be too much info on it so I assume it also was discontinued maybe for the same reasons you mentioned. Still their other rounds seem pretty stout, most are hard cast. 25 on the hardness scale but again these rounds are for Grizzly.

Either Sierra or Speer made some Tungsten solids for reloaders a while back. I bought a box of 20 of them. Man are they heavy. I don't remember the specific gravity (a measure of density), but I think its up about 21. Gold is light at 19.1 or so. Anyway, the box came to me in kind of a broken condition. Its one of those items that needs to be packed well with no movement. I've never gotten around to reloading them, and probably never will. I think the name on them was "Grand Slam".

Anyway, reloading for the .45-70 is kind of dangerous if you aren't careful. Its an easy cartridge to reload for if you only have one gun, or do as the factories do and just reload at the lowest levels. That doesn't really do justice to the cartridge and surely not to the high dollar tungsten bullets.

I'll go to the gun room and see if I can locate the box. Its made 3 moves now so it couldn't be too lost.....

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Dick Burg

"Years ago KTW made tungsten pistol ammo......The tungsten bullet was encapsulated in a nylon "shell" covering so it did not damage gun barrels."

Not quite. The earlier KTW ammunition used a core of a metal called Kennertium, an alloy of Tungsten, Cobalt, Copper, Iron, and Nickel. It was enclosed in a copper alloy partial jacket and coated with Teflon. For various reasons, later KTW bullets used brass cores, uncoated. I doubt that tungsten in an unalloyed form was ever used as a bullet core - just too difficult to work with. Possibly some form of powder metallurgy incorporating Tungsten and other metal powders might have been used to make bullet cores. I just don't know.

By the way, Kennertium was also used for making ice studs for snow tires - back when that was legal.

I believe military issue 5.56 black tip is loaded with a tungsten penetrator core, similar to the green tip stuff, which is loaded with a steel core. I have not seen any black tip 5.56 available on the civilian market.

Larry

The M995 cartridge (5.56mm AP, Black Tip) bullet has a Tungsten/Cobalt alloy (88/12) penetrator with a nominal weight of 31 grains and the bullet itself is nominally 52 grains. It is actually a Swedish (Bofors) bullet design. It is required to penetrate 12mm (1/2") of steel armor plate at 100 meters fired from the M16. I feel certain that BATFE has banned it from public sale as being armor piercing. But there is probably very, very little of it in inventory anywhere, even if it could be legally sold. At one time or other, I have seen about every variation of 5.56 NATO ammunition made anywhere. But I have yet to see even a single round of M995 ammunition that I can remember.

In reality it sounds like tungsten is a bit overkill even for the big five since the same penetration through bone and flesh can be achieved with a hard cast round. Just read a quote from buffalo bore that said their .430 gr hard cast in .45-70 will penetrate up to six feet. Sounds like tungsten is more geared toward military applications. Not that it wouldn't work but not really necessary as far as hunting goes, still it would be fun to see what it could do in my lever gun when loaded hot.

I do reload my 45-70 but am not interested in pushing the limits of the round. I'll just buy buffalo bore or Garrett cartridges. I actually decided to reload it to both save money and be able to make light loads so I could save the shoulder.

Speer used to make a tungsten core bullet called ''African Grand Slam''.

These were for Dangerous Game that required deep penetration like elephant

Also made heavier/smaller to allow increased case capacity in 458 Winchester

You will see descriptions of these bullets in older Speer manuals..

Why the quit making them is anyones guess. lts illegal to own ivory

that's undocumented.. Govt may have asked Speer to stop making

them. They cost more than GOLD..Tungsten is not a new idea for

bullet cores...l think the Germans started using them in WWII some..

But stopped because tungsten was in short supply and needed for other

uses

Interesting, didn't know it was utilized in ammo that long ago.

Better check your sources, that part is false. Its illegal to sell, but you can own it unless you live in communist states.

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Dick Burg

After a quick look at Wikipedia I found some interesting things.
Density in grams/ cubic centimeter: 19.25 tungsten, 19.3 gold, 11.34 lead. So tungsten is about as heavy as gold and much heavier than lead.

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Accuracy supercedes Speed

I spent 25 years in the manufacturing of tungsten carbide cutting tools, such as drills, reamers, end mills, etc.

Our hardness specifications called for mid 90s on the Rockwell A Scale, way more than the C scale.