I have seen several glowing references to Northfork Cup Point bullets. However, I have been to the Northfork web site and cannot find any reference to these bullets.

Where can I find some information about these? This isn't another name for the standard NF bullet, is it?

Any help is appreciated.

Bob.

Well the reason you will not find them on the NF website is because they are not available for common sales yet.

The cup points have been tested among professionals this year and have been in the development stage for a while. And Mike is like me , we make damn sure things are tip top before releasing them to the general public.

If you wait until spring 2005 you can get them too

I think if you call Mike he will get you four or five, if it's a common caliber, I have some .416's. He is somewhat concerned about the flat nose solids and cup point bullets feeding in some rifles, they actually feed smoother than the Woodleigh soft points in my .416 Rigby. Apparently some have had a feeding problem with them. Some of his other bullets like 9.3mm 286 grain bullets also don't show up on the website but are available.

.

Dr. Alf,

I have corresponded with Mike on his designs for solids. The cup point gives increased tissue damage, with less penetration than a flat point North Fork solid bullet. Mike says that you can have either tissue damage, or penetration, but not both together. The particular design trades one for the other.

I asked Mike to put me on his notification list for the flat point solid when it is ready for market, as that is the bullet I need. I already have a North Fork soft point to damage tissue.

Mike tests his bullets in gelatin over a range of velocities, and also farms them out to some users to try in the field. I expect what people are hearing are the results of field use, which is of course anecdotal.

"The plural of ancecdote is not data".

jim

Thanks for the replies!

Does anyone have a handy picture of one of these bullets?

I'm just interested.

Yep,

Anecdotes can add up to data eventually. I am starting with one mature bull bison (3 year-old) killed by one shot with a North Fork .423/380gr soft at about 2500 fps impact velocity. It sprayed blood from the chest entrance wound as it staggered about 18 yards and fell.



Next anecdote for the same load and rifle as above, is 3 of the plastic 5-gallon buckets filled with water and laid end to end on the ground. The first bucket had its side ripped open and flung skyward. Buckets #2 and #3 in the train were neatly perforated with 3/4" holes, and bucket #3 had a dent in the bottom of the bucket shaped like the nose of the expanded bucket.



And a third anecdote: It required 9 of the water filled 5-gallon plastic buckets to stop a North Fork .423/380gr FP solid (at about 2500 fps again), and the lid of the ninth bucket captured the FP still pointing nose forward ... straight-line stable penetration for 9'4" of water plus 16 bucket lids/bottoms completely penetrated and halfway through the seventeenth. None of the bucket sides were split open as with the North Fork Soft Point, however, but penetration was more than enough, it would seem.



The book, _Nyati_, published by _African Hunter_ magazine, says that the flatnosed monometal solid is the way to go. "End of story." They have a lot of anecdotes and wet pack testing to support that. They said the FP/FN type bullet gives better wounding and better solid performance than the round nose solids. They haven't tried the Cup Points, but neither have I.



Mike Brady is estimating a 1 to 10 scale of penetration for his North Fork bullets, as follows:



SP (Soft Point): 3

CP (Cup Point): 7

FP (Flat Point): 10



The CP is supposed to give more cavitation and explosive disruption than the FP, but less than the SP. The CP is supposed to penetrate less than the FP. Apparently this is due to some mushrooming of the Cup Point in game.



After crushing bone in a bison the SP retained 94%.

After perfect mushrooming in the water bucket train it retained 96%.



Mike Brady is doing something very right.



If I can get some of the Cup Points in .423/380gr, I will repeat the 5-gallon water bucket train to see how it compares to Mike's scale, using all three makes of his bullets in .423/380gr. Also to see if the Cup Point mushrooms any in water and plastic buckets. The FP does not. I wonder what test media he has been using?

From what I've read, it seems that this design could make for a good light bullet in the larger calibers (ex. 300-350gr .458).

Lighter bullets could be driven faster for better trajectories, and the non-deforming design would mitigate against the low SD while still doing a modicum of tissue destruction.

This would not, of course, be for large or dangerous game, but as a light-game bullet for the larger calibers.

What do you think?

Hi Jim,
Very good and rigorous you are there, well taken. Thanks.

Best Regards,
Ron

RangerBob,
That sounds like a good idea, but we cannot saddle Mike Brady with the load of making all the lightweights in Cup Point aimed at a small niche market. Maybe someday when North Fork becomes a mega-corporation they will be offered, maybe even a 300 grain .423.

Or fodder for another startup custom bullet maker ...

.

Alf,

The Cup Point is a mystery to me too. I am just repeating what I have heard over the backyard fence of the internet, about the Cup Point.



BTW, I am the one that supplied Gerard with his copy of Duncan MacPherson's tome of 1994 copyright, _Bullet Penetration_, since I bought two of them back when Andy was recommending it (2001), and sent one along as a gift to RSA. I don't think he learned much from it, since he already knew most of it from his own research.



I know that Gerard can get his FN's to mushroom slightly by shooting them into steel 55-gallon drums full of sand. I am not sure what he has tested a Cup point on, nor Mike Brady.



The Cup point sounds like a large and shallow hollow point, so it might be legal where the FN or FP is not legal here in the USA, for thin skinned game.



The North Fork Soft Point is an improved version of the Bear Claw. The North Fork has never failed to mushroom on game, by all the reports here and about, and a lot of them have been used. I'd like to hear from anyone with experience of any North Fork Soft Point failure of any kind.



Hey, this stuff is for fun mainly, but I am a board certified and recertified M.D. "scientist" who has heavy background in chemical engineering and accounting (he he), and that included a lot of engineering, business, and bio statistics from three different schools. So, I understand when data is significant and not, p-values, etc.



Hey I am an old Trekkie who idolized Mr. Spock because he could calculate the probability of anything, in his head after a mere glance at the situation.



Maybe Gerard did not test the particular configuration and alloy of the North Fork Cup Point? I do not believe that MacPherson was concerned with rifle bullets as much as handgun bullets. I gotta believe that a deep enough and broad enough Cup would stop behaving like an FP/FN at some point. Would a Cup Point produce supercavitation? I dunno.



But what is the point of the Cup Point? Less penetration and more shock than an FN/FP. I gotta believe this could come about only by some mushrooming, and the Cup Point is neither fish nor fowl, but legally speaking (he he) might be considered a soft point for field use. I hope so.



And, I proposed above to test the Cup Point and the Flat Point head to head in my water bucket train. Of course the train will be level and perfectly straight next time, and all hits will be dead center.

Alf,

Didnt Mike give you some CP's and FN .423's when you picked up your order of bonded soft points?

Mikes Cup Point is a true expanding bullet. I think other CP's are not. They are more than a concave HP, but really more like a wide shallow HP.

They expand.

Ive driven the 450 grain GSFN up to 2,550 fps and it sets back the truncated cone FN a bit but it does not expand to anything like the .458 diameter of the bullet. It would take a very high velocity thiry caliber or less to deform an annealed solid copper FN.

Ray has posted pictures of the .404 and .470 CP here and it clearly shows they expand, but modestly.

Unlike most Barnes X they seem to not blow off the expanded mushroom.

Mike uses book binding glue to test his bullets, and when they are right for the vel of the bullet caliber he will sell them.

Andy

I have shot about half a dozen buffalo with the cuppoints, last year and this year...I prefer them to any bullet I have ever used..Suggest those who are concerned just try them...The do expand and I have already posted pictures of recovered bullets, which are very hard to recover as mostly the leave two holes....

In the 404 380 gr. I got beatiful expansion about like one would expect from a Nosler that lost its core and pealed back against the base, plus I got solid like penetration with them and more internal damage..Much better than the flat point in killing the black bulls IMO...

In the 470 500 gr. cup points I got what looked like a cone, expanded to about 60 caliber but no roll back..but I was shooting them at 2020 FPS MV...but even at that I could not have asked for better performance or faster kills, it just knocked the wind out of there sales and they piled up on the spot are after a very short run of several yards....

IMO, the Northfork cup points are the best Buffalo bullet I have ever used hands down, and I have shot a heck of a lot of buffalo with different bullets, calibers and loads....

Gentlemen

Can any of you post a picture of these Cup point bullets.
I would like to copy them and make some in cal. .510


Cheers,

Andr�

Ray,

I got the email of the pictures of the Cup Point. Thanks.

I am unable to post these right now, due to some restrictions due to travel, as I don't travel with a laptop, my son does, but I don't have to and don't care to.



Sorry, but when I get home I'll post them if someone else hasn't. Thanks again.



I gotta try all the North Fork bullets in .416/370gr (SP, FP, CP) in the upcoming African Sheep Rifle II in .416 Dakota. I gotta try the .423/380 grain CP versus the FP in a "water bucket" penetration test too.



One doesn't need 10% ordnance gelatin at 4 degrees Celcius to test high velocity rifle loads. Ordnance gelatin is for the low-power handgun man-stopper testing. Water will work just fine to expand and deform an SP or hollowpoint, and it is quite a tough impact medium for +2000 fps rifle bullets so it ought to do the same for the CP (Ever try a belly flop off the Golden Gate Bridge?).



50 gallon drums full of sand will not be needed for this. From my reading of Duncan MacPherson's _Bullet Penetration_, I know this to be true: You can get some good data from tissue simulants, even water in a series of plastic containers, but you have to shoot a large enough sample size.



Glad to hear 500grains agrees that the CP works great.



Mike Brady who makes the CP says that they penetrate less than the FP, but they still penetrate more than double what the SP will do.



Of course the SP will cause geysers of blood and lung tissue to spray from the entrance wound of a chest shot buffalo, which no solid can do, unless it is the "soft-solid" CP, with it's wide and shallow hollowpoint.



Some of those recovered CP's did indeed look like some of Saeed's recovered Walterhog hollowpoints, which begs the question: Is it a soft or is it a solid, or is it both? A soft-solid?