I recast the soap into some 5" x 9" x 3" loaf pans last night.... Putting the metal pans in the freezer for a half hour let the soap fall right out of the tapered pans.... I stacked the two blocks end to end, and this turned out perfect, as combined with the meplats on the .257 cal bullets, the penetration was not an issue, even at 130 FPE.... The solids penetrated completely through the first block and a couple of inches into the second, leaving the other end of that block for testing the hollowpoints.... Here is a photo....



From the left, the upper is the 87.2 gr. RCBS solid, the lower the 73.4 gr. Lyman solid.... both having already penetrated 9" of soap....
From the right, the upper is the 77.2 gr. RCBS hollowpoint, the lower the 66.0 gr. Lyman hollowpoint....

The solids flattened completely on the nose, and had less penetration at 130 FPE than the lighter round nose solid I tested yesterday at 85 FPE, even though the velocities were similar.... In addition, the entry hole was larger, and the heavier 87 gr. bullet, which had a larger meplat, created a larger entry (larger actually than the hollowpoints) and had slightly less penetration than did the lighter 73 gr. solid.... I think this clearly shows the effectiveness of a meplat in controlling overpenetration and creating a larger wound channel, even without siginficant expansion occurring.... Once again, the two hollowpoints blew apart, with the fragments only penetrating 1/2 to 2/3 the distance of the base, but creating a massive wound channel.... Here are the recovered bullets....



The top row is the Lyman "65 gr.", and the bottom row is the RCBS "85 gr." Cowboy....
On the left is an unfired solid, in the middle a recovered solid, and on the right a recovered hollowpoint....

The hollowpoints were cast using the largest pins that Erik supplied with his hollowpoint conversions.... If I used a smaller pin, the bullets would be less likely to come apart at these velocities.... The solids penetrated 265 mm (10.4") for the 73 gr. and 255 mm (10.0") for the 87 gr..... The hollowpoints were also nearly identical to each other, 110 mm for the 66 gr. and 113 mm for the 77 gr. (4.3-4.4").... At some point I will cast some hollowpoints using a smaller diameter and/or shorter pin.... and I plan to also test these different configurations at various velocities to simulate different ranges.... I'll likely wait until I determine what the downrange velocities are (ie the BC) so that I can simulate impacts at about 50 and 100 yards....

Bob