130 grain only. Great bullet type for penetration. CB
NOZ WTC

I have a question about the Solid Base bullet.
It's the predecessor to the Ballistic Tip, I have several older boxes in various calibers. While it is very accurate it also seems to come apart pretty violently creating awesome damage to tissue. I would never describe it as a good penetrator.
Is this Solid Base bullet of different design than the older version???

Perry

That is interesting perry.
I use the old solid base 120 grn bullets in my various 6.5 cartridges, up to and including 264 mag. They work perfectly and appear much tougher than ballistic tips of the same weight/caliber.

perry:

These are very similar to Partitions except there is no partition.
I respectfully disagree on penetration of these bullets. Never tried the old school version.

penetration

quote:

Originally posted by custombolt:
perry:

These are very similar to Partitions except there is no partition.
I respectfully disagree on penetration of these bullets. Never tried the old school version.

penetration

That's interesting to note. It makes me wonder if it is a thicker jacket.
I use the old red box SB's for culling when we want to mitigate pass throughs. The lethality is excellent but the bullet usually comes apart like the BT's do.
I load them in 257, 270 and 308.
I might try a box for science

P

For comparison sake they are much softer than Sierra Game kings of like weight and caliber.

I remember when the Ballistic Tip first came out. They were coming apart on impact, very little penetration, and were getting a bad reputation in a hurry. Nosler got right on it and redesigned the jacket. It took a while to regain the trust in their new bullet, but that is ancient history.

Paul K

I've used about a jillion of the original Solid Base Noslers. Their performance mimics the Partition, but is a result of a somewhat different design. Great killers, and generally accurate. While they are relatively quick-expanding (like the front portion of a Partition), they penetrate well due to the solid base of jacket material supporting the rear portion of the bullet.

Being a septuagenarian who started shooting centerfires in my early teens, I quite well remember how, when the Solid Base was new to the market, shooters quickly found that they would do about anything that the Partition would do, but at half the price. That's one motivation that Nosler had to pull them off of the market in favor of the Ballistic Tip (which derived from the Solid Base) since Nosler was losing sales of the pricier Partition to its own "popularly priced" bullet.

But Nosler didn't quit making them -- they just stopped selling them to handloaders. Many ammunition companies have used the Solid Base supplied to them by Nosler in factory ammunition, but not identified as such. Every once in a while Nosler would have overruns of these bullets made for other factories and offer them as "seconds". Whenever that would happen I'd snap up all I could afford. My very most favorites have been the 100/6mm, 130/270, and 150/7mm.

Was there any problem with stabilising the solid-base Noslers? Having the back portion of lighter metal sounds like a possible problem.

quote:

Originally posted by sambarman338:
Was there any problem with stabilising the solid-base Noslers? Having the back portion of lighter metal sounds like a possible problem.

Not at all. Their design is identical to the Ballistic Tip, which has a reputation of being one of the most accurate factory-made bullets available. Of course, the solid base (and hollow point on the Ballistic Tip) make a bullet of the same weight longer than a conventional cup-and-core bullet, but in typical hunting weights they did just fine in standard twists.

I did have problems with the 100 grain 6mm in a Remington 721 in .244, but the 1-12" twist of that gun typically would not stabilize conventional 100 grain spitzers, either. Factory .244 ammunition topped out at 90 grains, and a few manufacturers made 100 grain RN's which would work in the .244.

???????????? I found the old solid base Nosler a excellent bullet in my 270 and 30-06. The first Ballistic tips were as soft as mashed potatoes..