[Clark Kent]

Just a wild guess, but Taurus' ambitions to enter the ammo market seems to be fading, whilst Cor-Bon is trumpeting its new line of deep-penetrating, fully expanding stuff that uses the same all-copper Barnes bullet that Taurus used in the HEX.

Barnes mentioned the Taurus connection last month when it announced the new bullet line, but quickly dropped this reference once Cor-Bon entered the picture.

I'm no prophet, but the entrails do seem to be speaking. Methinks the HEX .45 ammo you can now get from The Gun Source for a couple bucks less than Corbon is charging for its .45 DPX rounds will be the last we'll see of HEX. I bought some extra boxes just to be safe, and they're still from Lot Nr. 1.

http://www.thegunsource.com/shopping/st ... ategory=18

 

[Dean Speir]

Did they, or didn't they? Where's Screamin' Jay Hawkins when we really need him?!?

One of CorBon's minions stops by the Forum from time-to-time… we'll have to see what he has to say about this! I mean, after all:

1. Taurus introduces a HEX .45 ACP round utilizing a copper-bullet a little over a year ago and states that other chamberings are in development. [/*:2gscrc7e]
   
2. The HEX gets favorable notices in the gunzines from CeePee (Just a glance at the test results shows the Hex bullet works.) and other still-famous gun scribes. Even the Ammolab tests… why are we not surprised?!… show good penetration and expansion.[/*:2gscrc7e]
   
3. Since the initial roll-out of the .45 ACP, more than a year passes with no follow-up of the promised other calibers.[/*:2gscrc7e]
   
4. Cut to February 2004 and CorBon announces at SHOT yet another new line of ammo… and here's where it gets interesting…incorporating that same Barnes 99.95% pure copper bullet. Contemporaneously the webpage on which Barnes had touted the availability of its "APX" bullets for handloaders and which noting it was the same utilized by Taurus for its HEX .45s, became one of los desaparecidos. (Even Google's always handy "Sargasso Sea" of expired pages, has the cached version of that page purged after it's existence becomes known through some blabbermouth on another BB somewhere… no names, please!)
   
   The new "DPX" rounds, in .45 ACP, .40 S&W and 9 X 19mm, in the words of CorBon's announcement:

   DPX is our new Deep Penetrating load designed for deeper penetration. It utilizes a Barnes X bullet…

   (If my ol' colleague Terry Murbaugh wrote that, I think I know why he's not writing for the gunzines no mo'! And if he didn't, Peter Pi better get him back in the P.R. office real fast!)[/*:2gscrc7e]

There are other elements which, if not dispositive, then are certainly suggestive that something happened. As substantial as is Taurus, which doesn't make a lotta foolish marketing moves, it's curious that they'd drop out of the copper handgun bullet game this quickly, especially since they enjoyed substantial positive ink on the product.

 

[Charlie Petty]

On information and belief:

PMC was loading the ammo for Taurus and apparently all was not well in that regard.

Rumor had it that Taurus was seeking another manufacturer but for reasons unknown to me that did not pan out.

Apparently there was also some price resistance in the marketplace.

I got some of the bullets as components from Barnes and they were exactly the same.

My opinion is that Taurus was already out of the ammo business and CorBon just recognized an opportunity.

 

[Clark Kent]

Darn it. I prefer the conspiracy theory. Then again, maybe the villain is PMC. Remember, they're the ones who got some of us all atwitter about the tubular Ultramag bullet, affectionately dubbed "the cookie cutter," and then left us sniffling at the altar. I still have a box of them, waiting for the balloon to go up so's I can try 'em out on the anarchic marauders in my front yard that Jerry Ahern's been prophesizing for some years now.

 

[MikeO]

Darn!

That 185/45 Hex was a darn good bullet, and the Taurus/PMC loading worked well in every gun I tried it in. I was looking fwd to seeing it in 9mm, and I was hoping for a std pressure, light recoiling load there too.

I see the CorBon load is a 115 +P at 1275 fps. I'm assuming this is slower than their other 115/9 load because the all copper bullet is longer, less case capacity, more pressure at same velocity, something like that? Probably doesn't need to be a +P load to do what I wanted it too, but that is CorBon's thing.

Wonder what the velocity is at the std SAAMI limit of 35,000 psi w this bullet? What the pressure is at 1160 fps?