Some will say that long range accuracy is not important but I believe that all accuracy counts and what better way to determine accuracy than very accurate guns at long range. If it's most accurate a long range, I'm sure it will be most accurate at all ranges.
That sort of claim has wandered around for a long time. Years ago, someone put up serious money for anyone that could prove it, but no one collected.
If you think about the intellect a bullet would need to fly itself back on course after going amuck at midrange, you have to wonder who is making smart bullets.
You all make good points. You are all correct in context, but consider, how many target shooters have the math chops to actually compute the variables in our sport of passion? Let alone the time &/or funding to create enough data to really objectively get scientific results. Only the larger ammo manufacturers have capital to make this kind of investment. The closest anyone has come to making concrete data of this quality was Mr Ken Waters' Pet Load series. I encourage all to share their opinions here & elsewhere, just keep in mind the context. My personal experience is that Teflon wrapped boolits are effective & lead very little. (given more then 2 wraps) On cast boolits the grooves make plenty of room for extra teflon & a reservoir for down the bore. Paper patch is an established but nearly lost art for over a hundred years. It works for me. I do prefer swaged cores for the patched boolits. The newer coatings have incredible potential for similar effectiveness. All the same I still know in some rifles & handguns the particular load can make the difference between a dime at 200 & a paper plate at 100yds. A very few arms can achieve MOA consistently with almost everything you feed them. My Dad's 3006 Rem760 is an example of the former, a 742 (now traded) in the same caliber was the second. Guess which I kept, Oh yeah, I gave it away ;~D
My main point is there are just too many variables; barrel, action, bedding, bullet, concentricity, charge variance, temperature, barometric pressure, heartbeat, or whether you are having a good day to make maxims. We need to share our knowledge, economy, & tips. We all make it better, often teach the manufacturers a lesson or two.
Phyrbird,
I cannot agree with you. That math and analyses are pretty simple actually. Several experimental designs can be chosen from. Some effort is required, but there is nothing here that is really all that difficult other than the time.
Teflon and plastic coatings may work very well. And you are welcome to use them if you like - for your own shooting and hunting. But for many of us the purpose of using vintage rifles is to experience vintage shooting. You might just as well use jacketed bullets for all the difference it makes to me. But there is a reason I'm not interested in that, and why it is not legal for most competitions.
Everyone shoots for himself. But if you want to experience vintage shooting, you have to stick with vintage powder and vintage bullets. At least I do.
Sentient bullets don't exist. Until they do, they can't fly back to their flight path once they are off of it.
Last edited by Optimist; 06-10-2019 at 03:46 PM.
They don't fly back on course. They just stop spreading as much. Notice I said smaller in terms of MOA. For example, I've seen a 7mm magnum load that shot 1" at 100 yards, but 3" at 500. The 100 yard group is rougly 1MOA, but the 500 yard group is 0.6 MOA. This wasn't a one-time thing. It did it consistently. I don't know why it does it. It's something I've seen a couple times in my life.
Thunder maker, think about it some more. It just won't fly. Not even in MOAs.
I am doing laundry at the Whittington center with only my phone at hand at the moment, so please excuse the crudeness of this drawing and the brevity of this explanation.
Assume the firing point is at the bottom of this drawing below. A target at distance X has the aim point in the center of the X.
Shot A goes to the left side, Shot B goes to the right side. The width of the group is the distance between those 2 black lines.
A target at distance Y about twice as far as target X, behind target X will have a group twice as big (the same in MOA), ignoring additional winds and instabilities.
For the group to be smaller at distance Y, bullet A has to be smart enough to turn right after passing X. Meanwhile, Bullet B must have an IQ sufficient to know to turn left (red lines).
Personally, I do not believe bullets are that smart.
Thanks Edward. It kept me busy while waiting on my laundry.
That's fine in theory, and theory and practice are the same in theory but not in practice. You're assuming that the dispersion happens in a perfect cone, that the bullet is pointed along a diagonal path when it leaves the barrel, and that the bullet has no initial yaw. None of it works that way. Nice diagram for a cell phone though. Bullets can yaw out of the muzzle and stabilize later in flight. If you don't believe that, watch a high speed video of a 5.45x39 7n6 bullet leaving the muzzle.
I really don't care to argue the point any further, as it's not really important to me that anyone believe that I saw what I saw. The take away from what I originally posted is that the only way to know what a load will do at a given distance is to shoot it at that distance.
Yup bullets can yaw and stabilize and do all sorts of things (except think). But for sure Bullet A is moving laterally to the left as it passes target X. Ain't nothing going to tell it to start flying to the right as it passes so it will continue moving left? Theory always works on practice. Always. The laws of physics are not suspended for shooters.
No, the laws of physics are not suspended for shooters, that's why it baffles me how so many shooters don't understand them. The flaw in your thinking is that it assumes that, if you drew a line from the muzzle (which is pointed at the center of the target) to the bullet hole, the bullet would be traveling nose first along that straight line. That is not how dispersion works. That doesn't even make any sense if you think about it. You're saying that a projectile traveling down the tube somehow exits at a different angle than it was previously traveling down the bore. Or maybe you believe it cuts over at an angle as soon as it breaks contact with the barrel, changing the direction of its momentum in the process. Now who's talking about magic "smart bullets"?
The bullet nose is pointed toward the target along the same axis as the bore. Its forward momentum occurs along that axis. Dispersion happens when the bullet drifts sideways off this line. That drift follows more of a bell than a cone. Some bullets slow their rate of drift later in flight. Some destabilize later in flight and increase their rate of drift, exibiting less accuracy, even though they hit point first and make perfectly round holes.
You can believe what you want. It's of no consequence to me. I believe the thread was about teflon patching.
Last edited by Thundermaker; 07-01-2019 at 07:41 PM.
I been shooting for a very long time and I still have not figured out how to make a bullet curve back when it goes off on it's own wrong path then curve back to center like a baseball pitcher can make that ball return over the strike zone unless the wind pushes the bullet back into the center X or spin drift is involved. Yes a bullet with it's banana curve will rise above the line of sight and come back down to the point of aim.
But again I'm a retired plumber that used a lot of teflon tape over the years, but I used it for screwed pipe joint connections and not bullets, except one time and it didn't prove out the thing to use for slicking up bullets. Especially for using black powder.
Last edited by Lead pot; 07-01-2019 at 08:36 PM.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |