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Hi all, I'm not a swager (at the moment..) but I have found some copper jacketed swaged seconds with some folded tips, they are a good price, just wondering if the folds on the tip will greatly affect accuracy?? I don't need bench rest targets just fox/rabbit type target results. Do you think these would be ok? Or am I wasting my time and money?? These are 224 50grains and will be used in 223 and maybe 22 hornet (I can stabilise 55 grains so 50's should be good
Thanks in advance
Reddirt204
Depends on how bad it is have a pic
I don't have actual pictures but I have seen some examples, sort of looks like the very tip was twisted a little, like aluminium foil. The guy was a reasonable scale bullet manufacturer about 20 years ago and this is old stock he is selling off. His normal bullets were very good and highly effective, so I'm thinking that these will be ok for my needs, basically shots under 250 yards so if they hold an inch or so at 100 I'm good with that
If one takes a handful of different nose profiles in nose forming (result more lead exposed/no lead exposed, bigger or smaller meplat, slight amount of jacket material longer or ragged on one side) will result in a larger group size. Hand sorting with weight and appearance groups will usually result in reducing the spread when compared to simply lumping them all together.
One potential solution if they are all slightly different (rejected) nose profiles is to address the nose issue using a Meplat Trimmer and/or tipping die. Below is a link and description; provided because it provides good pictorial representation and descriptions - not because of endorsing the site.
One could also look at going the "Other Direction" by milling all of the noses slightly to get a uniform meplat for all bullets.
Sorting by weight would be highly recommended as there has to be a reason the noses vary; either the jacket was out of the bell curve spec, the core weighed more or less for each bullet, or something happened in the swage process that distorted the affected bullets.
Lastly; one could buy them and just sort them by weight and see how they perform. Your accuracy expectations would be key; if a 100 yard group of the vendors normal bullets is 1.0 MOA and the "Rejects" get you 1.5MOA (2.5 MOA at 250 yards or 3.75MOA at 250 Yards) it's up to you on what is acceptable for your purposes. In this example if your going after Dingo size animals then it is probably good to go; but if your shooting your equivalent of Ground Squirrels or Prairie Dogs; then maybe not. Ultimately accuracy potential is put to the shooter. I usually take all my visually rejected swaged bullets (.224 and .308) and put them aside in sorted groups and load them for when the Sons (who love to BLAST AMMO) and Grand Sons (who have not developed in shooting knowledge yet) come to visit. Each must make their own choice.
Best wishes. Have Fond memories of Australia from the Late 1970's.
Besides the aesthetics I've never been able to tell a difference with small folds and wrinkles on the nose of a bullet. The bases are much more important than the noses in my experience.
Thanks for all the input, given me a few things to consider. The biggest one is its quite a bulk lot (about 5000 projectiles in total) and so a few $$$ would be invested so I just have to weigh up the pros and cons
cheers
Reddier204
I second NoZombies. I always save my "rejects" for plinking and prairie dogs it they shoot just as well as the others. Actually, a couple years ago we were shooting prairie dogs down in the badlands, once they hunkered down for the afternoon we were plinking around. There was a chunk of sandstone on a hillside, 1' tall and 3' wide and 540 yards away. Once I found my scope setting I put 12 rounds in a row into it with my bolt 223. I only took my "rejects" with folded noses with me.
Set them aside for a special occasion or informal shooting but they are perfectly useable.
Yep... I have saved all my folded tips and have had just as good accuracy shooting p-dogs. I was surprised actually at how well they did.
Swage on!
BT
Can anyone tell me what causes the folded tips? I can feel when it happens as I point form. There's a little give as I add pressure. My jackets are 22lr batch annealed in a Lee pot.
+1 to what Mustang has said.
As to what caused the wrinkling, the root cause could be one or more of several issues,
and we don't exactly know unless a full sectioning, disassembly, and measuring/weighing of the pieces is performed,
with sufficient samples (certainly over 30, 100 or so would be much better).
As to accuracy, if the root cause of the wrinkling was not significantly longer cores or significant differences in jacket lengths,
(i.e. the root cause was purely cosmetic and not caused by a fundamental material discrepancy) then you probably have
good odds that they will shoot fine. I saw a through test that included pictures, not sure if it was online or in a gun mag,
where the purpose of the article was to test to see how much a nose deformity affected accuracy.
The induced nose deformities went so far as to clip off the bullet nose at a sharp angle with diagonal cutters.
After firing for accuracy, the groups were not off by much as compared to the unaltered, original, perfect bullets.
I forget exactly how much the groups were different, but the difference was small enough that, for hunting body shots on deer under 100 yards,
it really would not matter.