Bullets

O

Old Timer

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At the risk of sounding like a fool, I just started weighing my bullets and guess what, they are not all the same :eek:

What Bullet makers have the most accurate weight, bullet to bullet.
 
Old Timer said:
At the risk of sounding like a fool, I just started weighing my bullets and guess what, they are not all the same :eek:

What Bullet makers have the most accurate weight, bullet to bullet.
Click to expand...

How much deviation are you seeing?
 
Among the custom makers I have tried they all seem about the same.
 
I compete and do ok and have given up on weighing bullets a long time ago. More importantly IMHO is what matters down range I shoot 1K and what makes more difference in my rifles is the actual bearing surface and meplats. That is where I focus my attention in the preparation process.
 
Old Timer said:
At the risk of sounding like a fool, I just started weighing my bullets and guess what, they are not all the same :eek:

What Bullet makers have the most accurate weight, bullet to bullet.
Click to expand...

If you are going to worry about the weight, then for the sake of all that is good in the world dont start measuring all of your loaded rounds or it will drive you crazy.

Most good custom bullets will be within .1 grain in weight during the same lot. I have weighed bullets for fun but it becomes futile after a while.
Also when the bullets are pointed up they don't wind up exactly the same length at the tip, so you need to measure them from the bearing surface.

I am confident that the guys shooting good groups and winning matches aren't weighing all of their bullets.

If you are going to shoot factory bullets in a 6mm then the Sierra 70gr BT is almost as good as the custom BR bullets, but for a dollar more you can get some great hand made bullets.

But hear is a tip. If you drop a bullet on the garage floor from more than a couple of feet high then don't shoot it in a match. I have measured hundreds of bullets on the Juenke Concentricity Comparator and when they get droped on a hard surface it definatly changes they way they mesure on the Comparator.
Ted
 
Ted, that's a very interesting observation regarding the dropped bullets; I hadn't considered that before. Core loosening? I wonder what happens in there. Have you checked a bullet, seated it, pulled it and checked again? When I pull bullets, I set them aside for non-match use, but always wondered what, if any, damage is done.

Trying to see the invisible is a lot of fun, isn't it?!

German Salazar
 
German
I had thought that dropping the bullet knocked it out of round but maybe it is loosing the core.
That is why if I have a choice I would rather pick up my bullets from the maker at a match. I worry that the shipper will drop them. Although I have shot shipped bullets that have shot great, so maybe I just worry to much about that stuff.
Ted
 
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hecksf said:
German
I had thought that dropping the bullet knocked it out of round but maybe it is loosing the core.
That is why if I have a choice I would rather pick up my bullets from the maker at a match. I worry that the shipper will drop them. Although I have shot shipped bullets that have shot great, so maybe I just worry to much about that stuff.
Ted
Click to expand...

Ted,

Like you, I have always REALLY worried about dropped bullets. For this reason I was extremely concerned when USPS delivered my last lot of bullets. The seams on the box had been split, there were loose bullets in the delivery person's transport bin, and the box had been re-taped with duct tape on several of the seams.

When I opened the box I found that one of the plastic boxes that the bullets were in actually had the lid completely torn off, and the remaining bullets from that box were just loose in the shipping box (the ones that had not been lost that is). The other plastic bullet boxes were actually sitting on top of the loose bullets from the broken plastic box. Another of the plastic bullet boxes had obviously hit on the corner when the box had fallen, as the corner was actually crushed into the inside space. It was obvious that the original packing had been good, and that the box had dropped from some height to cause this much damage.

With great misgivings I tried some of these bullets in the last match. Actually, I shot them in one rifle, and some out of another "good" lot in a second rifle. It turns out that with the "good" bullets, that rifle finished fourth at 100 and first at 200, plus third in the grand. The rifle with the "bad" bullets finished second at 100, fourth at 200, and second in the grand, with the same exact score and X count in the Grand for both rifles. Go figure :confused:.

I sure don't want to drop bullets, but at least I am not QUITE as apprehensive about shooting them as I was. I still have that doubt in the back of my mind as to whether one of these bullets will cost me an X or a 10 in a match. Who knows :confused::(.

Jim
 
I would pay attention

Old Timer said:
At the risk of sounding like a fool, I just started weighing my bullets and guess what, they are not all the same :eek:

What Bullet makers have the most accurate weight, bullet to bullet.
Click to expand...

if there were major variation in ogive position resulting in 2 or more thou of OAL. Some barrels just don't like much variation.
 
I made bullets for a long time....

Also shot Benchrest. When setting up the core cutter, you will cut cores of different lengths (weights). I did an experiment, I segregated the cores in various weights and kept track of them.

Using a Hall "M" chambred in 6 PPC, bullets that had weight variations of 2.0g would still go in the same hole at 100 yards. At 200 yards, some vertical dispersion would start, but not much. At 300 yards, you could start to see how bullet weights really start affecting group. Extreme spreads in cores should not exceed .1 grain, if it does, the guy's core form die is crap or the press that he uses to make the cores with has too much play in the linkage.

All this talk of cores loosening up from shipment is a real eye opener. This is an indication that you need to switch bullet makers completely because he is not using the correct size punch to seat the cores with and he is not. Jacket Lots vary from Lot to lot. A guy making bullet has to have a variety of punch diameters to correctly seat the core, he also has to not be scared of using enough pressure to seat the cores properly.

If cores ever loosen up on a bullet, it is due to the fact that the guy has not used enough pressure to seat the cores. I did a test to confirm to see if I were using enough pressure seating the cores; I seated the cores and did not point up the bullets. I put the jackets with seated cores in a Thumbler's tumbler rock polisher and let them tumble for 24 hours with no media in the tumbler with them just banging against the walls. I found a way to seat the cores where they would never have one come loose.

I do believe that using undersize punches and using too little pressure are the two main problems that a bullet maker faces which will without a doubt lead to ho humm results in match bullets. If cores are coming loose duriing shipment, you really need to change bullet makers because he does not know his butt from third base when it comes to setting up a core seating die and choosing the correct punch.

If a bullet's core is coming loose from shipment, you are in deep doo doo with the entire batch of bullets that you just purchased.

Ogive length of the bullets should be darn near perfect with zero variations with .002 over a lot being acceptable.
 
I didn't say that the cores come loose.
I do believe that if the bullet gets a good whack it can be knocked out of round.
I can prove without a doubt that just about any conventional bullet droped on a concrete garage floor will change its measurements on the Juenke machine. I am not 100 percent sure what is changed but I beleve it to be the shape of the bullet.
For example if the UPS guy was unloading the truck and dropped your box of bullets onto the pavement some of the bullets might no longer have the same dimensions that they left the maker with.
ted
 
bullets

Bullet weight differance'
some people don't care. they claim the tune on the rifle is more important.
I keep my bullets really tight on weight. IE 68 or 67.9grs for a 68.
I personally feel it does make a differance. Other don't
bullets dropped on the floor are junk [culls] they are only good for the first shot to foul the barrels. There are those who may disagree but most of the really screamers were shot with bullets that weight the same.
Any one want to take it from there?
 
If you don't know which is which...

You can't tell the difference on the target. I will gladly wager in a blind arrangement that the better target of any two is with the offweight or dropped bullets. I have confidence that it's a 50/50 bet and nobody would get hurt too badly.
 
Loose cores

When I was making bullets, I routinely checked random bullets with a Juenke machine and was quite pleased with the results. I also got a small handfull of nearly everyone elses bullets from friends at matches I attended so I could measure and spin them........just for comparison:rolleyes:
One guy gave me some of xxxx bullets that were moly coated, and then said "here, take some that are naked as well".
The naked bullets spun quite well, but the moly coated bullets spun better. I called him and he assured me they were all from the same lot number.
Soooooooooooo I spun 50 of mine, then moly coated them in a glass pickle jar inside a Thumblers tumbler. The jar had a 1/4 inch dowel epoxied inside for agitation, but no steel balls. The moly coated bullets spun a bit better than they had when they were naked. Remember, these are the same 50 bullets. HHMMMMMMMMMMMMMM! Next, I cleaned the jar with acetone, put the bullets inside a clean shop towel and bound it up with a rubber band and tumbled them for about an hour. This removed most of the moly and left a "tarnished" finish I called minimum moly. One of my customers called it "strawberried". They spun slightly better yet! They also shot great!
That is a lot of tumbling, and if anything is going to loosen up a dead metal core from a "non dead" metal jacket, that should have.
These bullets were "stress relieved". I still do this, but I don't drop them on the floor.:D
Bryan
 
Gerry

Gerry / Wilbur

I tested the bullet weighing theory. I had a buddy load 5 rounds with a mix of 65 and 68 grain bullets from the same bullet die. At 200 hundred yards the group measured a .245. The 65s and 68 went into the same hole.

Bart
 
Bart,,,A long time ago. Ed Watson made 51 and 52 grain 22cal bullets. Some of us liked the 51's and always had Ed make them for us. He would deliver them to us at matches and chuckle when we told him how good they shot. One day he told us to mix some up and shoot some groups. We did, and even at 300yds we couldn't tell the difference.
I don't weigh bullets anymore and haven't in a long time.
Larry Isenhour
 
I made a few bullets some time ago..

One of my friends tried them and said they didn't shoot as well as the Watson's he had been shooting. Some weeks later I told him I had a new die and "underhandedly" gave him a hundred Watson's from his own stash to test. Not wanting to hurt my feelings he said they shot pretty good but weren't as consistent as the Watson's.

There's a moral in there somewhere...not exactly sure what it is....
 
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