Residual lube in grooves during flight affect accuracy?

[ghh3rd]

I've been pondering on this for a while, thinking about asking so here you go.

I used to assume that when I shot a lubed boolit, the extreme gyration would throw all of the lube off the boolit as soon as it exited the barrel. I use Felix Lube which is soft, so I can't imagine how that could hold on to the boolit in flight.

I have seen several pictures of recovered boolits with varying amounts of lube remaining in the grooves. Isn't having chunks of lube stuck in the lube grooves detremental to accuracy? Wouldn't it be desirable to have all of the lube either stay in the grooves or have it all leave the grooves to maintain an even balance?

Randy

[paul h]

Yes, I agree the ideal is either all or nothing regarding the lube in the grooves. The question regarding a retrieved bullet is did the lube come off in the media that stopped the bullet, and did the media remove the lube in a consistant matter?

Just remember when casting, sizing and lubing bullets. You can get caught up in all sorts of what ifs, but all the matters is consistant accuracy at the target. If you're getting consistant good accuracy, then all is well. When things aren't working out, then start troubleshooting and analizing.

[44man]

I recover hundreds of boolits to study. I have never found one with Felix left in a groove. That is what I want.
Some lubes will have a chunk here and there, they throw a boolit out of balance just like when you lose a WW on your car.
I never lose a GC either until the boolit hits, I fit them tight.

[David Bachelder]

I guess I'm too simple minded. If lube remains on a spent bullet, wouldn't that indicate there was too much lube to begin with? If it's not used then why have it? I'm wondering if this lube business is overrated.

I think it is.

[felix]

Yes, it is! It's no different than the need to get to the moon (and beyond). ... felix

[beagle]

I ran some tests years ago with a scoped M94 .44 Magnum and the Lyman 429303 which is a real lube hog with excessive capacity lube grooves.

Accuracy wasn't there for me but I was surprised at the amount of "lube boogers" on the target face at 100 yards so lube is definitely being shed in flight and I can't help but think this affects accuracy by shifting the aerodynamics/weight in flight. Now, to what extent, I can't say./beagle

[geargnasher]

I guess I'm too simple minded. If lube remains on a spent bullet, wouldn't that indicate there was too much lube to begin with? If it's not used then why have it? I'm wondering if this lube business is overrated.

I think it is.

The good news is you still have a whole lot to learn about how lube functions and how much difference lube quality/formulation can make, so your potential for boredom in this hobby is low for a while yet.

Gear

[45-70 Chevroner]

I have used a lot of different lubes, and when I have recovered boolits from the berm, I have never found one with lube left on it. I have also shot a lot of commercial cast boolits that had fairly hard red or blue lube and the ones that I have pulled from the berm have never had any lube left on them. As for accuracy I don't think it effects it at all. If you weigh a one or two grove 38 boolit with and with out the lube there is only about .02 to .03 of a grain difference. If some of the lube did stick to the boolit it would not effect the accuracy of the boolit. I have shot boolits with slight casting wrinkles and they have shot into the group and I have tested this. If a boolit were effected by a little lube a wrinkle would be worse.

44man, I'm not trying to pick on you but, I have shot thousands of rifle and pistol boolits with gas checks that were not crimp on GCs and they allways fall off in flight and it had no effect on the accuracy of the boolit. When "Ideal" was making gas checks they did not make crimp on checks. The checks even came off in my hand once in a while when reloading and all I did was slip it back on and load it. I never found a gas check at the berm unless I was very close to the berm and they were usually right on the surface.

[btroj]

The good news is you still have a whole lot to learn about how lube functions and how much difference lube quality/formulation can make, so your potential for boredom in this hobby is low for a while yet.

Gear

Well stated. A lube is more than we think yet less than we think. It does more than lube and shouldn't be taken for granted.

I don't care if lube stays on or if it all comes off. It just needs to be consistant from shot to shot.
I got lots of lube boogers on 100 yard targets with CR. never get them with many other lubes.

Why would we want a bullet with changing weight/balance during flight?

[geargnasher]

Here's a couple of many recent examples of "lube matters".

You can't see it in the pic, but there were specks of unmelted lube on the 50-yard target after firing the soap lube group.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/imagehosting/thum_89094f762eeb4915f.jpg (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=4631)

Gear

[44man]

I have used a lot of different lubes, and when I have recovered boolits from the berm, I have never found one with lube left on it. I have also shot a lot of commercial cast boolits that had fairly hard red or blue lube and the ones that I have pulled from the berm have never had any lube left on them. As for accuracy I don't think it effects it at all. If you weigh a one or two grove 38 boolit with and with out the lube there is only about .02 to .03 of a grain difference. If some of the lube did stick to the boolit it would not effect the accuracy of the boolit. I have shot boolits with slight casting wrinkles and they have shot into the group and I have tested this. If a boolit were effected by a little lube a wrinkle would be worse.

44man, I'm not trying to pick on you but, I have shot thousands of rifle and pistol boolits with gas checks that were not crimp on GCs and they allways fall off in flight and it had no effect on the accuracy of the boolit. When "Ideal" was making gas checks they did not make crimp on checks. The checks even came off in my hand once in a while when reloading and all I did was slip it back on and load it. I never found a gas check at the berm unless I was very close to the berm and they were usually right on the surface.
Gas checks are like wads. If they all fall off the same distance it is OK. It is when one hangs on to the target but another left fast.
Berms are not good to recover boolits. Too much damage. A boolit can lose lube at different distances too. So what happens before all lube is gone?
You have to look at how fast a boolit spins and how little weight is needed to throw it off. I find many commercial boolits with a chunk of lube left here and there.
All lube should be gone instantly at the muzzle or all should stay in until impact.
It is strange store bought boolits can lose half the lube to the bottom of the box yet retain some to the target.

[popper]

It's a gyroscope problem. Faster & lighter will be affected more by lube sluffing. Compare losing a tire at 5 vs 50 mph.
All lube should be gone instantly at the muzzle or all should stay in until impact. Consistency is the name of the game.

[Bigslug]

This lube-flinging topic is really beginning to fascinate me. . .

You would THINK that with the rotational speeds of bullets being what they are, lube would be kicked clear immediately at the muzzle. I've done experiments with 12 gauge tactical buckshot loads through rifled barrels intended for sabot slugs - the result is a near-useless, donut-hole shaped pattern at only ten yards. Obviously, there's a lot of gyroscopic torque with even slow shotgun twists and modest 1200fps velocities. Yet we still have lube spatter on targets as far away as a hundred yards. Curious. . .

I do know that the center of mass of a bullet does not usually coincide perfectly with its center of shape. A bullet starts out spinning around its center of shape, because the barrel forces it to do so. The bullet will tend to wobble for the first bit of its travel through the air as the rotation shifts from center of shape to center of mass. VLD target bullets are especially known for this - they do not usually group as tightly as flat-base slugs at short range because of the wobble, but as they "go to sleep", they are much more stable over the long haul of hundreds of yards.

I'm wondering if this wobble over shorter distances might have something to do with a bullet hanging onto lube. If there is still lube on the bullet at 100 yards but not at 200, I have to wonder if this is due to the bullet settling down and the gyroscopic forces becoming more consistent, or if the lube has simply been subjected to those gyroscopic forces for a longer period.:veryconfu

[btroj]

Haven't really shot many cast bullets on paper at 200 yards. I do know that I could reliably find bits of Carnuba Red on 100 yard targets with my 45-70.

With the relatively short, blunt bullet design of many cast bullets I wonder how quickly they "go to sleep"? I would expect pretty fast. A 420 gr flat nosed 45-70 bullet is about as far from a VLD as you can get.

Interesting concept.

[popper]

Gyro action (stability) is immediate from the muzzle. Sluffing lube erratically upsets the gyro action and can throw the bullet off the desired trajectory. The effect is lesser for high rotational mass, i.e. heavier or faster bullet.

[Bigslug]

Gyro action (stability) is immediate from the muzzle. Sluffing lube erratically upsets the gyro action and can throw the bullet off the desired trajectory. The effect is lesser for high rotational mass, i.e. heavier or faster bullet.

This does raise some interesting "chicken before egg" questions.

A bullet is not spinning in a perfect circle when it leaves the muzzle, or, more accurately, it isn't spinning in a perfect circle very shortly after leaving the muzzle - UNLESS the center of mass and center of shape are on exactly the same pole through the bullet. They'll usually be close, but not dead-on the same.

The result of this is that the nose and base of the bullet wobble like an imperfectly thrown football until that center of rotation shifts from center shape to center mass. Keep in mind that the point of a bullet may not be precisely aligned with the center of mass, so that even after the wobble "goes to sleep" and the sides of the bullet are parallel to the flight path, the nose may not be in the center of that spiral.

At any rate, the initial wobble is likely to be less on a bluntish cast pill than would be seen on a long, skinny, jacketed VLD. Some of questions that arise would then be:

1. Does this wobble delay the ejection of lube in any way?

2. Is what some of this forum's casters are perceiving as instability caused by uneven lube retention actually just part of the bullet's normal early-flight characteristics?

3. If lube retention is NOT the cause of any accuracy problems, do we need to be looking at concentricity of the molds or uniformity of cast?

4. If lube retention IS the cause of any accuracy problems, is the mix of the lube the ideal approach (as Geargnasher is on a Holy Quest for), or should we be looking at shaping the lube grooves in the mold for more effective release of lube?(I'm thinking a square-bottomed groove would be the ticket)

[felix]

Shape of the lube groove should be set up to release from the mold with the integrity of the boolit in mind, and nothing else because of the importance of boolit uniformity first and foremost. ... felix

[popper]

wobble "goes to sleep" Never happens. Yes, the bullet will transition from the bbl to air, but any wobble will only get worse. Now if halfway to the target a big chunk of lube from one side flies off, the bullet changes it's precession and the path will change. A large enough chunk and it can tumble. Like Felix says, bullet integrity, but the lube is part of the bullet. Considering tensile strength is what holds lube on a bullet and is what makes the lube hard. There isn't much lube in the groove, it doesn't weigh much but it has high energy e=mv^2), lost when it falls off. Soft lube has lower tensile strength and should release sooner and more evenly. So I think no, the shape of the lube grooves is fine, the SIZE of the grooves may need to be changed as they determine how much lube is carried. Comparing a bullet to a football is not quite correct. The bullet ALWAYS rotates around the center of mass - that doesn't mean it rotates around the geometric center. If the center of mass is NOT in direct line with the force vector, 'wobble' is introduced, which happens immediately leaving the muzzle and can only get worse. Can't put 'english' on a bullet.

[btroj]

Bullets going to sleep is certainly believed in by many bench rest shooters and high power competitors.

[MT Gianni]

Lube 5 bullets with lube only on 1/2 of their side and use the hardest lube that you can find. Orient them in your bbl if you wish. Lube 15 boolits fully. Shoot 10 to lube purge, then compare your groups of five. I do n ot see it making much of a difference @ 25 yards or less but could believe it would mean a lot @100-200 yards.

[geargnasher]

Cast boolits "go to sleep" same as any other boolit. A typical round-nosed, gas-checked .30 caliber is usually quiet by 3-400 yards, then it hits the subsonic transition and all goes to heck again. Most guys aren't shooting them that far for a number of reasons, including expectation levels or loading ability.

I've proven over and over again that lube jettison is critical to fine accuracy by doing accuracy comparisons between slightly modified versions of the same lube. For example, I have a "summer" version of Felix lube, which is simply the original recipe plus a teaspoon carnauba wax. This lube won't group quite as well in several of my rifles in cold weather (below 50 degrees) no matter how hot the barrel because the lube isn't coming off at the muzzle any more. Lube flecks are often visible on 100-yard targets. Deleting the Carnauba and adding a tablespoon of vaseline or ATF completly takes care of the issue, accuracy returns, and the lube flecks disappear. The winter lube starts causing "purge flyers" about every three or four shots predictably in hot weather due to, I believe, the lube being "too slick". Point-blank jettison tests and lube recovery (collecting the spatter off of shiny posterboard and weighing it) usually yield about the same recovery as the summer formula does in warm weather. The guns shoot the same, from first shot through long strings, hot or cold, same exact load and components, with only a tweak to the lube and the observable difference in lube spatter recovery. I've done it enough to pretty much conclude that if the lube isn't leaving the boolit, it spoils accuracy, and that whether the lube does or doesn't all leave at the muzzle is primarily a function of the lube's viscosity.

Gear

[44man]

Bullets going to sleep is certainly believed in by many bench rest shooters and high power competitors.
It is true! I have had a lot of experience with it during my varmint and IHMSA days. It can be seen through a good scope. Even a 240 gr bullet from a model 29 does it, just going to a 250 gr will stop it.
It is the result of over spin.
Cast BR shooters usually use a slower twist for the closer ranges.
A faster twist is better for real long ranges. They really do go to sleep at some distance and close range groups are larger then long range.
I liked the 220 Swift over the 22-250 because of the twist. I could shoot a heavier bullet farther while the 22-250 wanted a lighter bullet.
The Swift never shot good 100 yard groups but it could head shoot chucks at 600 yards. My sight in distance was 350 yards then it was easy to dial for distance with the big Balvar 24 scope.
A gun like this is very hard to work loads at 100 yards.

[btroj]

Exactly!
Shooting 200 yard reduced course highpower matches I learned that a lighter bullet often shot tighter groups than the heavier ones. Go past 300 yarss and things reversed.

The longer i shoot cast the more convinced I become that lube flinging off the bullet quickly is a good thing. A softer lube is a good thing here.

[beagle]

IMO, based on messing with gyroscopes, bullets do "go to sleep" and stabilize down the flight path. I'm not certain that this is accomplished in a hundred yards but it does happen is my belief. Now, whether this affects the shedding of lube or whether shedding of lube affects this penomonen is the question in my mind./beagle


Bullets going to sleep is certainly believed in by many bench rest shooters and high power competitors.

[beagle]

Then, there's the "shock/bump" when the bullet enters and leaves the sound barrier. This has to have some affect on the stability and also on the lube sloughing as well./beagle

[DrB]

Conservation of momentum says lube flinging from the bullet one direction means the bullet has the opposite resultant vector of the sum of the momentum vectors of the lube bits (it goes the other way). may not be much because the lube bits don't mass much.

Also, you will upset the axis of rotation some because of the conservation of angular momentum... This may damp out downrange depending.

Then you have the shove of gas venting around the bullet with separating lube at crown departure. Anyway you look at it greater uniformity in what the lube does is going to trend to improve accuracy. A very hard coating that stays with the bullet might have as much or more accuracy potential (think gilding metal jacket) as a bullet lube that cleanly flings/ blows off at the muzzle (relatively soft/untacky lube or a good pp load for example).

Uniformity and consistency are keys to accuracy.

See y'all in another month. :)


Good shooting and best regards,
DrB

[popper]

Not trying to be argumentative, but a bullet responds to forces acting on it, in or out of the bbl. Outside it's wind, air resistance, gravity, lube sluffing, mechanical imbalance, shock wave changes and of course the force vector that pushes it forward. I believe the OP is saying aerodynamic forces can stabilize or damp out and put it to 'sleep'? Shooters evidence on bullet profile vs accuracy tend to disprove that theory, i.e. short vs long, pointy vs flat. A bullet leaving the muzzle with a nose-up attitude may very quickly align itself due aerodynamics, but could just as easily tumble or spiral out of control. I believe the theory behind boat tail designs is to REDUCE aerodynamic effects. It reduces the turbulence and size of the low pressure zone (shock wave) behind the bullet and reduces the deceleration forces. Note the discussions about base deformity and accuracy. Pointy noses 'pin' the shock wave to a stable position, RN and FN don't. A poorly thrown pass doesn't get any better down range, although it MAY appear so. Read a good article 2 yrs ago about spin-drift in cross wind, uphill/down hill shooting which explained these phenomena.

[44man]

Lot of theories and math about cast. WFN will not stabilize, etc but I shoot them to 500 meters from revolvers and clang a ram every shot. I never had a problem because it is a proper boolit hardness, case tension and velocity.
We have so many forces acting on any bullet/boolit it is crazy but only the military has worked it out for each bullet none of which are cast with all kinds of shapes. We are on our own.
To even think of math makes me want to quit shooting so I just do the shooting to see.
Gear maybe does much more then I do and he has never been wrong in all the years we have been here.
You fellas go way out to make sure there is not an air hole in a boolit but you just can not ignore any out of balance even if from lube.
I just had a thought for you to try. Pound a lead shot into one side of a GG and shoot some. Sounds nuts! [smilie=l: Be fun to see though.
Remember the Juenke device to check balance of a bullet? I wanted one until I found it will not work on lead.
Anyway, don't leave anything to chance. If you think of something you might be right. Put away the pencil and make some tests.
My idea of a bullet that goes to sleep is that it has reached the perfect spin for the forward velocity. That reduces outside influences better. It is like a gyro with the perfect spin, it resists all motion and tries to correct everything.

[btroj]

Sort of like a top. First start one and they wobble a bit. Once the settle down, or go to sleep, they spin, well, like a top!

Lube that flings off at the muzzle every shot can't influence the bullet later on. Lube that stays on past the muzzle can influence a bullet.

I prefer having the lube gone, no chance it can cause issues later on.

[Alan in Vermont]

I'm not really convinced that ..5 gr. of lube is going to matter one way or the other if only part of it leaves the boolit. Could well be that I never could shoot good enough to detect it, I sure know I can't now. But I'm having fun anyhow. Then again, I'm not prone to making hard to believe claims about my abilities either.

[geargnasher]

I'm not really convinced that ..5 gr. of lube is going to matter one way or the other if only part of it leaves the boolit. Could well be that I never could shoot good enough to detect it, I sure know I can't now. But I'm having fun anyhow. Then again, I'm not prone to making hard to believe claims about my abilities either.

Nobody's trying to convince you, only present the facts as we've found them.

If you don't think half a groove full of lube will affect the way a boolit flys, drill a dimple in the bottom of a lube groove or in the side of a boolit's nose some time and see how they shoot at long range.

Gear

[btroj]

The lube not coming off is a problem.
What if it doesn't at all one shot, does partially at 25 yards another shot, and does entirely at 75 yards on another?

Variations in bullet weight are an issue. Now we are talking about variable variations. What could be worse?

[popper]

I removed ~ .5 - 1 gr from the base band of 175 40SW. 10 rnds formed an arc 2" from POA @ 25 yds. Talk about predictability. Higher rpm exacerbates the problem. Bullet path is not a line, but is ALWAYS a nutating spiral to the target. Trick is to keep the radii of the spiral small.

[btroj]

A handgun at 25 yards is far from ideal for testing the effect of bullet defects. Try an accurate rifle at 100 yards as a minimum.

[Huntducks]

Not for one min. do I feel 2-3>10's of lube will effect accuracy in any maner that you can hold and shoot that well.

Now spin drift will effect accuracy the longer the shot as much as 1" at 300-400 yds right hand twist bullet goes to right. A normal handgun shooting at 100 yds or less might see a slight movement in spin drift.

[Larry Gibson]

I'm not really convinced that ..5 gr. of lube is going to matter one way or the other if only part of it leaves the boolit. Could well be that I never could shoot good enough to detect it, I sure know I can't now. But I'm having fun anyhow. Then again, I'm not prone to making hard to believe claims about my abilities either.

If the lube comes off in chunks and does not come of equally around the circumference of the lube groove then the bullet is unbalanced around the rotational axis. DrB describes the laws of ballistics that make the bullet lose accuracy from such effects and is quite correct. The higher the RPM the greater the effect the imbalance causes and the greater the loss of accuracy. Knowing simply that all precision match shooters, especially long range and bench rest shooters, strive to use the most balanced bullet possible and that includes cast bullet bench rest shooters should give us a good indicaton that throwing lube off unevenly is not good for the balance of the bullet and thus not good for accuracy.

In the 6.5 Swede and .308W at HV threads this subject came up and was discussed at length. I posted pictures of my chronograph screens that had strips of thrown off lube that were not the length of the circumference of the lube grooves. The bullet holes also showed "tails" and lube residue showing the lube was coming off unevenly. Accuracy with such was not good. However, once I went back to a softer lube (Javelina) lube was still evident on the screens but not on the target and accuracy wasmuch improved.

Unless you are using the wrong lube, pushing to high enough RPM to throw the lube off and are conducting extensive enough testing you probably won't notice any difference. If your having fun and enjoying your shooting with cast bullets then all is well on your end. Some of us are prone to enjoy the more essoteric side of the sport though and such interests us. I'll leave the judgement on your shooting abilities to you:wink:

Larry Gibson

[runfiverun]

Cast boolits "go to sleep" same as any other boolit. A typical round-nosed, gas-checked .30 caliber is usually quiet by 3-400 yards, then it hits the subsonic transition and all goes to heck again. Most guys aren't shooting them that far for a number of reasons, including expectation levels or loading ability.

I've proven over and over again that lube jettison is critical to fine accuracy by doing accuracy comparisons between slightly modified versions of the same lube. For example, I have a "summer" version of Felix lube, which is simply the original recipe plus a teaspoon carnauba wax. This lube won't group quite as well in several of my rifles in cold weather (below 50 degrees) no matter how hot the barrel because the lube isn't coming off at the muzzle any more. Lube flecks are often visible on 100-yard targets. Deleting the Carnauba and adding a tablespoon of vaseline or ATF completly takes care of the issue, accuracy returns, and the lube flecks disappear. The winter lube starts causing "purge flyers" about every three or four shots predictably in hot weather due to, I believe, the lube being "too slick". Point-blank jettison tests and lube recovery (collecting the spatter off of shiny posterboard and weighing it) usually yield about the same recovery as the summer formula does in warm weather. The guns shoot the same, from first shot through long strings, hot or cold, same exact load and components, with only a tweak to the lube and the observable difference in lube spatter recovery. I've done it enough to pretty much conclude that if the lube isn't leaving the boolit, it spoils accuracy, and that whether the lube does or doesn't all leave at the muzzle is primarily a function of the lube's viscosity.

Gear

using a completly different set of lubes i have the exact same findings.
in fact during the summer i can willingly & predictably blow groups by adding more lube to the boolit or by using the 'wetter' winter fomula.

skim through the "quest" sticky that is still ongoing, you can see and read how lube ingredients affect our shooting,and help follow through on some of the testing.

[geargnasher]

Not for one min. do I feel 2-3>10's of lube will effect accuracy in any maner that you can hold and shoot that well.

Now spin drift will effect accuracy the longer the shot as much as 1" at 300-400 yds right hand twist bullet goes to right. A normal handgun shooting at 100 yds or less might see a slight movement in spin drift.

It happens, whether you believe it or not. Lube that hangs on too long can increase 100-yard, .30 caliber groups by as much as an inch quite predictably. I'm not the best bench shooter in the world, but I can usually hold at least 1MOA at any range with adequate optics and the rifle thrown across a shooting bag, so the effect of partial lube purge is plenty obvious even for me.

Gear

[44man]

Gear, I will be 100% interested in your lube tests.
I am lazy and stick with Felix for my revolvers but YES, I see different group sizes as weather changes. It happens with about any lube.
Right now the .44 is the worst offender with the larger calibers showing very little difference.
I have to think of twist rates along these lines of lube purge. My BFR's all have very fast twist rates while the SBH is 1 in 20".
The BFR 45-70 has 1 in 14", the .475 has 1 in 15" and the JRH has 1 in 15".
Is that why I see less change? Does a slower twist need a more specific lube?
Thinking of twist and going back to when I had the Marlin .44 with the 1 in 38" rate might shed light. Best range was 50 yards no matter but here is a lube test I did. I used hard LBT Blue on the left group and Felix on the right.
Food for thought anyway. :drinks:

[popper]

A handgun at 25 yards is far from ideal for testing the effect of bullet defects But it did prove the point. The experiment was done because I was curious about base damage. The way I damaged the base also unbalanced it. If tried @ 100, it wouldn't have hit the target. I posted the target pic a while back. Holes were round (surprised me) and undamaged were @ POA, damaged were in an arc 11-6 oclock around POA. You can do as suggested, drill a hole to remove 0.5,1.0 gr from the lube groove and see what happens. I predict that the further from the CB center of mass the worse the inaccuracy gets.

[snuffy]

This is just great!. Something else to ponder. It just don't get easier, does it?

I had never considered whether the lube does fling off a boolit, at the muzzle, half way to the target, or stays with/in the grooves. I'll have to take a closer look at the targets to see if the lube is throwing boogers on the paper.

I just started using carnuba red, because of good reports here and I like the way it feels. I rigged up a heater, and a light dimmer to control the heat. I even put a TC in the base of the 450, and ran it with my PID.

Because it's so sticky, and it requires heat to flow, I wonder if it doesn't stay in the grooves. Does the heat rise fast enough in a boolit fired, so that it is flowing enough to get flung off at the muzzle?

Maybe that's why NRA 50/50 AKA javelena works so well, it has to be at room temp to be solid. Summer heat, then firing heat probably mean it's liquid when it leaves the muzzle.

[Larry Gibson]

[I][Maybe that's why NRA 50/50 AKA javelena works so well, it has to be at room temp to be solid. Summer heat, then firing heat probably mean it's liquid when it leaves the muzzle./I]

My thoughts exactly.

Larry Gibson

[geargnasher]

But it did prove the point. The experiment was done because I was curious about base damage. The way I damaged the base also unbalanced it. If tried @ 100, it wouldn't have hit the target. I posted the target pic a while back. Holes were round (surprised me) and undamaged were @ POA, damaged were in an arc 11-6 oclock around POA. You can do as suggested, drill a hole to remove 0.5,1.0 gr from the lube groove and see what happens. I predict that the further from the CB center of mass the worse the inaccuracy gets.

If you damaged the base, it wasn't balance that was blowing your groups at 25 yards, it was deflection from the muzzle due to uneven muzzle blast. Drill or fill part of a lube groove and keep the bases perfect and I'll bet you can't tell the difference at all at any range with that pistol.

Gear

[Larry Gibson]

Drill or fill part of a lube groove and keep the bases perfect

I have done just that in numerous tests with both cast and jacketed bullets in rifles and handguns.

...........and I'll bet you can't tell the difference at all at any range with that pistol.

I would beg to differ, the difference in deterioration of accuracy is readily apparent in as little as 25 yards with handgun and rifle bullets so unbalenced.

Larry Gibson

[Cadillo]

Bullets going to sleep is certainly believed in by many bench rest shooters and high power competitors.

Hatcher proved it through penetration tests at various ranges. 3006 ball penetrates much deeper when striking a hard medium at longer ranges than it does at shorter ranges.

Also, his chapter on headspace is an essential read for any loader of rifle cartridges.

"Hatcher's Notebook"