Pointing your own rounds

[DocUSMCRetired]

Sometimes the question comes up along the lines of "I point my own rounds, how does this affect my BC?" So I wanted to share this information with you guys. If you decide to point your own rounds this is the change in BC you can expect:

"Typically, for pointing, it’s 3-4% increase in BC on average. If the nose is long and pointy/VLD shape and with a large meplat, that’s where pointing has the biggest effect; up to 8% or 10%. If the meplat is tight on a short tangent nose, the increase can be as small as 1 or 2%." - Bryan Litz

 

[MErl]

If the advantage is that great why do no manufacturers do it as a step in production? Are there drawbacks? Does the process being used now not scale up well?

 

[moxie]

Sounds like fun! One more OCD treat.

But I think I'd keep the pointing to my bullets, not to rounds.

 

[allaroundhunter]

Is this when using the Whidden bullet pointing dies?

 

[taliv]

I pointed for a couple years. Mostly Berger VLDs but ultimately it wasn't worth it so I stopped

 

[Sunray]

Pointing your own rounds is, um, pointless(Thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.). The only part of the bullet that matters is the base.

 

[aggiejet]

Pointing your own rounds is, um, pointless(Thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.). The only part of the bullet that matters is the base.

How come?

And as a newbie to reloading, what exactly are we talking about? Pointing?

 

[Paddy]

The base matters more that the front does.

 

[41 Mag]

The two main reasons one would want to "point" their bullets would be to raise the BC or to trim up an uneven formed meplat or tip. In some cases as mentioned this does help out in some it doesn't make much difference at all.

It your shooting matches at 100yds with one of the high intensity calibers, you will probably never notice one bit of difference, however stretch it out to 500, 800, or 1K and subtle differences become blatantly obvious.

There are different schools of thought here, one is to use a die to somewhat close the point and make it more streamlined, the other is to trim the points using a lathe like turning tool which can be adjusted to cut only a few thousands of an inch off, resulting in each bullet being identical in lenght. The best of both worlds to me would be to trim the tips square, then use the pointing tool to uniform them to a nice and tight point. This may or may not result in better accuracy though.

Here is a great read on the effects of both,
Bullet Pointing

Hope that helps.

 

[spitballer]

Thanks for interesting subject. I've thought about inventing some kind of low-cost "pencil sharpener" for those darned plastic tips.

 

[aggiejet]

So why not just buy bullets like this Hornady SST?

 

[aggiejet]

I can't figure out how to attach more than 1 picture at a time.

Here is a picture of a factory, fresh out of the box Remeington Core-Lokt 120 gr 25-06.

Polisci says that the Hornady SST would be much more accurate bullet. But is that the point, (no pun intended) that it doesn't make much difference till you get out past 500 yards?

 

[Walkalong]

How come?

The point is practically meaningless in short range accuracy. It can make a difference at very long range as far as drift and drop, but there are so many things that make such a much larger difference, that few people still point their bullets.

Pointing bullets for anything less than an extremely accurate gun/load with an very good shooter is a waste of time completely. Even then, there is no consensus on doing it like there is on some other aspects of shooting for accuracy.

The base and the jacket concentricity are the most important things for accuracy. They use the best jackets for match bullets. They use proven designs for match bullets. They use the best bullet dies.

Use crappy jackets and the bullets will shoot like crap. If the jacket is not evenly walled all the way around, the lead core will be out of balance and wobble like a care tire in need of balancing.

After these things there are other things to look for. We want the diameter to be consistent. We want a tiny variance in weight. We want the ogive to be consistent. But these are little things compared to the jacket, the base, and the quality of the bullet dies used. The dies need to be near perfect as well. Out of round a few ten thousandths and the bullets will shoot badly.

The jackets need to be nearly perfectly concentric, the base needs to be near perfect, and the bullet must be nearly perfectly round. The only reason I don't say perfect, is machining tolerances. It's hard not to be off .0001 or .0002. They get dadgum close though.

 

[gamestalker]

I opened up a new box of very old Sierra bullets (1960's) a couple weeks ago, and to my surprise, they were all finely pointed lead tips. They looked like sharpened pencil's. This is a quality I don't see any more with any PSP's, so apparently it must have mattered at one time, at least Sierra must have thought so?

GS

 

[DocUSMCRetired]

This is done for a couple of reasons.

To increase BC. On a well designed bullet you can see an increase of 2-4% BC. On a poorly designed bullet you can see an increase of 8-10%. So lets say you bought some ammo, and the meplats are poorly formed. You can point them, giving yourself a much better round.

I know of a couple people who do it, to change how the round is performing in hunting.

You can trim your rounds first, or not trim them. Bullet uniformity only adds to improving on your load development. Their are competitors who first separate out their bullets by weight. Then they trim those bullets to exacting standards, and point the meplats. Remember we are talking about people who have shot .088 MOA groups in competition. To some people every single grouping needs to bug hole.

To say its pointless is foolish. If you are shooting competitively or long range hunting, to not do everything you can to make sure you remove all uncertainty could mean the difference of being on that prize table.

I will say this though. This is not something for everyone. If I am shooting 3 gun, and the farthest target is 200 yards, I more than likely wont see a benefit from it. But If I am shooting sniper duals at 875 yards, Having a bullet with a slightly higher BC gives you an edge. Less wind deflection, less flight time, and less bullet drop, less velocity loss, more energy delivered at the target. 4% at close range isn't as big a deal as 4% at long range. This is even beneficial in long range hunting, since you will be able to deliver more energy on impact, a flatter trajectory means more range error forgiveness, and less wind deflection means less chance of a wounding vs fatal blow due to wind call.

 

[Walkalong]

If I am shooting 3 gun, and the farthest target is 200 yards, I more than likely wont see a benefit from it.

You'll never see a benefit there, not in a 3 gun set up. If you were shooting a custom Benchrest gun with custom Benchrest bullets and were one of the best shooters in the country, then it may shave a few ten thousandths occasionally at 200 yards.

In 100 and 200 yard Benchrest a change of wind velocity from 5 MPH to 8 MPH that you miss at 150 will do a great deal more damage to the group than not pointing.

Things like pointing are about shaving a few ten thousandths, if your good enough. Assuming you have equipment up to the task, gun handling and reading conditions are what it is about. Mostly reading conditions.

At long range, it will indeed, on paper, help, but the edge is so small that if the shooter makes an error, it won't help.

 

[dsm]

I've been using the Hoover tipping die for the past 5 years shooting 1k BR. It definitely works. I trim, then point.

FYI, the new production Sierra 107's are being pointed from the factory.

 

[DocUSMCRetired]

@allaroundhunter, I as well as Bryan Litz use the Whidden Pointing Die System, of which Bryan actually helped design parts of the system.

 

[mdi]

The only reason I can think of "pointing", off hand is I bought a bunch of Nosler "seconds" in .30 caliber. I noticed I had a problem measuring/setting the OAL because the points/noses were rough/uneven (I guess that's why they're seconds ). There didn't seem to be any difference in accuracy as I'm only shooting my Garand to about 100 yards fer now...

 

[Howard Roark]

If the advantage is that great why do no manufacturers do it as a step in production?

They do, 155 grain HPBT Palma. The problem is that they don't point it enough due to limitations of high speed manufacturing.

Meplat trimming and pointing SMK's is worth it to me to get higher BC's from a cheaper bullet, relative to Burger.

John Whidden has won two LR national championships and four cup trophies and has beat me like a rented mule using pointed bullets. Guys like him can point a rifle to 1/4 minute accuracy with iron or scope sights, they can literally hold on the X and decide which side to shoot on for wind calls. Mortals do good to get their hold down to double this. When you're in the top 99.5% of the shooters in your class every bit of accuracy counts.

There is an interesting article at Accurate Shooter about accuracy capabilities between a machine rest and a human. The machine held 200-18 while an AMU shooter recently shot 200-16. Bear in mind that this is a .223 cal AR15 service rifle, not a match rifle which will shoot much better that this.

Something that is often overlooked when loading for long range is ogive length. All bullets especially Sierra's have to be sorted according to this length. They can vary up to 10-20 thou in a box of 500. This greatly affects pressure which causes vertical dispersion at the target.