shrunken bullet syndrome

[fecmech]

I cast some 158 grn round noses today and did not notice till I sized them that I had SBS on the one drive band. I quit sizing after I saw that I had a fairly high percentage of them and decided to remelt and recast another day. http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll80/fecmech/Dscn0870.jpg Then on a whim I decided to show myself how badly unbalanced and out of round bullets would shoot so I loaded 14 of the worst ones up. I used my Model 94 winchester .357 because it likes this bullet over 5 grs of Unique very well as the test bed. The bullets I'm showing in the pics are not as bad as the ones I loaded and shot, they were all that I had left of the bad ones. The target was shot at 50 yds on a target that I had previously shot some .22's at but you can see the difference in hole sizes. I'm not sure what I proved here but I was sure that those bullets would not group well. Go figure.
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll80/fecmech/Dscn0872.jpg

[Buckshot]

..............The bases look nice and sharp. Doesn't appear as if the slug was really touched by the die much at all. In any event it does look like it did some nifty shooting with those rejects :-) Over the years I'd read a couple articles by guys who'd performed all sorts of un-natural acts upon the boolit's (and bullet's) noses, and slicing into drive bands with knives etc. They shot remarkably well. The only ones that did not were the ones that had their bases fooled with.

Possibly the twist and velocity, along with the weight loss wasn't sufficient to show up at 50 yards? Or the weight loss wasn't concentrated enough? Looks to have been pleanty of guidance length left.

An old shooting buddy who was our rangemaster for 16 years had a Sako in 375 H7H improved. With cast lead (Lyman 375449) it would print 3 shot or 5 shot cloverleaf groups of 1.5" or less. Mostly less, usually. This was a bit over 2,000 fps. At 100 yards you were lucky to find a couple holes. So between 50 and 100 yards they got a mind of their own and took off for the boonies.

................Buckshot

[Bass Ackward]

I find that if a bullet fits well, you can shoot some pretty crappy slugs and do surprisingly well.

By the same token, when it doesn't fit well or is not a particularly strong design, you need perfect slugs.

[Trailblazer]

I have shot a lot of reject bullets at the 50 meter chickens and it just doesn't seem to matter at that distance if the bullet is not horribly deformed.