Do you like a cast bullet that has a lot of contact with the bore ?

Ben

Moderator
Staff member
I have this 175 gr. plain base NOE .359" dia. mould.
I cast about 200 ea. with the mould today.
If you like a bullet that has a lot of contact with the bore, you've got to like this one.
Roughly 3/4 of the length of the bullet is in contact with the bore.
My mould is a 2 cavity, one plain base and one gas check.
I'll be shooting this one in my scoped T/C Contender heavy barrel , 12" , 357 Mag. I lubed and sized these to .358" today.
I'll also be trying some of them in my Ruger # 1, 357 Max.

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RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
For rifles, since you asked, I like about 60 to 70% of the length of the bullet to be throat diameter. With that I like the "lube grooves" to hold at least 150% of the volume of lead displaced by the lands. For pistols I like a blunt or flat nose that has as straight of sides as will give me a feeding nose. For revolvers, I like wadcutters or semi-wadcutters if the nose is short before the first driving band. The Lyman #452423 is as perfect of revolver bullet as ever designed. Except maybe the RCBS 32-RN-CM.
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
I like a lot of bore contact. I'll probably show my ignorance here, but the TL designs don't make sense to me. I don't TL, and have a lot of Micro grooved lever guns, in pistol calibers. I really like the NOE 360-160-WFN and 360-180-WFN designs. I like deeper lube grooves and heavier bands in the middle. My reasoning is, the narrow bands of the TL designs going down a MG barrel is displacing a lot of those narrow bands and leaving pretty narrow stations in the grooves. The bullet pictured above has a nice forward band and base band, but I prefer wider bands and fewer, deeper lube grooves in the center. I like the general shape of the bullet above, just not crazy about TL design.
 

Ben

Moderator
Staff member
As to T/L grooves vs. conventional grooves, ................I have both and shoot both. I like what the target down range likes.

Ben
 
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smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
Yep! Like the majority of the bullet's surface in contact with the barrel. Don't favor much unsupported mass and surface at the nose. Have always wondered if that was a contributing factor in the Ideal 311413 being speed/velocity sensitive.
 

Will

Well-Known Member
It think having close to 70% of the bullet making contact helps keep it supported. Bullets of those designs tend to do best for me.

As for tumble lube grooves, I think they allow a place for the alloy to displace in its trip down the bore. That should lead to less bullet deformation but I can’t prove it.

Shew I’m gonna have to get some plywood and sawdust.
 

John

Active Member
I have very few tl molds and have sold any of the others I tried. They are the RD 175, & 195 in .358" The interesting thing to me is Ranch Dog used a light tumble to size with then dipped and dried the sized bullets with tweezers on waxed paper. His final bullets looked like a conventional lube on the first three micro-grooves.
 

popper

Well-Known Member
31-142C PB (300BO) has 1/2 at throat dia. nose is same as 308W I shoot. No L.G. PCd. 50yds 2k fps. Now if I were a beter shot!
 

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