Evolutionary Dead End?

[Hamish]

Booliterati,

In looking at this drawing: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=101680&highlight=308403

It suddenly occured to me what if the boolit had a cylinder on the nose??? ie. in the drawing the measurements of the nose it looks like a cylindrical extension of the boolit.

This inquiring mind wonders all sorts of strange things.

Rich

[onondaga]

The aerodynamics would be a disaster with an extended cylinder on the nose. I envision an extended flat-nose from your question. The bullet would be the victim of nose steering. Steering caused by the front of bullet is much more dramatic than the drag of the tail. An ogive ending in a flat nose is a stable, time tested design . Extending a flat nose would disturb the turbulence pattern and de-stabilize the bullet in my opinion or it would have been done successfully already many years ago.

An extended nose cylinder with a conical point is a proven design in rocketry, but even that requires stabilizing tail fins.

Gary

[MT Gianni]

I believe that a button nose wadcutter was found to be more accurate tha a flat nose but not by much. In either case as onodaga said, anything more than a button would cause an unstable boolit.

[Hamish]

Well, there you go, that's what I was looking for. Not having enough enough aerodymanic skeeryum know how makes Rich a dull boy.

I had the thought and got it posted just before having to lay down. I had pretty well suspected that it would'nt wash trans sonically, but that it should be ok sub sonic, and, what brought it on to start with, "gee, I wonder what a boolit like that would do at it's terminus?"

Could one of you better edumacated fellers recommend some light enough reading on this subject that some of it might actually rub off?

Rich