do you weigh your boolits?

[jeff223]

i made some good head way with my cast shooting but when i go to shoot for a good group i will get two that are about one inch apart at 100yds then i will get another one in there about 2 to 3 inches away from the others and sometimes it might be 4 inches away from the others

im casting with a Lee 6 holer and im thinking i have a hole or two that gives a heavyer boolit than the others.what do you think about that?should i weigh them just to see.how much differance can i get away with?i could live with 2 or 2.5 inch groups at 100.the size of a SKOAL can
thank,
jeff

[NVcurmudgeon]

Jeff, this question depends on many things, but mainly on the purpose you have in mind. I weigh boolits only for competition, and when working up loads. Competition for me is the annual Nevada Cast Bulllet Shoot and postal matches on this board. All other uses get boolits which are visually insected only. I have a PACT electronic scale which makes weigh-sorting easy, but for my usual practice shooting it's not wrth the bother. When weigh-sorting I divide boolits into almost one grain difference lots. i.e. 199.0 to 199.9 gr. For my best match ammunition I select boolits from neither the heaviest nor the lightest group. It seems to work, I haven't had an unaccountable flyer for years. Also, I never weigh pistol boolits. I can't shoot that good.

[sundog]

Jeff, this has come up before, and we have certainly bantered it about a bit, haven't we, fellers? I weigh match boolits, and like the NVCurmudg, fliers are not a problem. My take is that for each batch of boolits that have been visually inpected and accepted, the lightweights in the bunch are ones with hidden voids. These voids basically amount to an air bubble under the skin, and by natural dispersion they will be off center more than on. What this means is the boolit is gonna wobble or even worse, corkscrew it way to the target. That's what I suspect, anyway. btw, I win my fair share of matches, so I think I'll keep on suspecting.... sundog

[BruceB]

Hmmm...NVC "insects" em, and Sundog "inpects" 'em, and me...I just look them over good and hope I don't "infect" 'em....

Typos are a curly bitch, ain't they? Sometimes I re-read a post three-four times and STILL don't catch them. All in fun here, guys.

[KCSO]

On average with just a good visual inspection my cast loads wil run under 3" at 100 yards. If I weigh the bullets I can get groups down to the 1 1/2" range and if I allign the bullets in the gc seater and allign them in the cases and weigh and check run out and ream the flash oles i can sometimes go under an inch for 5 shots at 100 yards from the bench. So for 99% of my shooting I just do a good visual. For a real match I will do all the extra's and i will weigh the bullets when working up a load. I also do my real testing at at least 100 yards as a 50 yard test is just an indicator, many loads that group well close up fail at 100+.

[charlie45]

Its just the way I am, but I weigh every thing. It helps to figure out whats going on. A new mold, you bet # the holes and see for your self what your getting. Maybe you want to skip hole #5. Just my 2 cents.

[Underclocked]

I shot several different bullets the other day in one of my muzzleloaders, all conicals that ranged in weight from 280 grains to 430 grains. The absolute extreme spread of all those shots was about 3.5". All shots were fired using the same everything except bullet and at a range of 100 yards. I've decided that weight sorting, at least for that particular muzzleloader might be a waste of time - but I do it anyway.

[buck1]

I put all rifle boolits to the scale! My groups were cut down half in size and flyers went away all together......FWIW................Buck

[NVcurmudgeon]

Bruce, of course I "insect" my boolits, how else would I get the bugs out of them? (One, two, three, groan.)

[swheeler]

Jeff5.56; almost never anymore, takes away from precious shootin' time!

[David R]

Weighing boolits would be great, but I live in the real world and don't have much time. I do weigh for a 300 yard match or something, but generally I just shoot em.

Since I started using the BruceB method the ES of the weights went way down.

22-250 1" and a little for 10 shots @ 100 yards with weighed boolits to .5 grain

308 1 3/8" for 5 shots @ 100 visiually inspected.

I could weigh all I want for my enfield and it will still shoot 10 shots into 3 to 5 inches at 100 yards.

If I had a good digital scale, I would be more selective for matches. Now I just use a beam scale and its a pain in Da Butt.

David

[felix]

David, do the 22s at one-tenth grain increments. Anything more than .2 below the AVERAGE of them all per lot, chunk those back into the pot. Anything more than .4 above the average throw back into the pot. If only 10 percent or so of the entire lot are at .3 and .4 above, throw all of those back into the pot. Chunk the entire lot if you have a spread more than 50 percent of the lot that is wider than a half grain. ... felix

[mike in co]

Weighing boolits would be great, but I live in the real world and don't have much time. I do weigh for a 300 yard match or something, but generally I just shoot em.

......

If I had a good digital scale, I would be more selective for matches. Now I just use a beam scale and its a pain in Da Butt.

David

DAVID, AND THE REST OF YOU...

find the spread you want on your bollits....plus or minus....point 2, point 3 ??

weight a few and find two that weigh the plus or minus number

say you have a 180.5 plus or minus .3.... you need a 180.2 and a 180.8.

set the scale at 180.5 , put in the 180.8 and mark your scale where the pointer stops, do the same for the 180.3....
now when scaling boolits...dont wait for the beam to stop....as long as it is between the marks its a keeper.
put the rest in two piles..one for over, one for under. if there is a bunch then consider doing a seperate sort for them.