Sorting / Weighing

[PopcornSutton]

I'm one of the obsessed with accuracy guys. I regularly compete in CBA benchrest. What counts is your score. To me, I don't care what "class" someone shoots in, the score is what counts. If you really want to chase accuracy, you need to start with an accurate gun, and test everything. AND, learn to tune your load. Some powders work better than others, powder charge, seating depth all make a difference. Fitment of bullet to throat is needed.

Visual and weight sorting is required. How far to sort with weight, I don't know. I aint the best caster by any means, to get enough bullets to shoot a match, so I try for +- .5 grain. What I worry over most, is the base. I think this is the most over looked, but very important aspect to an accurate bullet. Getting a gas check seated and sized perfectly square with the bullet axis, and the check surface flat and the same is not as easy as you might think. Some come out with a dish shape, some domed. When the bullet leaves the barrel with the pressure behind it, ANY variance is going to show up on paper, especially at 200 yards.

[dverna]

Lots of good advice.

People who weight sort pistol bullets are wasting their time from my testing. At 50 yards or less, it is pointless. Tested in a Ransom Rest.

I could not get rifle bullets to shoot well (consistent sub 2 MOA) even with weight sorting and I gave up. Lots of folk say they can do it. Some can average that over multiple groups...which is success IMO. A couple of good groups does not work for me.

I have weight sorted .22 cal pellets and at 50 yards the difference in groups was inconclusive. It was not worth the time for my needs.

Your needs and expectations are paramount. It does not take a lot of effort to see if weight sorting matters in your guns, with your loads, and your skills. 100 rounds will tell the tale.

If you decide to test, you will learn more from ten 5 shot groups, or five 10 shot groups. Do not let one or two groups fool you. If you use 3 shot groups, you are wasting resources and time.

[William Yanda]

Rifle or pistol, plinking or target, distance? Inquiring minds want to know.

[charlie b]

Don't hunt, just make holes in paper for fun. Don't shoot pistol much anymore either. My most common shooting distances are 300 and 500yd. Load development starts at 100yd, simply because wind is less a factor at that range. Real fun is shooting soda cans at 300yd (no I don't hit with every shot).

Getting cast bullets to shoot 'small' groups is frustrating to say the least. I don't recommend it unless you are ready to go down the rabbit hole.

[Larry Gibson]

BTW, I also do not weight sort all my cast rifle bullets. I only weight sort those cast bullets to be used for the best accuracy at 100 t0 600 yards. I shoot many cast bullets that are only selected visually having no defects. Same with Handgun bullets, visual inspection only. I've also learned over the years to quality cast instead of quantity cast. I end up with a whole lot less rejects that way and, in the long run, more bullets for the total time spent.

Day before yesterday it was a cold, windy and a bit rainy day so I cast about 750 NOE 30 XCBs. Those will be weight sorted as I'll use most of them in my M70 Match rifle and my 30x60 XCB.

[Bigslug]

Larry's bell curve represents my experience helping my department's rifle team get ready for a smallbore competition - I sorted their .22LR cartridges by weight and then again by rim thickness. You end up with a big batch in the middle and have your outlying extremes on either end.

As pertains to casting for Schuetzen level accuracy, I'd probably run a strip of masking tape along a tabletop, and write a section for 195 grains, 195.1 grains, 195.2, etc... That will let you see what kind of spread and concentrations you're dealing with. No sense doing that until you've made an initial visual culling.

From there, you could start looking at the extremes to find out WHY they're extremes: your first cull missed something, you have a wonky cavity in a multi-cavity mold, etc... with the goal of reducing the duds to begin with.

As long as you're getting a decent pile of good bullets in the middle weight categories, you might as well keep them segregated by those tenth grains in the ammo boxes when you load them so that your ammo is as consistent as possible within a given string on a given day.

If you keep a detailed "sniper's log book", you might actually start to see a difference. It's worth remembering, however, that the bigger the bullet, the smaller a percentage of the overall weight that tenth grain will be - on a 200 grain bullet, it's 0.05% - so it may be hard to see over 200 yards on a low velocity load.

[Bob259]

Larry's bell curve represents my experience helping my department's rifle team get ready for a smallbore competition - I sorted their .22LR cartridges by weight and then again by rim thickness. You end up with a big batch in the middle and have your outlying extremes on either end.

As pertains to casting for Schuetzen level accuracy, I'd probably run a strip of masking tape along a tabletop, and write a section for 195 grains, 195.1 grains, 195.2, etc... That will let you see what kind of spread and concentrations you're dealing with. No sense doing that until you've made an initial visual culling.

From there, you could start looking at the extremes to find out WHY they're extremes: your first cull missed something, you have a wonky cavity in a multi-cavity mold, etc... with the goal of reducing the duds to begin with.

As long as you're getting a decent pile of good bullets in the middle weight categories, you might as well keep them segregated by those tenth grains in the ammo boxes when you load them so that your ammo is as consistent as possible within a given string on a given day.

If you keep a detailed "sniper's log book", you might actually start to see a difference. It's worth remembering, however, that the bigger the bullet, the smaller a percentage of the overall weight that tenth grain will be - on a 200 grain bullet, it's 0.05% - so it may be hard to see over 200 yards on a low velocity load.

I have been doing that. I was also told to keep in order cast. When you start sorting by weight then add order cast on top of it 🤪

[Bigslug]

I have a hard time fathoming the notion of separating bullets by the order they were cast in. I can see setting aside the first pile cast if you decide you need to toss a lump of tin in the pot to quit fighting fillout issues, but if the alloy and temps haven't really changed, what would the order matter? and why would it matter more than the stuff you can actually measure?

[high standard 40]

I have a hard time fathoming the notion of separating bullets by the order they were cast in. I can see setting aside the first pile cast if you decide you need to toss a lump of tin in the pot to quit fighting fillout issues, but if the alloy and temps haven't really changed, what would the order matter? and why would it matter more than the stuff you can actually measure?

Agreed. I recently started casting the bullets I'll need for the coming competition season. I did it over a three day period. When I visually sorted I had only a small handful of culls. The remaining bullets weight sorted to +/- .25 grains

[charlie b]

Time after casting could be important if you have an alloy that changes hardness over time.

[fa38]

If I am shooting 200 yards at a Schuetzen match I will weight sort my bullets if I am shooting a bench match not that I shoot the bench matches very often as I do not have the patients to wait for a condition. So maybe weight sorting for bench rest shooting is a waste of time but I still do it. And I can shoot them offhand.
I am not sure anything I shoot (offhand) needs weighing as I am getting so bad at offhand maybe the big flyer will go into the center of the target.
Therefore, the top and bottom ends of the various weights get shot offhand and the middle is for bench shooting.
All my bullets go downrange. The bad ones get shot as fouling shots after waiting for the next relay. Sometimes there is 20 minutes between relays. And especially when I forget to stick a bullet into the rifling with my breech seating tool to keep the fouling from really drying out.