The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Rifles Medium Bore Rifles Do your bullets weigh spot on?Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
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My experiences are mostly with Nosler Partitions and Hornady SST's. Just curious how others stack up to my go to Partitions that weigh spot on. Life itself is a gift. Live it up if you can. | ||
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In general I've seen a variance of about a grain weighing bullets. A 160gr. 7mm bullet might go 159.5-160.5 in weight. That might make a difference in long distance, 1000 yard shooting but not likely to mean anything in my <300 yard hunting world. So, in a word, no. I don't bother weighing them any more. Regards, Robert ****************************** H4350! It stays crunchy in milk longer! | |||
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I have weighed bullets in the past. Non weigh exactly the same with all bullets in the box. Worst ones were Winchester Failsafe. In a box of 25 the weight variation was up to 5 grains - for 270 caliber, 140 grains. I do weigh and select bullets for shooting our 6mm PPC bench rifle. This rifle shoots groups, frankly too hard to measure in our indoor range. In making our Walterhog bullets in 375 caliber, I keep the weight variations to within .9 of a grain in each box of 200. Variations occur because of the density of the copper rod we buy. Our design is for a 300 grain bullet, with the original stock rods we had. New stock can vary of up to 3 grains more, but I do select and keep each box to be with 0.9 of a grain. | |||
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For "most" hunting application it matters not. For LR or target shooting it might make some difference. There's a reason BR shooters weight-sort their bullets but for hunters it generally is a waste of time and effort. And NO, they don't always weigh exactly the same. Zeke | |||
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Good to hear it's not just mine that vary. No worries then. Last loads I compared were 7X57R. Shot my best load with both varied and weight-matched 154 Hornady's. Both performed the same at 100 yards. Thanks for backing up my thoughts. CB Life itself is a gift. Live it up if you can. | |||
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I once had a box of Norma 6.5mm FMJ target bullets which were supposed to weight 138.9 grains. Every one I weighed came in at exactly 138.9 grains. That is unusual, of course. I've found Winchester bullets to be the worst offenders, having variances of 3-4% and even the cannelures were all up and down the bullet shank. Remington not much better. Sierra and Nosler seem to be pretty consistent, while Speer and Hornady beat the WIN-REMS but typically aren't quite as consistent as their competitors. | |||
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This exercise assumes your scale is both accurate and repeatable. Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue.  What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
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When I have bothered to compare trueness to stated weight of rifle bullets I found very little variation in monometals and more variation in lead cored bullets. The weight checks were done only out of curiosity, not because anything was shooting badly. However, I experienced one exception. I was trying to get a load for my .375H&H with Barnes TSX 235 gn bullets. No matter what I did they shot badly unlike both 300 gn and 270 gn TSX. Maybe my rifle simply doesn't like the 235 gn bullets although it shot Woodleigh OK but I decided to check weigh the 235 gn Barnes. There was quite a bit of bullet to bullet variation. I also weighed some 300 and 270 gn TSX which were very consistent. Hunting.... it's not everything, it's the only thing. | |||
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Hate to say it, but I have never checked any jacketed bullet and only very rarely ones I have cast. | |||
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Yes. I calibrate it before each session.
Life itself is a gift. Live it up if you can. | |||
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This is exactly the point. | |||
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I measured length using the Hornady gauge and found a lot of variance. I started a thread about a month ago. Ogive was never the same "When the wind stops....start rowing. When the wind starts, get the sail up quick." | |||
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[quote]posted 16 May 2019 07:35 I measured length using the Hornady gauge and found a lot of variance. I started a thread about a month ago. Ogive was never the same That is something that pisses me off about Hornady bullets which I use quite a lot of. Batch to batch variance in bullet OAL and ogive is usual. I try to buy several packs from the same maunfacturing batch of bullets I like. I found much more consistency with Barnes TTSX. Hardly any batch to batch variance. Sadly Barnes is more spendy if shooting frequently. Hunting.... it's not everything, it's the only thing. | |||
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Buckeye has it right; it don't matter for hunters. You have better things to do. Like load and shoot. | |||
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I remember once checking some 0.458 Hornady hollow points for the 45-70 that had what I thought was very large weight variation. I do not have my notes for the exact numbers. It was so bad I was convinced I would see a significant accuracy improvement by sorting them. So I did that one time. I could not tell the difference in group size between groups with very uniform weight bullets, and groups with max(from a single box) weight variation. Unless I got into bench rest or something like that I probably would not weight sort bullets. | |||
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The weight difference in a box of bullets is rarely more than +/-1 grain. Shooting a 6BR 1000 yd benchrest rifle, I found that the bearing surface length of the bullet is much more important to accuracy. I surmised that longer bearing surface bullets produce more pressure with a given load, and therefore, higher velocities. I bought 2 boxes, 500 rnds each, of Sierra 107gr bullets. When I first started shooting them, I got good groups, but not benchrest shot to shot accuracy. I learned that Sierra uses more that one bullet making machine to produce a particular bullet, and the output from all these machines are mixed together and then packaged for sale. I also learned, from other long range shooters, that the bearing surface length of these bullets can vary. So I devised a way to measure the bearing surface length and found that the bearing surface length can vary by as much a .006 inch. This has nothing to do with the overall length of the bullet and I believe that the reason for this is the multiple bullet making machines and the slight differences in the finished product. I sorted the remainder of my bullets into boxes that fell into a variance of no more that .002, then when I load, I pull all the bullets from the same box. My resulting groups shrank significantly. The difference was even noticeable at 100 yds. To measure the bearing surface length, I used bushings from bushing style neck sizing dies. If your bullet is a boattail, you will need 2 bushings. I use the bore diameter of the barrel, not the groove diameter. For example a 6mm had a groove diameter of .243 and a bore diameter of .236. So I used a .236 bushing in a setup that holds both bushings with the bullet between the bushings (this if for boattails, only 1 bushing is needed for flat base bullets) then I measure with a good caliper, the overall length. This might take a little practice so you use and consistent pressure from bullet to bullet to get consistent measurements. You don't need the actual bearing surface length. You are just measuring the relative length of you fixture from bullet to bullet. The difference in the fixture length should be equal to the difference between the bullets. For .308 bullets, use a .300 bushing, etc. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. --Winston Churchill "Oh, nothing Mom, just pounding primers with a hammer ..." Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. | |||
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