Andy,
I'm no gunsmith and wouldn't know where to start grinding, but in our rifles the ones we tried would catch on the front edge of the chamber due to their extemely flat and wide nose. Mike says these have gone through several design changes so they might be better now. We had two versions early last summer and neither one would feed up without catching the chamber lip. The rifles feed flawlessly with old TBSHs so I'm guessing these just have too much of a good thing. In any case, when my new rifle is built I will have the 'smith see about making it work with these. Never know, I might need to shoot an elephant off of my shoelaces one day!

John S,
That is an easy fix to put a little more bevel and polish on the breech end of the chamber edge. Gotta take the barrel off to do it usually, and the Mauser versus M70, etc are different. The new factory M70 Classics, with the extractor cuts in the barrel being a little different than the Pre-64, are famous now for being left knife sharp and needing a touch of smoothing/rounding. They can even jam on a RNSP or exposed lead spitzer.

I would be surprised if a Dakota needed that, but I have sure had to send my beater rifles back to the smith for that bit of finishing. The rails and ramp, box and follower I can polish myself as Andy says.

I found the truncated cone shape of the new FP (which is also that of the CP which I haven't tried yet) to feed better usually than the old North Fork Ogive-FP.

RIP,
Thanks for the info! Yes, even a Dakota, make that 2 Dakotas, might need some extra attention!

RIP,

Of course there is always vertical stack and those shitty Weatherbys

Mike

John,

I went back through some of our correspondence and believe that you and Joel had the 1st generation (experimantal) solid which had a truly wicked sharp edged Flat Nose on a RN profile ogive. These did notfeed too well in my rifle and Mike put a radius on them. This was his second gen design which RIP has bough alot of and these feed great! Next in line was the current Truncated Cone FN and according to Mike you do need to seat these to first or second driving band so there are still enough driving bands in the neck for the bullet to keep in place.

I am sure you have the 1st gen design, and you will find his current TC design alot more feed ramp friendly.

I dont know of any other bullet maker who will sell you a handful of bullets to see if they feed in your rifle, other than Mike.

Try the new TC or CP and let me know if your Dakota feeds as well as my on the cheap CZ550!

PS I love the bonded soft point Joel used. You dont need another bullet unless you want to slay jumbo. Even then Id try the bonded soft on anything but a full on frontal brain shot through the trunk. Its one stout bullet.

Check out the overlapping group I shot with the SP, CP, FN if you have not already on my imagestation photo albumn.

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2131666134

Keep in touch.

Andy

Ah, yes, The first North Fork Ogive solids had a rather sharp edge on the meplat of the flat point.

The current solids have been repeatedly improved and are much better now, except I would like to see more gripping surface on the shanks. That is pretty minimal, but will sure make them safe for an antique double rifle.

I wish the solids had shanks like the SP's.

The SP is perfect.

It would probably double the price of the solids to make them with shanks like the SP, eh?
Of course I do not understand the manufacturing process differences between the softs and solids.

My take on Swift bullets is that they always expand perfectly, in fact a little too perfect, they end up with an expanded base and a "smooth round top" that sometimes does little damage, it's like overkill in the right direction..I would prefer some ragged edges...The low and behold to further opinionate my opine, this year I killed a perfectly healthy, very fat old bull and it had a baseball size calloused ball on the off side skin, that gob of gristle contained a perfectly expanded Swift A frame of .375 caliber, further inspection showed scar tissue through both lungs, it appeared he had four lungs attached, amazing...

I am not sure one could blame this on the Swift bullet, it could have occured with any bullet perhaps, I don't have a clue, but it seems that a more ragged expansion such as you get with a Woodleigh or Nosler may have had a better and faster effect as would two holes?? then again maybe poop just happens...

At any rate it makes a nice secondary trophy of a great hunt..

quote:

---

Originally posted by Atkinson:
My take on Swift bullets is that they always expand perfectly, in fact a little too perfect, they end up with an expanded base and a "smooth round top" that sometimes does little damage, it's like overkill in the right direction..I would prefer some ragged edges...The low and behold to further opinionate my opine, this year I killed a perfectly healthy, very fat old bull and it had a baseball size calloused ball on the off side skin, that gob of gristle contained a perfectly expanded Swift A frame of .375 caliber, further inspection showed scar tissue through both lungs, it appeared he had four lungs attached, amazing...

I am not sure one could blame this on the Swift bullet, it could have occured with any bullet perhaps, I don't have a clue, but it seems that a more ragged expansion such as you get with a Woodleigh or Nosler may have had a better and faster effect as would two holes?? then again maybe poop just happens...

At any rate it makes a nice secondary trophy of a great hunt..

---

Must have been a freak of nature if that bull had four lungs still attached, instead of the usual two, a right and left ...

Of course we know what you meant Ray (the appearance of two lobes on the left and two on the right), and dote on every word of it.

Ray,

Thats an amazing discovery! (The old Swift under his hide).

Must have hurt!

Only solution for that is more velocity and more Frontal Area to mess the lungs up more.

My 375 improved at 2,800 fps leaves mush for lungs, even on a high lung shot. But I use Bitterroots which are a full inch in diameter vs about .70 caliber for the Swift.

My problem with the Swift is that their performance is so dependant on such an unconventional mechanism. To depend on your rear core buldging to support the expanded mushroom to keep the front core attached to the bullet is really pretty weird!

The new Trophy Bonded Speer has the same architecture as a NF yet its mushroom just lays back along the bullets bearing surface and dissapears.

There really is alot of craft and metalurgy skill to making these premiums work right.

Andy

After Andy started this thread, it was a reminder that I needed some of those .458 Cup Points, didn't have any in that caliber yet ... but now I do, arrived today.

A certain bullet maker with the initials GSC could take some lessons from Mike "North Fork" Brady on how to package their bullets to survive the trip across the pond.

Even though North Fork deliveries are only three days by FedEx, Mike packages them to survive even the black hole of Afrika.

One can never have enough books, guns, or North Forks.

Cheers!

We are now over 1,000 views on this thread.

How many of you guys have ordered either CP, FN or bonded SP from Mike Brady?

Just curious if we talk or walk!

Andy