A good year ago or more a customer inquired with me regarding the possibility of making some bullets to match the popular 125 grain OTM bullets. So I had my custom reamer shop cut me a reamer and that was as far as I got for at least the last 6 months or longer. Yesterday I was going threw my oversized dies and recut the cavity of an oversized 22 cal up with this new 30 cal reamer. The results as pictured below pretty much speak for themselves!
There must be a lot of extra room in the nose of the factory 125 grain OTM bullets, you can see that the bullets I made are nearly the same length yet I made mine at 150 grains. I bet there is still room in the jacket nose too. The length of the nose ogive of my bullet is the same as the factory one so feeding in an AR platform should be no problem.
I don't shoot the 300 AAC so those of you that do let me know your thoughts on this bullet and what you think of the 300 AAC. I hear the availability is a bit limited with this particular bullet, having a de set to make your own certainly solves that problem. Looking at the results I might just have to look into a new upper to shoot some of these bullets! I wonder how this bullet profile would do in a longer jacket with a boat tail, say about 220-240 grains shot from a 300WM or larger 30 cal?
Here is the pics. RCE jacketed 150 grain on the left, factory 125 grain OTM center and 150 grain made from Sierra jacket on right. That's a .062 meplat on my bullets. The factory one has been closed in a pointing die.
I will be machining some of these dies starting in January and will have them available for order in 2015!
Good shooting and swage on!
Brian