Kent Bismuth Pellets

[Jim Cloninger]

What do you guys think of Kent's new bismuth pellets? Tom Roster says Kent's bismuth is a "22 % increase in bagging performance" over previous bismuth pellets! Jim

[OH Osthaus]

I read the article

I will assume we will need to wait until this fall's season to get opinions

I realized the affects of changing times when I told my wife I was going to test the new Kent shot vs the available for reloading bismuth, and realized I had no phone books to soak in water to gauge penetration of the different shots

[Mike of the Mountain]

OH, not only a lack of phone books, but most of us don't even get a newspaper so we couldn't use soaked and stacked newspapers either. As you said, times sure are changing!!

[vaturkey]

I have an old laptop we could probably shoot at.

[Stan Hillis]

Pattern them first ....... do the penetration tests next (if the patterning goes well).

SRH

[Silvers]

Here's a protocol to check any of the factory soft/non-tox shells yourself.

Measure your test gun's bore, choke and choke profile so you can include that data when you share your results here. Buy enough of the shells/shot sizes to be tested @ 2 to 4 bucks a pop depending on the load. Open enough shells to get good averages of actual pellet count, and of shot charge weight and pellet diameter as measured with your precision scale and caliper. Buy a big roll of 48" wide paper from Amazon and make up a frame that allows 4 x 4 ft pieces to hang vertical and flat. A wood pallet works well with push pins. Be sure to set up the frame in a safe location for the shot-throw and where a bench rest is available so you don't flinch in anticipation of recoil. Buy or make up a 30" circle template, transparent plastic works very well so you can eyeball and center the holes. You'll start at 40 yards and need enough distance to be able to move the frame/pallet (or the bench rest) backwards in increments as you fire more shells and the efficiency % thins out to where an average size duck won't get hit by enough pellets. You will see a range of pattern efficiencies, so fire 3-5 shells - 1 each on a new test paper - and count and calculate the averages at each distance. Then at the longest distance where the duck is certain to be hit by enough pellet strikes, fire a shot or two at your medium to measure penetration. If not deep enough, do that again and again at increasingly shorter distances until you have enough penetration. That will be your sure kill distance with that gun and load ..... we are sportsmen/women and want to be taking game humanely. Did I mention that you'll also need a recoil buffer gizmo due to the large number of shots to be fired/static with heavy loads? Repeat all this for the next gun, shell and shot size to be tested. Please report on the results here.

frank

[OH Osthaus]

thanks for the tutorial guys

but I may have been down this road once or twice before - i have a frame- and paper

and - i have Rio bismuth, Precision's reloading bismuth and Kent's bismuth to test

along with Kent TM and Nice Shot

what i don't have is phone books - maybe i will make a small frame to hold them and walk off with a stack of those free newsprint advertising papers from the honor boxes at the grocery store

phone books or newsprint are not ballistics gel - but will give a way to compare one load to another

yeah this stuff is not cheap - but neither is duck hunting, compared to what we spend on guns - i do not understand the concern of spending a few bucks on making sure we know what to expect from our ammunition especially the bismuth since there seems to be a lot of theory and anecdotal evidence on pellet integrity

[Jim Cloninger]

Frank, I did that kind of testing with the old bismuth. I have quite a few bottles of shot that came from the shells I was testing. Counted the pellets in each load tested. This was mostly done with my 12, 16 and 20 M21's.
Jim

[birdawg]

In general terms what are the preferred types of shot? ITX niceshot, Bismuth, Tungsten Matrix or ?
I am starting to work up some small bore waterfowl loads for Fox, LCS vintage doubles.

[OH Osthaus]

Kent's TM is not available as bulk shot. Nice Shot is hard to come by but except for a slight increase in pressure which you can adjust for, it loads like lead with no special components

I have never tried ITX, I believe the "10" version is said the be safe for doubles. I also think they sell special wads for it

Bismuth is a readily available option and there are lots of tested loads for it

[Jim Cloninger]

From Wildfowl magazine. Kent: "We are on the verge of being able to produce a 25-round box of bismuth shot competitive price-wise with steel".

[thepalm0314]

Has anyone used this bismuth .....

https://www.rotometals.com/bismuth-shot/