30 cal bore riders. What nose size is acceptable?

waco

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I'm using a new NOE 312290 four cavity AL mold. I'm getting slight variance in the nose size. Anywhere from some bullets measure as small as .299" and up to .3015"+ The majority are between .300" and .301"

My alloy for this run was 50/50 ww pure plus 2% foundry type air cooled.

They are all a very consistent weight of right around 220gr.

I cast up about 350 of these and I've only checked about 10 or so using a mic.

Is it enough to even worry about or should I just load them up and let the target tell me?

Seems that some of the bullets are .299" across the seam and .302" 90 degrees from that.

Your thoughts?

Waco
 
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Ben

Ben

Moderator
Staff member
If the weights are consistent, makes me wonder how the nose could vary that much ?

They may chamber and shoot just fine ? ?

Question :

With the mould blocks removed from your handles, do they fit together and come apart without sticking , or do they stick when you try to pull one mould 1/2 from the other ? ?

Ben
 
waco

waco

Springfield, Oregon
Ben said:
With the mould blocks removed from your handles, do they fit together and come apart without sticking , or do they stick when you try to pull one mould 1/2 from the other ? ?
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They come apart just fine. No sticking or grab at all. The bullets look and feel good too with barley a visible seam. Some seem worse that others.
 
Brad

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Well lets see here.......

What if you loaded some, once you find a good load, in groups. Some all with consistant nose dimensions of various sizes and some with a wide range of nose dimensions. See what happens.
 
waco

waco

Springfield, Oregon
All good advice. First run with the mold. I did have some pretty wide mold/alloy temp swings. Maybe that had something to do with it? Proof will be in the pudding I suppose.....
 
waco

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I'll tell you what. These are two of the nicest NOE molds I have gotten as far as bullets just falling free on their own. What a joy to cast with.
 
quicksylver

quicksylver

Well-Known Member
waco said:
Yeah. I wasn't going to get too excited about it until I shot some. Shoot. Could just be my inexpensive Chinese mic.....:(
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Waco...I don't think you fully apreciate the situation ...one of my first post was about how my new lyman 31332 mold was casting out of round bullets ..but that I had found that if I orientated them the right way in my 2 grouve Springfield 03a3 they would shoot 1/2" to 3/4" groups....so what better solution to your problem than to be forced to buy a nice 2 grouve a3 in order to "salvage" that mold...
 
Brad

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
quicksylver said:
Waco...I don't think you fully apreciate the situation ...one of my first post was about how my new lyman 31332 mold was casting out of round bullets ..but that I had found that if I orientated them the right way in my 2 grouve Springfield 03a3 they would shoot 1/2" to 3/4" groups....so what better solution to your problem than to be forced to buy a nice 2 grouve a3 in order to "salvage" that mold...
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That is excellent advice. A new rifle would solve the problem.

Maybe quicksylver can recommend a good divorce lawyer too......
 
Kevin Stenberg

Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
Waco I mite have missed it. But did you test each cavity. To see if even though they cast uniform weight, that the dim of one cavity is off.
Do different alloys change the nose differences?
 
Ian

Ian

Notorious member
Brad really answered the question: Segregate, try, and see. So much of the advice I try to pass on is from doing just that. Maybe it is relevant to another shooter's system, maybe not, but it's good for each of us to devise tests so we KNOW rather than speculate on what exactly matters and what, well, not so much (often depending on what you're trying to accomplish).
 
9

9.3X62AL

Guest
Won't fly, IME. Women don't relate their shoe acquisitions on the same plane that we hobbyists rate our tools and toys. Apples & oranges, in their world. My lady is a lot better than many, but all things have their limits--and I don't push that envelope. A mad Spaniard is best avoided. They are a spirited lot.

I'm firmly in the camp of "Shoot first & ask questions later". Unless things are grossly undersized, I just let the things fly and see where they wind up. Sometimes I find myself over-thinking a lot of what I do in this hobby field. I was hashing this over with Buckshot a while back, and my view was that it takes a pretty good rifle barrel to discern a difference between .0005" over or .0005" under a given "critical" dimension. Up to about .001", I'm not too sure it matters a whole heck of a lot. Bigger or smaller than .001", sometimes things will start going a little wonky--but it takes a real good barrel and a squared-away shooter to discern such things. My rifles and my skill sets with same don't place the bullets in a position of unfair advantage, let's just say. Apportionment of respective responsibility between the machine and the nut behind its stock--as always--is subject to critique, and a negative bias in my direction would be a wisely-made estimation. Short version--Don't sweat the small stuff--and a lot of this stuff IS small stuff. If they shoot good, it didn't matter--if they install themselves sideways 3 targets left and right of your own paper, then "Houston, we have a problem".
 
Ian

Ian

Notorious member
"It only matters if it does". Some of us have been nitpicking (upon request) some castings tonight that would easily group five all touching from a squared-away system, at 50 yards.....at 1600 fps. But my experience tells me not so much at 2200, or even 2000, and certainly not at 100 or 200 yards at any speed. If the shooter never ventures past comfortable 1/2 throttle loads, a lot doesn't matter and doesn't need to. I always assume 'worst case' when trying to answer the question of what matters or not. For some things, nothing less than perfection of uniformity will do, but most of the time culling to 99.8% size and weight of visually perfect castings won't make or break a good load.
 
I

Intheshop

Banned
Yup,nose sizing has made a target confirmed difference on my 6mm,and 22-250.Although the original intent was nose alignment/protection during GC seating....

Proof of concept took a slight,happy detour with bumping the nose size AND shape(to a slightly lessor degree).

Not sayin Waco needs this on a .30,saying it can be a solution if it comes to it.
 
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