Pecos
The goal of 'as humanly possible' uniformity may not play out as particularly pertinent with handguns other then bolstering the confidence level of the shooter.
I rifles I believe the perfection does play an important role. I think the speed of the bullet and the distance that the rifle bullet travels makes the perfection/ uniformity a requirement.
As an example I was casting a bunch of 265 grain 375 RCBS gas checked bullets for my rifle. I know what degree of accuracy the rifle was capable of from previous testing with cast bullets.
So, after casting several hundred what visually appeared to be good bullets. I weighed the bullets and separated them into three groups. That pot of alloy gave me 272 for light, 274 for medium and the majority and 277 for the heavy and smallest group. There was a certain number that were much lighter and much heavier that went to the recycle bucket for future casting sessions.
Then I took my micrometer and measured the first band and the band just above the gas check of 10 or 12 from each group. None appeared to be greatly over or under sized from any of the others randomly picked. I then seated the gas checks and sized and lubed the intire bunch.
I loaded up what had been an accurate load with the bullets from the same mold, from an earlier casting loading session.
I had 20 each of the light and medium and 15 of the heavy. I shot at 100 yards. The light bullets were a bit low and to the left of the bull. The medium were close to center and 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch high, just about where the previous testing were. The heavy bullets were an inch higher then the medium weight.
The groups within each of the bullet weight batchs were acceptable, 1 inch to 1.5 inches.
During previous testing, using groups of ten shots there would be five or six in the center with flyers above or to the side of the center.
So for hunting I always weighed the bullets and used the medium weight bullets.
Jim

Thanks Arky for your report. I've never had the patience to take it that far for sure. Other than my "eyeball" method, I've generally appled the "Jackrabbit Rule." Periodically I'd test a batch at the range over 100 yds. If the 5 shot groops held 1.5 to even 2.0" I was ready to go hunting. And as long as they consistently cut jackrabbits in half for me out even to 200 yds I was a happy camper.

Quite often the shots were necessarily fast, with minimal time for aiming at such illusive targets. I didn't care if the bullet took them in the 2nd rib or third.....and the damage to the critters was too savage for much of an autopsy anyway.

So as I said, according to the "Jackrabbit Rule," if the critter died a swift and terrible death whenever I pulled the trigger, then I knew all was as it should be in the universe.

But I don't imagine I can sell the "Jackrabbit Rule" to many bullet makers. Still, I think many of us worry about "cosmetic" things more than we should.

I have NEVER gone to the trouble evaluating bullets that you have undertaken. Nor shall I. May I suggest that by using my "rabbit rules" for bullet making, ALL of your .375s would have spelled a disaster for the unlucky critter.

Have you tried such tests on smaller calibers? Say .30?

Pecos
Getting ready to play with the 30 caliber. A month ago I was lucky to find a Browning version of the Winchester 1895 in 30-06. I already had the dies, a friends set, that he stores in my reloading shed.
I had a mold made by Mountain Molds that I recieved today. Now I need to get a Lyman 'M' for thirty, the sizer lube die for the Lyman 450, a thousand Hornady gas checks.
I'm betting that this bullet will like IMR4064 or IMR4350 since it will weigh some where around 205 or 206 grains.
So once all the goodies get here and I can cast a few hundred I'll begin load developement.
Jim

Arky, I can't guarantee your results, but I've done best with .311 diameter bullets in all my 06. (Of course they all had military barrels from the old 2 groove on up. Dunno if this made any diff.)

The most accurate one I ever shot was just about what you are setting up for. Good luck! Drop 20 grs. of 2400 behind it and see what happens.

Pecos, as to your question, I tend to agree with Arkypete regarding application as a touchstone. And I agree with you about diameter. There is a post about factory .22 Hornet ammo quality in this forum that questions bullet tip quality. IF it were a .22-250 AND the range is long that would be an issue, but they're not. Pistol twist rates are slow and this de-emphasizes the significance of balance about the bullets long axis as does the typical range they are used at. Cast bullet velocities for rifles tend to be mild and this helps too, but the twist rates are fast, so if you demand match level accuracy you must do your part. Regardless of construction bullet imbalance about any axis of a bullet is not good. How bad is bad? Depends on your application, and where the imbalance is. An inescapable fact is that there is always some and it cannot be avoided.

I gather from reading your posts that you tend to shoot things close rather than far, so probably it is not a substantial issue to you. If you are interested in the pursuit of knowledge... Robert McCoy's "Modern Exterior Ballistics" and/or Harold Vaughn's "Rifle Accuracy Facts" They were rocket scientists once...

Digital - All you say sounds good to me and logic would certainly support it. I've often asked myself how can something flying and spinning like a bullet tolerate flaws? How have I gotten away with it so wonderfully well all these years? I'm sure you've guessed the answer by saying the velocity is fairly low and the distance fairly short.

I would say for all the cast bullets I've shot, that I have lived in a world of 2,000 fps or less velocity and shot and hunted within a distance of 250 yds or under and admittedly I was even less picky about pistol bullet flaws. Obviously the pistol bullets were shot at a much lower velocity and closer range.

My point was only that often I think shooters worry about things that don't matter in the real world. If we were all trying to put every bullet in the same hole at 300 yds, then I could understand weighing, measuring and fretting about EVERYTHING. But most of us are really trying to keep our bullets in a 3 - 6 is area and that's all it taked to kill most things that walk the earth.

One of the most deadly rifles I ever owned was a mauser action 257 Roberts I had built. I became convinced that rifle had two seperate personalities. On target, I NEVER could get it to shoot less than 2" at 100 yds...and quite often it was 3" at that range. I thought it was pitiful. But hunting the gun seemed to wake up and take on a new persona. I made some of the wildest, longest, most difficult shots of my life with that rifle. But take it back to the range the next day and it would fall asleep in my hands and couldn't care less where it grouped.

This was many years ago and did much to convince me that shooting is mostly mental. If you believe in a gun and your ammo, you'll do well. If not, you won't. The truth was it was me who fell asleep on the target range. I hated punching holes in paper and my targets showed my lack of interest. Hunting was what turned me on.

Well, we're all spending too much time looking at our belly buttons. Why else would we be here? I have a couple of guns like that. They hate the range far more than I do. Or perhaps it is that they don't like sand bags.

Back to the subject briefly: Did you know that imbalance forward of the bullet CG is less important than aft, even in the same magnitude? You can have imbalance(about the longitudinal axis) on both sides of the CG that may cancel each other out. Or they may harmonize in a very bad way... All bullet imbalance causes precession about the flight path, some damps out, some doesn't. Some even grows with time. What is really odd to me is that you can have multiple modes of precession at the same time. Epicyclic, tricyclic, etc ad nauseum. Speaking of Nauseum, don't stay awake tonight thinking about any of this. Your bullets will still shoot the same regardless. I could go on and on and on...

Gents
Because I'm a professional anal retentive, I feel better if I know the bullet/load combo groups all of it's shots into a one inch circle one inch high at a 100 yards. That does not mean I hit everything I aim at 100% of the time, but it does mean that only major variable left open is me!
Jim

I think we are all pretty much in agreement here on this topic. Digital, without ever knowing all the technical stuff, I've always been more tolerant of defects in the front half of the bullet than I have flaws in the last half. Now you explain to me why this worked. Thank you.

Arky - I think most serious reloaders have their little anal quirks. You would laugh if you saw me reload. One of my "things" is primers. I have a whole box of different colored big Sharpie Ink pens that I carefully run around the gap between each primer and the case head to both "seal" the primer and color code the ammo as to what lot it is. I suspect most of us could be committed to a mental institution if anyone ever cared to take a close look at us. Maybe that's why I'm never far away from a big, bad pistol.

Pecos
I cannot reload without having Public radio or the local talk radio program on.
Jim

Back in the good old days I couldn't reload without a cold beer by me either. I found by rewarding myself with a swallow for every 10 bullets made that I could crank out a lot of bullets each night. Who says reloading is drudgery?

For what it is worth we myself and a shooting friend have taken some what deformed bullets from shooting range and as an experiment reloaded with out resizing and have put them thru the x ring at 25 yrds. off hand (pistol bullets)----------Mag801

Tom - You're right. Pistols bullets aren't very critical at all. I used to cast with a fellow pistol shooter of equal shooting ability to me. We shot in the same gun clubs matches etc.

Anyway, after a night's casting, he would go thru and inspect his bullets for perfection...probably tossing 25% of his work back in the pot. I might cull 5% of mine. On the range it never helped him a bit. We still shot neck and neck. But that was a lot of his work going down the drain in my mind.