Culling Criteria

[JohnH]

What do you use? I only have the Lee scale, so I can only wiegh to 110 grains. The lightest bullet I shoot is 158 grains, so it is obvious that I can only sort/cull visually. There ain't much I won't shoot, I sort to a very simple standard, gross visual defects which reject, minor defects which I may seperate out and shoot in seperate lots or may not as the mood suits me at the time (generally relies on past experience of how the defects shoot) The third of course is no visual defect.

Once upon a time I weighed sorted everything, and found myself returning nearly 50% of my efforts to the pot. These days I think I was too critical, as I've found that minor defects seem to group decently.

What criteria do you apply to your culling?

If you weigh sort, what tolerance do you use, and do you shoot anything outside the tolerance or do you return everything you don't shoot to the pot?

[wills]

Draw a table on the computer and print it, sort the bullets by .5 gr. I print this big enough so it uses a whole page of 11X17. Once you have the bullets sorted then you can keep the loaded rounds together by bullet weight. You will find the bullets will form the famous bell shaped curve on your chart. You will find a few bullets at the far ends of the bell, too few to be useful as a group. Re melt them.

You will find it well worth your while to invest in an electronic scale, and you may as well get one you can eventually hook to a powder measure.










437. 0-4 437.5-9 438.0-4 438.5-9 439.0-4 439.5-9 440.0-4 440.5-9

(I tried to copy and paste the table above. It didnt work)

[Willbird]

Also on the Lee scale, can you figuire out a way to add some more weight to the beam so it will balance with a 158 in the pan ?? Just an idea, because exact weight doesnt matter, only comparing and sorting.

which btw I do not do for pistol boolits, look them over, shoot the decent ones.

cast boolits in rifles is on my to-do list this summer, I have not done nearly enough of that yet, but for what I'm going to use them for we won't need 1/4 moa accuracy.

Bill

[Buckshot]

..............I haven't intentionaly scaled any boolits in a long time, except for labeling a batch as a piece of infromation on the container. Like: Lee 452-255RF, 14 BHN, 253gr. Otherwise most everything I shoot only gets a visual inspection. Bases went the sprueplate is swung, outside when they're dumped and roll down into the pile. As they're picked up to be lube-sized and after being lube-sized, as they're picked up to be seated.

When I've scaled batches of boolits I do like Wills, but I don't use a computer drawn deal. I just lay out a couple pieces of paper with the median weight listed in the center and then weights by .1 or .5 grain increments off to either side, increasing and decreasing in either direction.

Boolits on the light end usually mean shrinkage-cooling voids, and/or rounded detail features, or ripped out sprues. Those on the heavy end can be due to incomplete block closure, sprue nubs on the base, or a slightly loose plate lifted via alloy pressure.

The light ones are most likely to cause you problems and I toss them into the scrap pile. Those on the lighter end of your supposed useable weights may also be slightly suspect, as they may be otherwise heavier, but containing a void in the base.

The most work I ever did in culling for ultimate accuracy was when I was running a Savage M112 single shot in 223 with cast. After discarding slugs that I'd weighed on a Dillon D'terminator 1500gr digital scale, I ran them on a Hornady balance beam with an approch to weight scale on the pointer. Things did shift slightly in the weight groups. Wether I'd made an improvement or not is debatable.

For these 55gr 22 cal cast slugs I held them to .1gr. I checked the Sierra 53gr HP match slugs I'd been using and even these had a few which would fall .2gr heavier then the norm, so I figured I'd done all I could.

For normal shooting, I do not scale boolits but visually inspect them only. I will accept slugs with mildly rounded bases or drive bands, if they're rounded all the way around. To me, the largest accuracy destroyer is out of balance. The rotational forces are huge on a boolit and I think have more effect on where it lands in or out of a group then a small weight difference.

You can ruthlessly cull visually imperfect slugs. Voids you cannot usually see. Even though voids normally tend to fall on the boolit's centerline, you have no guarantee, so that's the reason for the lightest of the median weight slugs getting dumped when I do scale them. When a projectile leaves the support of the barrel at the muzzle, even the best will 'hunt' a bit to find their axis of rotation about thier center of gravity before settling down in flight. Any out of balance details exacerbates the hunting.

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

[BruceB]

On a number of occasions, I became ambitious enough (or curious enough) to weigh every bullet in large production runs, with numbers up into 800 or 1000 boolits per run. My PACT electronic scale makes this fairly painless and quick.

The result of these bullet-weighing marathons is very simple: for at least 99% of my purposes, there is NO GOOD REASON to bother with weighing the general run of bullets. This is simply due to the fact that my VISUAL culling of the bullets is more rigorous (i.e.: rejects more bullets) than weighing. Even at that, the percentage rejected is very low, usually under 5%.

Now IF I was going to shoot a big important match, or perform some other demanding feat involving a relatively small number of bullets, I might weigh them and identify a group which falls into a very narrow spread. However, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

In typical production runs, with RCBS, Lyman AND LEE two-cavity moulds, my bullets of about 200 grains exhibit extreme weight spreads of less than one grain. In bullets of say, 130-grain average weight, I expect them to have a max spread of about 1/2 grain. One of my RCBS single cavity moulds is the 416-350, and I can DEPEND on this one to drop bullets with LESS than one grain weight spread...in a 365-grain bullet! These are of course bullets which have passed my visual inspection, and I'm fairly fussy.

Gents, that is amply-sufficient consistency for me. I have better things to do with my time than fiddle with microscopic angels-on-the-point-of-a-pin analysis and plotting of tenths of a grain's variation.

I repeat: my visual inspection rejects MORE bullets than weighing. BTW, I recently found one of those articulated-arm work lights with a magnifying glass capability at Walmart for a measly TEN BUCKS! I've never seen my bullets and cases with such clarity before, and I highly recommend such a light to everyone. It's literally a revelation.

[carpetman]

You can only weigh to 110 grains and the bullets weigh 158. You could cut them in half and weigh the halves, then you'd have to cull them all. I dont weigh them,and it would have to be a mighty serious match before I would.

[Gussy]

Carpetman, that was too complicated. Do what I do, shoot it and if it doesn't go into a 1" group, it was a cull bullet and should not be counted. No need to weigh at all.
Gus

[buck1]

With handguns a looksie does just fine. But I am thinking of putting the scale to use on my rifle slugs , just so I cant blame the "flyer" on a air bubble in side.
I have used the Lee scales before and I do not like them at all. I highly recomend a upgrade. The pact I now use is great but pricy too. But the RCBS 505 can be found cheep enugh and dont over look the old pacific balance scales on Ebay. You should be able to pick up a older oil dampened scale of some kind (redding comes to mind) on ebay fairly cheep. MY .02.........buck

[buck1]

Carpetman, that was too complicated. Do what I do, shoot it and if it doesn't go into a 1" group, it was a cull bullet and should not be counted. No need to weigh at all.
Gus


Now thats the way to look at it!!!LOL...buck

[joeb33050]

The result of these bullet-weighing marathons is very simple: for at least 99% of my purposes, there is NO GOOD REASON to bother with weighing the general run of bullets. This is simply due to the fact that my VISUAL culling of the bullets is more rigorous (i.e.: rejects more bullets) than weighing. Even at that, the percentage rejected is very low, usually under 5%.

Gents, that is amply-sufficient consistency for me. I have better things to do with my time than fiddle with microscopic angels-on-the-point-of-a-pin analysis and plotting of tenths of a grain's variation.

I repeat: my visual inspection rejects MORE bullets than weighing. BTW, I recently found one of those articulated-arm work lights with a magnifying glass capability at Walmart for a measly TEN BUCKS! I've never seen my bullets and cases with such clarity before, and I highly recommend such a light to everyone. It's literally a revelation.

I weigh (almost) every bullet I cast. I've got records of 8790 weighed bullets. NOT COUNTING those that are more than .5 grain from the average, virtually all will be within +/- .4 grains of the average.
I have never been able to see that bullets weighing XXX.X grains shoot better than bullets weighing XXX.X +/-.3 grains. But that's not the point.
In my average casting session of 115 bullets, I ALWAYS find one or more that weigh WAY less than the average. My guess is that these cause flyers.
I don't weigh to get close batches, I weigh to eliminate the outliers that cause that group to enlarge.
joe b.

[JohnH]

Carpetman, that was too complicated. Do what I do, shoot it and if it doesn't go into a 1" group, it was a cull bullet and should not be counted. No need to weigh at all.
Gus

ROFLMAO :) :) :) Thanks for that laugh Gussy, made my day

[wills]

.

I repeat: my visual inspection rejects MORE bullets than weighing. BTW, I recently found one of those articulated-arm work lights with a magnifying glass capability at Walmart for a measly TEN BUCKS! I've never seen my bullets and cases with such clarity before, and I highly recommend such a light to everyone. It's literally a revelation.

I have been hunting for that light, is it with the lamps or in hardware, or where?

[sundog]

In the general scheme of things in my life I know less about more and more about less. Of many (most) things, nothing. But, happy as a clam is not enough to explain my lot. It is quite better, indeed. But, culling boolits is one of those very few things of which I know a little more than a little less.

Hi, my name is sundog, and I weigh boolits.

Match boolits for the military bolt excursions are the ones I do with great zeel. I'll weigh ten, find an average and then set a batch of tuna cans around the Dillon dTerminator electronic scale and have at it. Doesn't take that long. The result of this is the better scores I have been shooting lately at these matches. The boolits are segregated by .1, then loads are put together from exact same weight boolits. I've even mixed runs of boolits from different days using the same alloy and cannot tell the difference. I can tell a difference if boolits are segreated by .5 grain lots. Since I'm weighing anyway for match boolits all it takes is a few extra containers to do the separating. Good groups and NO flyers.

Boolits for other purposes are not usually weighed without a good reason - too many other things to do. Visual culling while casting and sizing/lubing is generally sufficient if you are willing to throw any into the recycle bin that look even remotely unaccepable. Be ruthless. sundog

[anachronism]

I weight bullets too. I sort them on a piece of paper, sorted by bullet weights in tenths of a grain. Once they're all sorted, I look at the famous bell curve, then toss the heavy ones, and the light ones in the remelt can, and keep only the ones that are within a maximum of 1% of the median bullet weight. Visibly defective bullets get remelted too, regardless of weight. I'm a little more relaxed with handgun bullets, I'll still use them up to about 2%, depending on caliber.

Bob

[NVcurmudgeon]

I weigh boolits when I expect them to be used for match shooting. I didn't use to until I got my PACT digital scale, which makes weight sorting fast and easy. My selected boolits are the result of three criteria: visual perfection, weights matched within one half of one percent, and avoiding the heaviest or lightest among a particular lot of castings. The selection process leaves a generous supply of what I call plinkers, which are visually inspected only. Sometimes I get stuck and have to use selected plinkers for a postal match and am pleasantly surprised. I doubt if I will cast enough boolits in my lifetime to prove the validity of my culling process, but I can't remember a flyer from my first class castings since I got the digital scale. All pistol boolits and most of the rifle plinkers never see a scale, because Ican't shoot that well.

[9.3X62AL]

[All pistol boolits and most of the rifle plinkers never see a scale, because Ican't shoot that well.[/QUOTE]

A very succinct description of why scaling boolits is a pretty large waste of time in my case. I have a couple rifle/boolit combos that might make scaling worth the time and effort, and as long as those combos stay firmly placed on the sandbags--the effort would still pay off. One of these days, maybe.

[Willbird]

I wonder how many people foolishly mix in differant dia culls when they remelt ??

that of course is a bozo no no because the smaller sizes of grease grooves can up placed off center in a larger caliber boolit.

The indents from the oft used carriage bolt in the ingot mold however is far too large to even enter the hole in the sprue plate.

Bill

[carpetman]

We weigh our powder to the infinite degree of accuracy. We select primers even by lot #'s and powder the same. We determine the composistion of our alloy and add in by exacting standards what the batch needs(even though we may have started with wheelweights which vary). We neck turn and spend a lot of time worrying about full length or neck sizing only. We want the perfect lube and not only that the color must be right and I guess now,even the smell becomes an issue. We slug our barrels and want the sizer to be atleast four decimal points of exact---more precise would be even better. We check the hardness of the bullet. Now the bullet must be weighed and within a decimal point of being the same weight. One of you mathematical types tell me how many decimal points a .5 grain difference in a 158 grain bullet for example would be???? How we crimp or whether we do is a topic of reams of discussion. Anyways we do all this and almost all of us will pick up range brass and in my books,variations in cases will have more bearing than any of the other mentioned stuff. Heck when I get flyers and shoot a 3/8" group,I want all the excuses as to why it wasn't the normal 5/16th inch group I shoot----when ofcourse nobody was around.

[anachronism]

I wonder how many people foolishly mix in differant dia culls when they remelt ??

that of course is a bozo no no because the smaller sizes of grease grooves can up placed off center in a larger caliber boolit.

The indents from the oft used carriage bolt in the ingot mold however is far too large to even enter the hole in the sprue plate.

Bill

Huh? You lost me with that "I wonder how many people foolishly mix in differant dia culls when they remelt " thing. I must not understand what you're saying. Why would it matter what diameter a cull bullet, slated for a remelt is?

I'm lost here....

Bob

[Scrounger]

To put it another way, there are some societies in the world where CarpetMan would be considered a holy man and consulted on all important occasions. To which he would usually order the sacrifice of a number of cats...

[sundog]

Is San Angelo SOUTH of the Red River?




...thought so.




{BSEG} - just pullin' yer leg C-man. sundog

btw, keep it comin'

[StanDahl]

Just to complicate things...in his book "Jacketed Performance With Cast Bullets", Veral Smith says that bullets should be selected by diameter and weight. Say you have a pile of bullets measuring .3110", typical weight 150 grains. In another pile in the same batch you have bullets measuring .3112", typical weight 151 grains. In the example given, a fat bullet (.3112" diameter) measuring 150 grains (with a hidden void) would be a keeper if you only weighed the samples, and the unmeasured 151's might be tossed as 'overweight' instead of regrouped as bigger diameter bullets.

I've spent time weighing big batches of bullets and I've noticed that bullets of a given weight can be rounded on the edges and some can be sharp. I've sat and wondered if I would be better off grouping them by appearance instead of weight. I did just that with the most recent casting session, but haven't shot any yet. I don't have a micrometer that can measure to the 0.0001, but that should be on the list soon. (I need to give that book back to xxgrampa soon too.) Stan

[waksupi]

Anachronism - Legs are being pulled, and tongues placed in cheeks.

[Willbird]

anachronism,

culls have grease grooves,when you melt the boolits unless you flux heavily and repeatedly with rancid goat tallow (and that is a nasty process) the grease grooves do not go into solution, so if there is a 22 caliber grease groove floating around inside your 30 caliber boolit as it cools the law of averages states it will end up off center. This can also happen with gas check shanks too but for some reason they do not cause as many fliers as the grease grooves.


Bill