Seeing as I'm shooting alot of Berger VLD's lately, I purchased a SMU. I set it up as per the instructions and attempted to trim the end off a bullet. Just as stated in the instructions, the bullet wobbles around quite a bit. However, the cutter does not appear to be 'biting' into the bullet whatsoever. I've tried numerous bullets and the result is the same...no progress.

Can anyone offer any insights?

Bobby B.

I have only seen the tool in their catalog, so I can't help with personal experience. But, I have only called Sinclair's once with a question, and I found their tech experts to be exactly that. Experts. Call them and ask a tech support guy your questions. It was obvious to me immediately that the guy I was talking to was a shooter, and used the product he was talking to me about.

Call them, and describe what the tool is doing, and I'm sure they can walk you through any issues with it.

Talked to Sinclair and apparently this is not an isolated case. They are shipping me a new cutter pronto.

Bobby B.

Hey Bobby, I'd be interested in hearing how much the Groups differ between some not Trimmed and those you do Trim with the Cutter.

Once you have them all Trimmed, do you plan to sort them by Base-to-Ogive distance, or perhaps by Weight?

Curious because I've never Squarred the Tip on Long Range Bullets.

I bought a Sinclair Meplat Uniformer.
I had a problem with it from the git-go.
I have it set up to trim 22 caliber bullet Meplats.
There was no way that I could consistently "push" the bullet into the housing to the same distance/depth every time, so that all of trimmed bullets ended up being the same length. If I used some force pushing a bullet into the housing one time, it would come out shorter than one pushed in using less force.
So, to fix the problem, I made up a small die plate of the correct thickness, with a hole drilled in it a few thou larger than 224. I put the die plate over the exposed rear end of the bullet, then using a brass lug, push the rear end of the bullet in to the housing the same depth every time. Much harder describing than actually seeing what I did. But now, all of my trimmed bullets end up being the exact same length after trimming meplats.

Don

Hey Don, After you Trim them do you do any kind of Sorting? Or do you consider them good-to-go?

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
Hey Don, After you Trim them do you do any kind of Sorting? Or do you consider them good-to-go?

I don't do any sorting after trimming, just shoot them.

What kind of "change" are you seeing in the Groups? Rounder? No Fliers? Tightened the Average Group size by 0.XXX" and at what distance?

IMO....another item to add to the "thingy" thread.

I'd love to hear final results but from what I'm hearing now.....it's a thingy!

I couldn't even start to venture an opinion on whether that sort of thing is worth the price and added effort. I have no idea.

I can say this, in 65+ years of active shooting it is the answer to a question I have never asked even once.

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
I couldn't even start to venture an opinion on whether that sort of thing is worth the price and added effort. I have no idea.

I can say this, in 65+ years of active shooting it is the answer to a question I have never asked even once.

I've fired quite a few soft points with lead tips smashed and smeared over from colliding with the front of the magazine and didn't notice any difference in the groups.....

"thingy" fits here!

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
What kind of "change" are you seeing in the Groups? Rounder? No Fliers? Tightened the Average Group size by 0.XXX" and at what distance?

Absolutely PITIFUL and PATHETIC!!!!!

Here the self confessed suppository of all reloading knowledge is stumped again. I think that the old Glen is starting to tip over the edge. Look out.

I bought the meplat trimmer for one reason only.
I had been shooting Speer's 50 gn 22 caliber TNT's with excellent accuracy. These were the ones in the yellow box. My local store ran out of the yellow box TNT's, but had some of the new, black box, TNT's available.
I took a box home, and opened the box and the first thing I noticed was the meplats were different with all of these bullets comapred to those in the yellow box. The holes in the new ones were almost closed completely, where the older ones were like those you get with Sierra and Nosler HPBT's
I had been getting three shot, 1/4" to 1/2" accuracy with the yellow box ones in several 22 CF rifles.
So, I loaded up some of the new ones to shoot in one of my most accurate 222's. Low and behold, I got 3 shot, 1 1/2" groups at 100 yards.
So, I bought the meplat trimmer to make black box TNT's equal to those older ones that came in yellow boxes. It worked, but took a lot of experimenting to get the meplat that I wanted, and get great accuracy. Part of that start up problem imvolved getting different length bullets due to not having a calibrated thumb.
I found the magic hole size, and began getting good accuracy again.