Thread: DIY bullet tips for flat nosed cast bullets

Originally Posted by T.FOYE

The MP moulds have a couple of options with the hollowpoints. Would you go for a HP mould or set up a jig to drill an insert hole?

Hollow point would be easier, send me the dimensions of yours and I'll print you some to try

That's the MP keith style mould I have. I usually put a good 2thou coat on before sizing so I guess that hole diam would be -4thou from the stated dim? I'll check when I get home with the calipers.

Take a measure when you can. I will try draw something up this week.
How long do you want them?

I'm firing up the printer to do some softbait molds, will do a few test BT's for you at the same time

Somehow managed to bugger up the measurements, and did a shit job of supporting them so now I know what I need to fix for next batch!

Million dollar question, does it work well enough to justify the effort?

Originally Posted by No.3

Million dollar question, does it work well enough to justify the effort?

Probably not but I like to tinker, even on others behalf

Being such a wet and crappy year it's taken me a while to get out and test. OK, so mixed results. I did get a flyer that I believe was caused by a tip coming off. Wasn't happy about that.

But the BC data from the labradar was sufficient to give deffinate results for each shape.

I sent 10 normal NOE semi flat nose bullets downrange and got an average of .250 G1. Not too shabby.

The home made pointies did noticeably better with an average of .285 G1.

The blob tips were a disaster and I stopped shooting them. I believe they were .256 but I had climbing velocity due to residue in the barrel.

Those results were all over the show but for .05 gain in bc... nah the blobs are a waste of time. But the pointed rounds I feel had merit. The accuracy was good. I was forced to only shoot in 2s as this rifle doesn't like heat at all (SBL 45-70).
I also need to check I didn't kill the scope lol. Testing for another day.

Makka I reckon your method is the safest. Although I can prove that it is worth altering cast bullets, the inserts you've made will be much safer than relying on a glue bond to PC. Main problem I had was the seating distance was irregular with my method. I had to meticulously remove excess glue that appeared. It was hard to regulate how much epoxy I dropped into the mould too so I had to fall back on culling over/under sized tips (between 353gn and 356gn)

So this would be using the keith hollowpoint mould and avoiding the mag tube. Single loading only. Gonna jump on an app and see what gains I would get on applied ballistics using those bc results (they worked out pretty well when I ran them out to 200m last time and took real world drop data

OK so feeding all this crap into strelok to get the suggested hunting zeros it came up with a very interesting result.
The flat tip bullets are best set at 106m giving 86m of "flat shooting". They drop to subsonic at 285m.

The pointed rounds are best set at 116m zero, giving 115m of flat shooting. They go subsonic at 365m.

(The flat shooting distance begins at 20/21m for both). Strikingly similar tradj to a .22lr really when you look at it. But my original aim was to get 50m extra usable hunting distance. 29m is what it turned out to be. So a 33% gain in killing distance. 28% further supersonic flight (you can't actually rely on those full distances as anything transonic / near the sound barrier can lose stability apparently)

try a plastic BB airsoft pellet.....dob of glue to hold it there.....you may be surprised in a good way.

Is that with a hollowpoint yes? That would deffinately work
safely I reckon.

while my 'blob tips' failed I did get
the strong indication that I had an issue in the barrel from something (I never normally get issues from pc). MV was jumping 100fts between shots so i just stopped.
Would try blobs again as I think they might be a good compromise. Better bc yet still fine to load in a levergun

Trouble is, if you knocked a tip off....

Up next is a run of hp with 3d tips. I reckon that will be a good combo. The only drawback with the MP keith mould is that you lose 2 full grains of powder getting them into the case. Also have to crimp on the bearing surface forward of the last canulure. Hate doing that but you gotta get a safe seating distance to the lands. Doesn't always work out perfectly for crimping alignment

yip BB into hollow point. if you already have a centred hollow point its too easy to enlarge it a WEE bit with 7mm drill bit so BB sits in nice and securely. bit hit and miss with a flat point,hard to get it centered properly.

Now that I'm playing with this stuff I don't much touch my jacketed ammo. All those months and years waiting for stock to hit the online shops. I grabbed a few boxes but I can't be bothered loading it if I know I'm only gonna be at the mercy of the market. Tbf I am still at the mercy of the weather. Can't cast lead if there's grey clouds about