Got a new box of Barnes 225 gr 338 caliber TTSX's and weighed them. They are laid out on the towel separated by .1 gr starting at the top left at 224.0 gr and going left to right to the bullet at the bottom right which was 225.7 gr



The breakout is:
224.0 gr - 1
224.2 gr - 1
224.3 gr - 2
224.5 gr - 1
224.6 gr - 1
224.7 gr - 1
224.8 gr - 2
224.9 gr - 12
225.0 gr - 12
225.1 gr - 9
225.2 gr - 1
225.3 gr - 1
225.4 gr - 3
225.6 gr - 2
225.7 gr - 1

What do you think the chances are that the bullet that is 224.0 gr would have a different POI than the bullet that is 225.7 gr, a 1.7 gr difference?

I just started sorting bullets by weight so I don't have a lot of data but these TTSX's vary a lot more than Sierra Game Kings or Nosler Accubonds.

Anybody else sort bullets and what are your results?

Actually, for Barnes, that's a bit better than the norm as they do tend to have wider variances in weights than Noslers or Sierras.

You may notice it under tightly-controlled conditions at the bench, but under actual field conditions, neither you nor the game you are hunting will know the difference.

I weighed over 25 boxes of various caliber and weight TTSX bullets before our BC bear hunt. While I wasn't very impressed with the uniformity in weight (mine varied as much as yours), the TTSX was the easiest to find several loads for in 3 rifles of mine, and 2 that do not belong to me.

I purposely shot a few groups where the weight spread was greatest and it didn't make any difference to 200 yards.

You should still contact Barnes and ask them what their standard is and what is acceptable in terms of variances with bullet weight.

Nosler makes the most consistent bullets I've ever weighed. Yet groups with accubonds, partitions, and btips are on par with my findings with the tsx and ttsx.

I will admit that I did place the bullets back in boxes that were grouped by weight.

If you've ever watched the Sierra videos with David Tubb, his opinion is that the concentricity of the brass and finished round was much more important than even as much as a grain of powder from the powder thrower.

He stated that he throws powder for matches up to 600 yards, but weighs each charge if shooting 1000 yard competition.

So, I would loosely predict that one grain of bullet weight, out of 225 grains, will not make much difference at all inside of 300, maybe 350 yards.

Like I mentioned, to date, I sure haven't noticed any difference.

Forget about it boss! That's pretty good consistency for a mass produced part. There are other variables in your system which will impact the performance of the round more than a grain or so on a 225 grain bullet.

The DIAMETER of the bullet is what you should be looking at....this will make a significant difference in performance. If the bullet is undersized by much, your groups will go to hell.

what brand/model is the scale and what's the guaranteed accuracy of the scale?

The weights were taken with an RCBS 1500 Chargemaster





calibrated when it was turned on and checked several times during the weighing. The way I checked was every few weighings I would reweigh the 240.0 gr bullet or maybe the 225.7 gr bullet or maybe the 50 gr calibrated weight that came with the scale.

As usual the RCBS was always dead on and it didn't matter if I'd just weighed a bullet that was over 225 gr or the 50 gr check weight, the 224.0 gr bullet always weighed exactly 224.0 gr or the check weight always weighed exactly 50 gr throughout the whole process.

I talked to Barnes about weight variations and they said that their bullets are made to "industry standard", which is 1% by weight (which would be 2.25 grains for those 225 grain bullets). They also say this will not materially affect accuracy at "hunting distances".

I called Hornady and they said that their weight standards are "significantly tighter than 1%" but they would not say what it is, but only that it varies for different bullets.

You can hold whatever tolerance you want if you weigh every bullet on the line and sell the out of spec bullets as "Seconds" as some manufacturers do.

On larger solids holding 2/10's of a grain is not a problem without tossing anything. Of course that depends on what type of equipment you have.

Hey Woods. Interesting Test you are performing. I've not tried weight-sorted Bullets in many years. I was using a Balance Beam Scale waaaaaay back in the pre-electronic scale Era(of course I still use the same 1010 Ohaus today ). As well as I can remember, I was weighing and comparing 30cal Nosler Solid Base Bullets Variation, in comparison to Sierra MatchKings Variation, with the Ohaus and I decided to try a few Blue Ribbons to help with the sorting. The exercise is now a vague memory.

Looks like there are enough bullets in the 225.1gr Lot to run the never improved upon Creighton Audette Load Development Method. Then once you know where the best Harmonic lies, you can try shooting the 224.0gr and the 225.7gr Bullet to see if they fall within the same Cluster.
-----

Did you drop a Tomato on the 224.7gr Bullet(#7) and klutz the Tip off, or smash it with a Thingy?

Seeing a "Tip" off inside the box would probably cause me a bit of concern - about the Tip Retention on the rest of them. Might not make any difference inside 400yds, but there is only one way to know for sure.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
Hey Woods. Interesting Test you are performing. I've not tried weight-sorted Bullets in many years. I was using a Balance Beam Scale waaaaaay back in the pre-electronic scale Era(of course I still use the same 1010 Ohaus today ).

HC, why does it not surprise me that you are still using an old balance beam?

quote:

Did you drop a Tomato on the 224.7gr Bullet(#7) and klutz the Tip off, or smash it with a Thingy?

Seeing a "Tip" off inside the box would probably cause me a bit of concern - about the Tip Retention on the rest of them.

But you are a sharp eyed old coot



this tip was off in the box. Notice how the hole left is much larger on the TTSX than a regular TSX. The tip made a difference of .6 grains so it went from a 225.3 gr bullet to a 224.7 gr bullet. Does make you wonder how fragile those tips are.

Hey Woods, Good talking to you last night. Ran out of time before I got to ask you if you "pulled" on any of the other Tips with your fingers?

There is a glue found in Hobby/Model Shops called "Instant Jet". I think it is about $2.35 for 1/4oz up here. When they say "Instant", they are telling the truth. It sets in the blink of an eye. Plus the strength is quite high. It sticks to most things I've tried it on, but as we discussed, I do not know what material is used to make the Synthetic Tips.

If I were going to use the Instant Jet on the Tips, I'd have the Tips already in place and just touch the tip of the tiny droplet from the bottle to the seam between the Synthetic Tip and the Bullet Mouth. It doesn't take much and you do not have to hold the parts together.

Or you could just Wham the Tip in with a Thingy!
-----

Oh yes, I mentioned this thread to a buddy in Califoney and he said he had seen a post of yours on another board that had something to do with various Cases Measurements and Fire Forming. I seem to recall you posting something similar to that on here some time ago. Anyway, he was "bragging on your post". I figured he had been sampling the Grape Juice a bit too much.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
Hey Woods, Good talking to you last night. Ran out of time before I got to ask you if you "pulled" on any of the other Tips with your fingers?

There is a glue found in Hobby/Model Shops called "Instant Jet". I think it is about $2.35 for 1/4oz up here. When they say "Instant", they are telling the truth. It sets in the blink of an eye. Plus the strength is quite high. It sticks to most things I've tried it on, but as we discussed, I do not know what material is used to make the Synthetic Tips.

If I were going to use the Instant Jet on the Tips, I'd have the Tips already in place and just touch the tip of the tiny droplet from the bottle to the seam between the Synthetic Tip and the Bullet Mouth. It doesn't take much and you do not have to hold the parts together.

Or you could just Wham the Tip in with a Thingy!
-----

Oh yes, I mentioned this thread to a buddy in Califoney and he said he had seen a post of yours on another board that had something to do with various Cases Measurements and Fire Forming. I seem to recall you posting something similar to that on here some time ago. Anyway, he was "bragging on your post". I figured he had been sampling the Grape Juice a bit too much.

Hey HC

I'm not thinking about glueing that one back on as much as I'm thinking about breaking the other ones off! There was a thread not too long ago about how the TSX tips had detritus in them and were not big enough. Some even started drilling them larger. Just break the tips off these and the holes are much larger.

About that guy braggin about my posts, I have to say that I couldn't have done it without my thingy's!

quote:

Originally posted by woods:
...I'm not thinking about glueing that one back on as much as I'm thinking about breaking the other ones off! There was a thread not too long ago about how the TSX tips had detritus in them and were not big enough. Some even started drilling them larger. Just break the tips off these and the holes are much larger.

Hey Woods, Now that the close-up flick of #7 has had time to down-load on my ancient old fashion dial-up I see what you mean. Surely it took a pretty good jolt to bust the Tip off.

For some reason , which is probably difficult for folks concerned with having the most Modern of everything to understand, I don't have the Tips bust off my "mature design" Lead Tipped Speer, Hornady, Win, Rem, and Sierras - unless I twist them off.

Drilling the Bullets would be an interesting project. Souldn't make much difference with the Trajectory inside 400yds, would allow them to be Seated out farther in the magazine if needed, but might make the Expansion Characteristics change.

I think we talked a bit about it, but for those who were not in on the discussion, it looks like the best way to hold the Bullet for drilling is to make a Jig from two pieces of wood. Clamp them together and drill a slightly undersize hole where the two pieces of wood come together and use that as a Bullet Clamp. You do not want to drill all the way through, so the Bullet Base will have a "Stop" to set against which will allow the depth of cut to be accurate. The trick would be to keep one piece of the wood firmly afixed to the Table so the registration of the Pilot Hole does not move. And of course the Drill Press needs to run true without wobbling the Bit.

The old 150gr 0.284" Win Power Points I want to drill out are actually fairly consistent in weight. Since I twisted all the Lead Tips off of them, I sorted them into two bunches, 146.9-147.3gr and 147.4-148.0gr. Probably got 300 of the original 1000 left. I normally just use them for Fire Forming in the various 7mm cartridges, but a Hollow Point might shift the weight far enough to the rear to improve the accuracy even more - don't know.

I was thinking about drilling them in two steps. A shallow wider diameter cut and then a slightly deeper smaller diameter cut. Though that might be over-doing the process.

I'd also considered keeping the time-proven, never-fail, no-batterys-needed 1010 Ohaus close by and might be able to adjust the weight down to about 140gr total. When I think how little Lead was removed to go from approximately 150gr down to 147gr, it sure won't take much drilling to reach 140gr. Perhaps a single cut would be more to my advantage, instead of getting too fancy-smancy. Then the question becomes if a shallow large diameter cut is better than a deeper narrow diameter cut?

Hwo `bout it Macifej, what do you think would be the best way to go about the Drilling without using a Lathe?

Of course, all my weight shifting would be done - Thingy Free - (aka no Thingys for miles and miles).

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
...but as we discussed, I do not know what material is used to make the Synthetic Tips.

According to the newest edition of Barnes manual, #4, the tips are made from DELRIN.

quote:

Originally posted by onefunzr2:
...According to the newest edition of Barnes manual, #4, the tips are made from DELRIN.

Hey Dave, Thank you.

Delrin is normally pretty "tough". One of the places I worked used small 4-40 Delrin Screws in a piece of equipment and I don't remember ever seeing one snap off. Dosen't mean it didn't happen though.

Makes me wonder if the Delrin Tip was somehow over stressed during Insertion. But, now that I can see inside the cavity, I would have expected the damage to be some kind of Shear Stress

Makes me wonder if this could get back to the dimensional variance inside the Hollow Point Cavities that was noted by (maybe) Frank(?) on the TSX bullets.

How `bout it Woods? Any more pull out or snap off?

I had a problem with several batches of Accubond tips breaking off. They told me that they had several lots that, during the cleaning process, the tips were becoming brittle. Nosler sent me several replacement boxes.

Perhaps Barnes is also going through a learning process before boxing up their bullets. I've got several thousand TTSX bullets and have inspected many boxes. So far no broken tips.

Excellent input Doc. Perhaps Woods just had one of those random wierd things we all occasionally experience.

Are any of yours in 0.338"?

quote:

Originally posted by woods:
.....

Anybody else sort bullets and what are your results?

woods,

I've weighed many a 286 grain NPT w/ .366 Dia.

I got 1 box of factory Noslers and 2 bags of Nosler factory seconds. I numbered each bullet 1 through 150 with a felt tip pen and weighed each one.

I've since lost the excel file containing the numbers in a computer virus attack last year. But best I can remember - 1 Bag of the seconds was actually figured a better wt. std. dev and extreme spread than those in the factory box! The other bag of seconds had a wt. extreme spread of 16 grains and triple the std. dev.

Since I had each wt. and the bullets, I combined both bags of seconds and seperated the high and lows. Also, did same with the box of factory NPTs. I used all the culled high/low working up reloads plus some of the "good" ones but still have the most of the mid sorted weights that I use for hunting.

Lesson learned - Probably isn't any need to wt/sort factory boxes, but am checking all factory seconds and bulk bullets.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
Excellent input Doc. Perhaps Woods just had one of those random wierd things we all occasionally experience.

Are any of yours in 0.338"?

HC, no. Mine were as follows:

180 and 200 grain 30 cal
140 .277
160 in 7mm.

But the problem, according to Nosler, was not isolated to any one caliber or bullet weight. It was dependent on their chemical rinse used for any given batch of bullets. Also of note, Mike Harris (I think that is his name) stated that even a couple of bad bullets could contaminate a whole box. I do not know the mechanism of this but that was his explanation.

As far as I know, the delrin tip on the Barnes product is not quite as strong as the Nosler tips. However, when the goal is to have the tip slam back into the shank to aid with expansion, I'll take whatever works.

Just to recap, I will restate that in BC, I killed 2 bears, one with the 180 AB from my .06, and the other with a 168 TTSX. Impacts were so similar out to 250, I simply was not worried about which one was in the chamber. Both bullets blew through heavy muscle and bone. Exit holes were near identical, as was shot placement. I could not tell any difference in blood shot meat, since that is an issue for some hunters.

Here is the first bear taken with the 180 AB at roughly 200 yards. I did not get pics of the second bear. Sorry that it is blurry. My partner took still photos with his video camera and they didn't turn out well:

Makes me wonder about how resistant to heat these tips are. After all there has to be a lot of heat from the friction of that bullet getting engraved by the lands in the bore. Not to mention hell's fire behind the base. Air friction?

Always wondered why bullets leave a black edge around the hole on a paper target. If they get super hot the plastic tips may melt off and not even be there when the bullet hits the target. I'm not sure it would make any difference in ballistics or terminal performance.

Those all copper bullet heat up very fast even with a drill bit drilling out the holes. Get too hot to touch.

I might just take that broke off tip and put it in a spoon and see if it would melt. Might have a new idea for a new thingy! A tip melter and annealer!!

Hey Doc, Congratulations on the Bears. Sounds like you were well prepared with both Adequate Cartridges and Bullets.

The flick looks fine to my old eyes. Did the Bear get close enough to tear the knee out of your britches, or are my old eyes playing tricks on me?

quote:

Originally posted by woods:
...I might just take that broke off tip and put it in a spoon and see if it would melt. Might have a new idea for a new thingy! A tip melter and annealer!!

HC, that's just your eyes. "kneeless" pants went out in the late 80s, early 90s....bout the same time mullets became goofy. I should know, I had one!!

From experience, I can tell you that there seems to be a substantial difference b/w placing a bullet in the lungs v. the bones.

quote:

Originally posted by Doc:
...From experience, I can tell you that there seems to be a substantial difference b/w placing a bullet in the lungs v. the bones.

Completely agree. Those Bear Bones can be tough.