Hereter's Wasp-Waist Bullets

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8mmman

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Last year at a garage sale I bought a lot of 30 cal. bullets among them were some 180 grain Hereter's Wasp-Waist Bullets. Well yesterday I when to the range to try them out. I loaded them with IMR4350 (my pet load) for this weight bullets. I can shoot off the bench 1 1/4" five shot groups all day with Speer bullets.

Well in 50 rounds of these Hereter's Wasp-Waist Bullets I never had more than three bullets stay with in 2" and in every five shot sting I would get one or two flyer's that would open the group up to 3" or 4"......

Now I know why you don't see these for sale any more. Looks like an interesting idea and cool looking bullet that didn't work out. I did have fun ringing the gongs with them... So all go in the end.
 
I did in fact have good accuracy with Herters Wasp-Waist .224 50 grain bullets in a Remington 722 .222 Remington back in the 60's.

The problem with them was, they shot .22 cal holes in coyotes like FMJ, and showed no signs of the explosive expansion I needed to kill coyotes DRT with a .222 Rem.

rc
 
NEI used t make bullet molds that would cast these. I had a hard time figuring out what they were for. They certainly had "looking cool" covered.
 
The idea at the time was, you could push them faster, because they had less bearing surface for their weight.

Mostly what Herters sold, was a bunch of hype!

DM
 
Hype!
How dare you!

It was all Model Perfect.

Where do you think they got the idea for Glock Perfection!

From Jacques P. Herter of course, after his fathers company did a belly flop with the passage of the 1968 GCA.. :D

rc
 
I have never seen or evan heard of this type of bullet. Could some one please post a picture of one. Thank you.
 
Wasp waist bullets needed a case with a long enough neck to capture the tail and a point past the "waist" to hold the bullet in alignment for best results.


NCsmitty
 

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That looks like stuff I find at the & bring home to pulldown. A little heavy on the crimp will get you a bullet that looks just like that.
 
rc, do you still have your 722, 222 ?
I still have mine and shot tons of the Herters Wasp bullets, I still have some around, I'll have to dig them out:)

Floydster
 
floydster said:
rc, do you still have your 722, 222 ?
I still have mine and shot tons of the Herters Wasp bullets, I still have some around, I'll have to dig them out:)

Floydster
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Good to hear there are still .222 722's out there.
My dad bought one new back in the 50's.
It's been mine for the last 20 years or so.
Also lived in Minnesota and visited Herter's store in the area.
Thought the wasp waist were just a gimmick.
Used them though.
 
I'm old enough to remember that around that time (early '60's) the hottest new thing in supersonic aircraft was, you guessed it, wasp waisted fuselages. Supersonic was new enough back then to still be a bit of an adventure sometimes for military and test pilots. Boundary layer drag and all that good stuff.
I think it's safe to say that the hypester-in-chief at Herters saw a marketing opportunity there. Of course as with everything at Herters, their stuff was WAY better than anyone else's. The catalog said so, often and loudly.
Funny how such a great(?) idea was never taken up by anyone else, and disappeared pretty quickly.
Not hard to imagine the seating depth and bearing surface problems.
 
The wasp-waist fuselages were an attempt to reduce wave drag by limiting sudden changes in the cross-sectional area of the plane. So they thinned out the fuselage right where the wings were. It would actually make things worse on a bullet. Makes me wonder what BC's these things have.
 
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