Hi all, there was a post alittle while back about the importance of a cutting sholder on the nose to create a better hole in the animal. How big does the cutting sholder need to be? The same a a Normal SWC or bigger? I'm testing a bunch of bullets from www.mountainmolds.com with different nose shapes on a similar bullet base in my 454. Gascheck and Plainbase also. One of them is an ogival flatpoint with a meplat of 90% bore diameter. The nose measures .412". Would this be large enough to act as a cutting sholder? what is the consensus on a large flatpoint? Do they generally penetrate in a straight line? I would imagine they wouldn't peneterate as deep.
I had 7 different styles loaded for a trip to the range today, but threw my back out on the way.

I have believed the cutting shoulder concept for many years...I used to modify TCCI and Barnes solids in such a manner on my drill press, prior to GS Customs and Bridger Bullets...Not my idea, as I got the opinnion from shooting game with my 44 Special and a Keith bullet...

I could get no one interested in applying the concept to rifle bullets, in otherwords I couldn't get much reaction from the close minded bullet makers, then GS Customs showed up in RSA, then Bridger came on the scene..They feed and they work, and the difference in blood trails is absolutly dead solid proof of the cutting shoulder and flat nose, internal damage is another proof of these wonderful bullets...

Ross Seyfried always championerd the flat nosed bullet, sporting a very wide meplat, for usage in revolvers and rifles shooting at "handgun speeds" (2,000 fps or slower). His choice are LBT-style hardcast bullets. He has only positive things to say about them, even when used on dangerous game. Where he leads, I will follow. ~~~Suluuq

[ 03-26-2003, 13:37: Message edited by: Rusty Gunn ]

It does not take much of a cutting shoulder to work - just a few thousandths. The bullet nose should also be a wide, flat, sharp meplat. For example Bridger Bullets nose styles no. 3 or 4.

Large meplat flatpoint bullets were championed by Veral Smith in his LBT line of cast bullets. He wrote a book about casting and designing bullets where he claimed that the "cutting shoulder" of a typical SWC design doesn't actually touch the animal as it's going through the animal. He claimed the flat point opened a temporary cavity around the bullet large enough that the bullet sides (including the cutting shoulder) did't touch the animal. This is why the LBT designs don't have a shoulder, but a smooth transition from the nose to the body of the bullet. This also allows a larger meplat than a SWC design as the diameter used to form a shoulder is moved to the meplat instead.

The original source that I know of for testing bullet size and shape is the Thompson LeGarde Study (Department of the Army Ordnance Board). As I recall Jeff Cooper in a lecture at Gunsite cited that work and also said the flat meplat was at least 20% more effective than the round-nose bullet.

Of course the ultimate in flat bullet performance is Norbert Hansen's SuperPenetrator with its super-cavitation effect. For those who came in later, it is valuable to search on SuperPenetrator and go visit Norbert's website.

You can also see the effect of a cutting shoulder both on targets, and on the entrance wounds in an animal's hide.

jim dodd

I tested all the different bullets for accuracy in my 454. the results are here.
www.geocities.com/idahobronco/mm454.html
Does anyone have a link to the super cavitaion bullet?
I hope to be able to test these in wet newsprint to see how they penetrate.

The Norbert Hansen superpenetrator is found here:

http://home.snafu.de/l.moeller/Zielwirkung/Superpenetrator.htm